The new spoof Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation has fun teasing the recent Broadway drama The Ferryman. That show brimmed over with children and drinking and the Troubles, so Forbidden Broadway sings the question: "What is the state of Irish drama?" The answer? "Grim, grim, grim."
Well, the Irish Rep tackles what might be playwright Conor McPherson's idea of a holiday show. You''ll find loads of drinking and troubles (if not THE Troubles) and the tone is indeed grim, along with some black humor. But given its setting on Christmas Eve, at least Dublin Carol has the grace to avoid crushing your spirit completely. It features a small, wavering candle flame of hope at the very end. I'll take it.
Still, it's no surprise the holiday setting has not fooled Irish Rep into delivering this play during the actual holidays. Dublin Carol ends its run before Thanksgiving and the Irish Rep offers the enjoyable nonsense of a London Assurance revival through the New Year. This is the sixth play by McPherson revived by the company (including their exceptional production of The Weir). Here's hoping they keep working their way through his body of work. Maybe a double bill of the one acts This Lime Tree Bower and Come On Over is next? And is it too soon to bring back The Night Alive? McPherson and the Irish Rep are lucky to have one another.
Still, this is my first time seeing it and I'm not quite sure what I think of the play. Or, rather, I'm not sure if it's the play or the production that doesn't quite satisfy.
The story is a familiar one, somehow. John Plunkett is a sad wreck of a man, an alcoholic whose eyes are always darting towards a bottle...or studiously trying not to look at a bottle calling to him. He's the senior man in charge of a funeral parlor while the owner is slowly dying in hospital. It's Christmas Eve, 1999, and John is teaching the new lad Mark the ropes. They've just finished working a job and Mark perks up a bit when John insists he was grand, proved a natural at what was apparently Mark's first assignment. Sitting in a tatty, tired office decorated with a few modest holiday decorations, Mark sits with John for a few minutes and then makes to go.
John leaps to his feet, offering a cookie, another drink, another task -- anything to keep the lad from leaving him alone. John's story pours out of him: a marriage ruined by drink, a son who is too much like his dad, a daughter he hasn't seen in years. You've heard it all before. Mark should be off duty but he is dragooned into doing the same job he did at the funeral: sitting around looking politely mournful while other people vent their emotions or struggle not to let go.
In the next scene, John's daughter Mary shows up with painful news. John's wife is also in hospital and dying. Mary urges him to visit today, assuming he can stay somewhat sober. He can't quite believe his presence is welcome, but Mary says it is. Soon they're trading painful tales. Mary describes John's dreadful behavior and then John tops her with even more self-flagellation. In the show's best moment, John insists he can't say he's sorry because that's such a pathetic request given the damage he's done...and then he drops to his knees and begs for it anyway.
In the third and final scene, Mark returns for his pay but John is too distraught and too drunk to have bothered with a trip to the bank. He clings to the lad but is soon alone with his thoughts and memories. Alone on Christmas Eve, with his daughter soon to return, John wrestles with the bottle and his desire to maybe take one small step towards redemption. Maybe, for just a minute, he can play a carol on the radio, put out some poor excuse for a gift (probably grabbed at the local chemists) and not screw things up. Maybe.
While the elements may be familiar, there's no reason on God's green earth that Dublin Carol couldn't be so specific it came to life. Or it might surprise in some way, such as The Seafarer, where the Devil manages to shake up another familiar tale. But Dublin Carol does not offer an unexpected surprise or the shiver of familiarity, the moment where you think, "I know this person." Instead you think, "I know this play." Still, the tech elements are spot-on and it's directed ably if without fire by Ciarán O'Reilly.
The cast is fine. Sarah Street has the most detailed and vigorous character in Mary, a woman who isn't there to condemn or hold hands. Cillian Hegarty's Mark is harder to pin down. I've no idea what kind of person Mark might be. But it's notable that Mark spends much of the play listening and Hegarty felt alive and present with nothing more to rely on than his own stage presence. I look forward to seeing his next role. Jeffrey Bean has by far the biggest part as John, which means he either lets the play down a tad or reveals its limitations. Still, he's not bad (cruel compliment, that), just...unsurprising.
