THEATER: 'BLKS' IS SERIOUSLY FUNNY

BLKS ** 1/2 out of ****
THE ROBERT W. WILSON MCC THEATER SPACE

To the growing list of playwrights of color pushing the boundaries of contemporary theater, you can happily add the name of Aziza Barnes. Is it any wonder they attracted the attention of red-hot director Robert O'Hara? No, it is not. He gives BLKS a solid showcase that also shows off the versatility of the mainstage at the relatively new Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space. This was my first visit to the latest addition in NYC's collection of artistic spaces but it won't be my last. And this was my first chance to see a work by Barnes, but it surely won't be my last for that either.

In this broad but pointed comedy, Octavia is having a bad day. She (Paige Gilbert) freaks out over a mole on her clitoris. It wasn't there yesterday! When her lover/friend with benefits/whatever Ry (Coral Peña) demurs when asked to play amateur gynecologist, Octavia has had enough. She ends their brief fling/burgeoning romance (I don't know what to call it because neither does Octavia). When roommate June (Antoinette Crowe-Legacy) barges in and reveals her boyfriend has cheated on her (again) and a relative of Octavia says the potentially cancerous mole needs to be dealt with right away, they and fellow roomie Imani (Alfie Fuller) agree there's only one solution. Day drinking, rolling a blunt and generally partying, of course.

What follows is a roundelay of sexual entanglements, hilarious banter and the unwelcome but inevitable downer of reality intruding in on the fun via a violent confrontation on the streets and social media updates on the latest killing of a young black man.

Unlike other recent plays, BLKS is not extravagantly out there or form-breaking. It's not a series of sketches, just a well-constructed play with characters bouncing off one another in unexpected, revealing ways and with a joyous sense of sisterhood. Even when they are practically swapping potential partners, you never doubt Octavia, June and Imani have each others backs. And while the humor is broad and cranked up, unlike Barnes we never doubt its essential seriousness either.

O'Hara oversees the show with affection but several elements hold it back. The scenic design by Clint Ramos is a trickster in its own right. The stage is wide and deep but the central space of the shared living room in their apartment is presented at a cramped, odd angle. It's puzzling until the set rotates again and again, almost going widescreen as Ramos reveals a bathroom, bedrooms, a club and even a city street with subway entrances. And yet it felt over-elaborate and attention-grabbing to me. You shouldn't be thinking about the sets as much as we do here.

Worse, two roles are poorly cast. Marié Botha as That Bitch On The Couch is merely ok as a clueless white woman bedeviled by what's appropriate for her to say. And Octavia's love interest Ry was mishandled entirely by Peña, making her Off Broadway debut and proving very uncomfortable onstage. Her body movement, her line deliveries, literally everything about her proved awkward, never more so than a key monologue at the climax she barely delivered, much less brought to life.

The three leads are much better. Fuller reveals depths to Imani. Crowe-Legacy is full-on Amazonian as she straddles the stage with her personality and take-command voice. And Gilbert anchors it all with ease as the conflicted but decent Octavia. Playing a string of male characters but mostly the nerdy, off-beat Justin (a guy who befriends June in a club), Chris Myers is scene-stealing good from start to finish. For a play centered on women, Barnes gifts him with a terrific showcase and Myers makes the most of it.

I wish Barnes had trusted their own talents as much. News alerts about the gunning down of young black men by the police both early on and at the end feel like an unnecessary attempt to prove the play has serious intent. I never doubted it, thanks to the more organic inclusion of a burst of violence on the street and the wickedly funny taunting Imani gives to a white woman she flirts with. Yet even at the end, Barnes insists on a string of monologues that come from a different world than the colorful comedy they created and make us care about.

Indeed, Barnes has a gift for character and dialogue. After delivering three women in a setting I'd be glad to return to, TV might just be in their future.

NOTE: It's not every day NYC gets a new theater space. Check out this quick peek of The Robert W Wilson MCC Theater Space.

THEATER OF 2019

Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar  Festival at the Public  ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **
Estado Vegetal ***
Hans Christian Andersen * 1/2
Cirque du Soleil: Luzia ***
BLKS ** 1/2

Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. 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. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with 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.

MUSIC: CHRIS THILE CAPS CARNEGIE HALL RESIDENCY WITH OLD FRIENDS

NICKEL CREEK/PUNCH BROTHERS *** 1/2 out of ****
CARNEGIE HALL 

Did musician Chris Thile just conquer New York? I think he did! The multi-talented, mandolin-brandishing entertainer capped off a residency at Carnegie Hall with a delightful concert celebrating his two key bands: Nickel Creek, the bluegrass rabble rousers (but with respect!) that started it all for him and Punch Brothers, the ongoing group helping Thile to push boundaries of that genre ever further. (Thile won Grammys with both of them, including just this February.) The sold-out crowd was both enthusiastic and attentive, a rare and welcome attribute. The music was accomplished, lovely, lively and naturally climaxed with both groups merging on stage for a raucous hoedown and a final bow.

As if all this weren't enough, Thile just announced that in the future his radio show will record all its episodes in New York City. Yes, Live From Here -- the Show Formerly Known As A Prairie Home Companion -- that mainstay of public radio and a bastion of heartland humor, will be broadcast from the Big Apple. And with Live From Here already test-driven live from Town Hall featuring guests like jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant and Jeff Daniels doing a monologue from the Broadway show To Kill A Mockingbird, Thile makes this transition seem natural and unforced. Longtime fans can rest assured the show is still sponsored by Powdermilk Biscuits while newcomers will discover a sharper, more encompassing mix of humor and music.

If you don't know Thile, you've got a lot of catching up to do. He began performing as a pre-teen (and even guested on A Prairie Home Companion at just 15 years old). Nickel Creek has six studio album and Punch Brothers have five. But wait! Thile also has seven solo albums AND seven collaborative albums, including two especially good ones with respectively Edgar Meyer and Brad Mehldau.  (You can start right now with this 20m set by Nickel Creek for NPR's Tiny Desk concert series.)

The audience at Carnegie Hall clearly had no catching up to do. They began applauding songs the moment a particular beat or familiar melody was introduced. They shouted "Ahoy!" and "Oh boy!" at the right times. And generally they held off on applause until the sound of a song faded mostly away, though one man up front couldn't quite help himself and offered up a quiet but fervent "Yes!" just as one gorgeous tune ended in otherwise perfect silence.  The night began with the slightly more intellectual endeavor Punch Brothers, with songs that often contained distinct movements along with dynamics more often found in rock. After about 80m and a break, the somewhat more traditional Nickel Creek delivered fan favorites audiences have been cherishing for the past 20 years. The concert could happily have run twice as long.

The Punch Brothers set showed off their versatility, from "Julep" to the marvelous and haunting "Another World" from the EP Ahoy. The Nickel Creek set was even better, especially since fans haven't seen them in concert as much in recent years. Sara Watkins delivered especially piercing versions of "Anthony" and Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is A Long Time." Sean Watkins (her brother) offered an amusing intro to his own "21st of May." And Thile was sometimes a showman (making like Joe Cocker on one especially rocking mandolin solo),  sometimes immersed in the group of musicians at hand and sometimes sitting back and taking it all in with delight. His voice weaved in and out of the evening with its high lonesome sound, from Nickel Creek's 2001 debut album heartbreaker "The Lighthouse's Tale" right up to his most recent work with PB.

Time and again, the artists on stage crowded around one mike, shoulder to shoulder, making music. They did it just like the Weavers did at Carnegie Hall nearly 65 years ago...and just like Thile will surely be doing at Carnegie Hall for decades to come.

Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. 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. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with 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.

THEATER: CIRQUE DU SOLEIL GETS ITS MOJO BACK

CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: LUZIA -- A WAKING DREAM OF MEXICO *** out of ****
NEXT TO CITI FIELD IN QUEENS, NYC 

I skipped the last few Cirque du Soleil shows that passed through New York City. After revolutionizing the circus, this Montreal-based company fell into a bit of a rut. Every show was an amorphous, New Age-y sort of experience. Worse, they kept trying to shoehorn a collection of fine circus acts (trapeze work, juggling and the like) into a narrative. This misguided idea about how to keep their shows fresh culminated in the godawful Broadway show Paramour. Perhaps that disaster sobered the company up. That show was followed immediately by this one, which comes to the city three years after its debut in Montreal. Luzia runs through June 9 before moving on to Connecticut, Canada and then London's Royal Albert Hall in January.

Here Cirque breaks its own "rules" but far more effectively. They take inspiration from a particular country, in this case Mexico. That gives the costumes and colors a focus their more outlandish  and conceptually vague shows lack. Many of the songs are sung in Spanish, rather than just the usual made-up Cirque nonsense language meant to be "exotic" and yet not alienate any of its worldwide audience. (Sure, a number of tunes are still vocalized with wordless ooh-oohing, but it's an improvement.) Plus the score is bursting with brass that -- again -- step away from New Age and create a friendlier, livelier more human vibe.

Indeed, the entire show has a warm, inviting feel that draws the audience in. It's human-scaled and all the better for it. This video gives highlights of the many acts on display.

I wasn't surprised for a second by anything in Luzia but I smiled with pleasure the entire time. A treadmill is used effectively early on. A woman/butterfly runs forward as her wings fill up the stage and a War Horse-like puppet of a stallion gallops behind her. It's not ground-breaking or unusual in any way -- just a lovely, simple effect. The same goes for the troupe (my favorite of the lot) dressed in bird-like costumes who tumble through hoops as those move forward and backward along the treadmill. One or two or three hoops are stacked up, while tumblers go alone or two or three at a time in both directions . Again, the routine is simplicity itself but done with elegance and charm. Of course, I say "simple" but of course it's only simple for folk who devote a lifetime to developing their skills and their bodies. (Many performers come from Eastern Europe, which boasts a deep circus tradition while others were competitive gymnasts, swimmers, wrestlers and the like in college.)

Start to finish, Luzia has an easy charm. True, it never wowed me with some outrageous never-seen-before feat of derring-do. But I don't relish truly death-defying acts for my afternoon's entertainment so that low-key vibe was a bonus. While the clown act usually had me cringing over his "antics" in Cirque shows from the past, Luzia's performer was top-notch, especially in an act-one bit where he engaged the audience in a beach ball competition. When a juggler had a disastrous outing (he lost his rhythm early on and dropped pins four or five times), it was a welcome reminder how difficult their skills are. And while the contortionist appearing towards the climax was unsettling rather than entertaining (he seemed more appropriate for Coney Island), his big routine was staged beautifully with a parade of performers placing candles all around the stage while the lights dimmed.

If an aerialist dipping into a pool of water proved kitschy (his Fabio-like hair was flipped so often and so dramatically it deserved its own trailer backstage), this was all part of the fun. A curtain of water also played a prominent role throughout the show and created some very cool cascading pictures indeed. At the end, the cast gathered around a table to celebrate and even this felt right, especially how they froze into place at various points to allow the clown a final bit of nonsense. If you've never been to Cirque du Soleil or, like me, you took a break when it became repetitive or just too omnipresent, Luzia is a good reminder of why they conquered the world in the first place.


THEATER OF 2019

Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar  Festival at the Public  ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **
Estado Vegetal ***
Hans Christian Andersen * 1/2
Cirque du Soleil: Luzia ***

Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. 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. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with 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.

THEATER: HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S LIFE WAS NO FAIRY TALE

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN: TALES REAL AND IMAGINED * 1/2 out of ****
THE DUKE ON 42ND STREET 

Proving how rich and varied the theater world is in New York City, the Ensemble for the Romantic Century is celebrating its 18th season (still high off the critical acclaim for their show Van Gogh's Ear) and yet somehow I've never seen any of their 40 or so productions. The company is known for creating atypical bio-plays that combine live classical music with the story of historical figures such as Emily Dickinson, Arturo Toscanini and the painter Vincent Van Gogh. In the case of the Danish writer most famous for fairy tales like "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Snow Queen" and "Thumbelina," they're even incorporating puppetry.

Owning an insane amount of folk and fairy tales (not to mention loving puppetry), I am perhaps the ideal adult audience member for this show. Sadly, it's a noble failure of the sort one would expect of a bio-play celebrating an historical figure. The odd twists and turns of Andersen's celibate life, the fine performances of pieces by Britten and Purcell among others and the sheer commitment of all involved make this a noble failure, but a failure nonetheless.

Written by Eve Wolf and directed by Donald T. Sanders, the show tells of Andersen's life from start to finish, making every dutiful stop along the way. Born into poor circumstances, Andersen hightailed it to Copenhagen at the age of 14 and lucked into a spot at the Royal Danish Theatre. That led to Hans impressing the head enough to land the lad a thorough education, funded by King Frederick VI no less. And up and up he went; rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty; writing pieces of theater, poetry, travelogues and yes fairy tales, the stories which slowly but surely made him world famous.

Andersen might share dinner with Charles Dickens but he never found similar success in his private life. He shunned his mother and sister as undesirably lower class, he yearned for acceptance from the aristocratic family that semi-adopted this stray of a child but never took him to their breast and he chastely yearned for men and women who clearly did not reciprocate his affections. Gay? Straight? Bisexual? The one thing most biographers agree on is that Hans died a virgin.

Frustrated sexual desire, social climbing, world fame eclipsed by private shame -- Hans Christian Andersen was a complicated man. While the details of his life are revealed, the play never turns them into dramatic fare. Most of his fairy tales are glancingly referenced, with only "The Ugly Duckling" (as autobiographical as it gets for him) and "The Little Match Girl" incorporated more fully into the show. Hans obviously identified with the maligned creature who blossomed into a swan. And the inexplicable climax of the play involves a silent reenactment of that heart-tugging fairy tale about a beggar girl freezing to death on New Year's Eve.

Bald statements about the life of Andersen are interrupted by so-so puppetry or fine performances of classical pieces arranged for two pianos and percussion along with a counter tenor. Arvo Pärt seems the odd duck here, alongside a program dominated by Purcell, Britten and one apiece by Igor Stravinsky and Samuel Barber. Still, that deeply religious Estonian composer is a personal favorite and a pleasure to hear. Nonetheless, I struggled to make any connection between the music and the story of Andersen's life, turning them into welcome but puzzling respites from the dramatics.

A better show would have the fairy tales revealing the soul of this sad writer more effectively with the music underscoring the action with purpose, rather than the randomness in selection I felt here. While the puppetry is by and large forgettable, the musical performances are solid. And the acting by leads Jimmy Ray Bennett and Randall Scotting (who also doubled as the singer at the performance I saw) were solid. Bennett showed Andersen's insecure name-dropping and craving for acceptance without making him too pathetic, no small task. Scotting (in multiple roles but especially the object of affection Edvard) was just as assured.

Yet even the ending is bungled, with a perfectly fine last image returning us to where the show began trampled on by an unnecessary coda declaring that the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen would live forever. Yes, we know. A better show would make that point without having to announce it so baldly.

THEATER OF 2019

Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar  Festival at the Public  ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **
Estado Vegetal ***
Hans Christian Andersen * 1/2
Cirque du Soleil: Luzia ***

Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. 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. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with 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.

THEATER: "MANUELA INFANTE," OR REVENGE OF THE PLANT KINGDOM

ESTADO VEGETAL *** out of ****
BARYSHNIKOV ARTS CENTER

If monologist Anna Deavere Smith could dance and preferred fiction to non, she might come up with something like the oddball pleasures of Estado Vegetal. This one person performance piece belongs at the Baryshnikov Arts Center for two good reasons. First, it was workshopped at the BAC in 2016. Second, every gesture, every movement by performer Marcela Salinas has purpose and effect. It's a bold, fascinating and slightly nutty work that will reward those of an...expansive nature when it comes to the arts. This is the sort of show that begins simply, with a man answering questions from an unseen police officer. By the end, actors don ceramic pots, then a giant plant gets the spotlight along with a microphone while you confidently wait to hear what it has to say and it seems quite reasonable to do so.

You can think of Estado Vegetal in several ways. It's a manifesto for the plant kingdom, those members of this planet perhaps unfairly ravaged by homo sapiens.

It's also a one person show where Salinas captivatingly embodies the members of a neighborhood reeling from a tragic "accident." The branches of a massive old tree hit some power lines late at night, plunging their street into darkness just as young fireman Manuel comes roaring down the road on his motorcycle. Salinas delivers monologues by a host of people including a city worker in charge of green spaces, a little girl who loves the tree, a busybody sticking her nose into everyone else's business, the mother of Manuel and more.

And it's also perhaps a mystery of sorts, with the prime suspect hiding in plain sight and boasting the rock-solid alibi of all arboreal criminals -- trees can't move or think or act. Can they?

Here's a video about the piece when it was being developed at BAC in 2016. Needless to say, elements may have changed since then, but it nicely captures the artists and their creative processes.

Estado Vegetal is admirable and fun to watch, especially in the strong earlier half where one character after another comes to life through a combination of dialogue, movement, lighting and playful props. The piece was created by both director Manuela Infante and star Salinas, assisted strongly by the set, costume and lighting of Rocio Hernández. I see no credit for sound design but voice recording was done by Pol del Sur and sound is a major player in the show's effect, with a looping device giving Salinas the freedom to "interview" herself as well as create aural collages that do everything from mirror the crosstalk of two humans to encompassing a roaring inferno.

However, Estado Vegetal is also an intense work of movement and sound that demands close attention. Pieces like this are hard to maintain for an hour; Estado Vegetal runs an unwise 90 minutes. Worse, it builds to a climactic moment in which the plants of the world finally give voice to their demands. (From the sound of it, humans are in for a world of hurt.) The scene is effective and so freighted with grand finale symbolism (a fog machine, a sound collage that builds and builds in cataclysmic power, lighting that glows with doom and then fades to black, etc.) I naturally assumed we had reached the end.

But no, a substantial portion of the show remained. That portion is fascinating in its own right. Yet it feels extraneous; intellectually I understand it's not, but still.... Worse the plotting is more elliptical and vague than the relatively easy to follow chorus of voices that preceded it. Yes, it all ties together (even a detour into the gothic) and the philosophical ideas embodied in a flashback with Manuel give firmer voice to the show's intentions. Nonetheless, one felt impatient towards the end, an unhappy response to a work made with intelligence and passion. After all, many people talk to their plants. But very few listen for a response.

NOTE: This piece has just one more performance in NYC on May 3. But co-writer/director Manuela Infante is a major talent to keep an eye out for when she returns to the city. And those interested in getting a new perspective on plants might enjoy the delightful work of popular science The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben. It was a bestseller across Europe.


THEATER OF 2019

Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar  Festival at the Public  ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **
Estado Vegetal ***
Hans Christian Andersen

Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. 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. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with 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.

THEATER: "BEETLEJUICE" SHOWS A LITTLE LIFE

BEETLEJUICE ** out of ****

WINTER GARDEN THEATRE 

The new show Beetlejuice just scored eight Tony nominations, including Best Musical. But its best bet to win a statue is surely in Best Scenic Design. Nominee David Korins gets to play in the world created by the film's director Tim Burton and he in turn was inspired by Edward Gorey, old horror films and a thousand other sources. Korins has a blast in this show, creating a nicely askew old home and then layering on look after look for the main set right in front of our eyes. Combine that with ghouls, a giant snake (I mean, a GIANT snake), wacky costumes by William Ivey Long (also nominated) and great lighting by Kenneth Posner and Peter Nigrini (both also nominated) and sound by Peter Hylenski (ditto, or is that thritto?) and you've got a fun show with a pop-up haunted house aesthetic that fans of Tim Burton will enjoy. Toss in Alex Brightman's tireless cheerleading as the title ghoul (essentially delivering the same Red Bull of a performance he delivered in School Of Rock even though it's supposed to be subversive rather than inspiring) and you've got a show that's not bad, a backhanded compliment but a sincere one.

Turning the movie Beetlejuice into a musical made more sense than, say, Pretty Woman for the simple fact that everyone who saw it remembers the big musical number and funniest moment in the film. That's the scene where people at a dinner party are unwittingly forced by a demon to lip sync to Harry Belafonte's "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)." On stage, the actors actually sing the song, though I think it would have been funnier to have them lip sync, just like in the film. It's still the highlight of the stage show, just like in the movie. And there's the problem. All the fun bits of Beetlejuice (just like most of the fun bits in Tootsie) feel like call backs to what was done better and first on film. Worse, unlike Tootsie the movie Beetlejuice is a modest comedy at best, so there's not much to mine in the first place. 

The show's creators knew that. The film is a collection of gags sort of held together by Michael Keaton's manic turn and the aching seriousness of Winona Ryder (which makes her intentionally all the funnier). There's almost no plot worth mentioning or caring about. So the show must engineer one. 

Our teen goth heroine (a solid Sophia Anne Caruso) isn't just a kid who LOVES to embrace the weird. Instead of choosing to be goth, she is burdened by the death of her mom, which is a lot less fun. Her dad adds to the pain by refusing to mention his dead wife's name. It takes a haunted house, two very dull ghosts, the sexy beast Beetlejuice, a fake guru, that giant snake and a trip to the underworld (or the Nether Region or whatever they call it) just to get dad to admit he misses his wife too. It's a big journey for a very small and obvious payoff.  Ultimately, the show collapses under our lack of interest in the bland ghosts (poor Kerry Butler and Rob McClure, doing their best), the forgettable songs and the heartfelt confessions of a girl and her dad we could see coming a mile off. 

Beetlejuice is a lot more fun when it just goes nuts, from the crazy costumes to the chorus of ghouls to Brightman getting all sexually fluid with every character in sight. The first act really is pretty good, almost, thanks to Brightman, a lot of sight gags and Leslie Kritzer doing a great turn as the ditzy Delia  (played in the film by Catherine O'Hara). Really, it was Tony-worthy but fell through the cracks in a strong year for supporting women. 

We barely cared about the characters in act one. When act two keeps introducing more of them to less and less interest (a bland fake guru/exorcist; an underworld bureaucrat, etc.) along with that thoroughly unnecessary heartwarming revelation, the show's energy flags entirely. (And sweetening the audio mix with roars of applause and cheers can't mask that fact.) Thankfully, they reprise "Day-O" at the curtain call. How could they not? But I still say they should have lip-synced it. 

THEATER OF 2019

Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar  Festival at the Public  ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **

Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. 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. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with 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.