That's the same complaint I've made throughout and it holds. Like a new holiday song hoping for airplay alongside "Jingle Bells" and "Fairytale Of New York," Dublin Carol must compete with the other strong plays by McPherson, not to mention every drama ever made to justify its existence. In this production, it strikes a note too similar to distinguish it from so many other shows that have come before.
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.
Seven years ago, the York Theatre Company delivered a sterling revival of the Maltby & Shire revue Closer Than Ever. It ran and ran. Now they're presenting the legendary but little seen 1965 revue called The Decline and Fall Of The Entire World As Seen Through The Eyes Of Cole Porter. It could run and run.
Closer Than Ever was a fully mounted, fully rehearsed production. Decline and Fall is the middle show in a three-part season of York's Musicals In Mufti series. For York, Muftis are their term for staged concert performances. A game cast is handed a script and just a few days to learn the songs, practice choreography, rehearse their lines and then stand up in front of a paying audience and deliver.
The first show in the Mufti season devoted to Porter was Fifty Million Frenchmen and that's exactly the sort of show an Encores-style series should be tackling. Not musicals with one eye on a big budget Broadway revival, but shows that rarely if ever are done anymore and probably won't get a Broadway revival no matter how well received. Up third is an Ethel Merman vehicle called Panama Hattie.
And smack dab in the middle is the show I'm certain will be the best of the bunch. Decline and Fall was mounted in 1965 and apparently hasn't been seen in New York City since, despite running some 15 months and being one of the biggest hits of its kind in history. Masterminded by Ben Bagley, Decline and Fall is the very model of a modern musical revue.
Pictured: Lee Roy Reams, Danny Gardner, Diane Phelan, Lauren Molina
By focusing on the lesser known songs of a major talent like Cole Porter, Bagley underlined what a tremendous songbook Porter had to offer. A four member cast is given plenty to do, Bagley's between-song patter is swift and informed, the tunes vary from solos to duets to trios and so on, from sad (rarely) to happy (often) to witty (always) and the evening breezes by.
That's precisely what this revival accomplishes too. The master of ceremonies is Tony nominee Lee Roy Reams, surely the only actor to play both Cornelius and Dolly Levi in legit productions of Hello, Dolly! Reams offers the right touch of avuncular charm and dry wit to the proceedings. You almost don't notice how well the show eases its éminence grise into the proceedings -- it's halfway through act one before Reams solos on an amusing "I'm A Gigolo." Then he's a constant presence, whether offering up a Sophie Tucker imitation, duetting wonderfully on "Well, Did You Evah?" with Danny Gardner, nailing an obscure song cut from Anything Goes and then ending the night on a wistful, hopeful note with "Experiment."
Gardner has a lot of fun on that warhorse "Well, Did You Evah?" But he's the show's core throughout, whether playing a tap dancing fool in a few welcome bits, using his square-jawed charm to goofy effect in the opener "I've A Shooting Box In Scotland" or getting serious with "At Long Last Love." Gardner enjoys an easy rapport with...well everyone, from the two female co-stars Diane Phelan and Lauren Molina to Reams and the audience. His reactions to the hijinks around him accentuate the pleasures of the night without ever calling attention to themselves. A stand-out in the Dames At Sea Broadway revival, Gardner is right at home in the musicals of the 1930s, proving he was born about 70 years too late.
Molina was a hoot in the York's very successful musical Desperate Measures and is at her best on the comic numbers here, especially "Make It An Old-Fashioned Please." Phelan has fun too, including her winning duet with Gardner on "But In The Morning, No." Yet she also delivers on the quieter numbers like "After You, Who?" and too many duets and trios and full company numbers to mention. Indeed, the list of songs in the show program is 30 titles long, not counting the medley at the end. Onstage pianist, occasional chimer-in on songs and music director Eric Svejcar works overtime.
Half the fun of a casual staged concert performance like this is the complicity between the performers and the audience. When a little something goes wrong, Reams quickly smoothed things over with an amused comment, turning the tiniest of off moments (like Phelan grabbing a stool Reams needed) into a happy accident. Director Pamela Hunt has a gentle touch on the proceedings, lending this evening the casual but assured atmosphere it needs.
But eleven performances? This show can and should run longer. If it does, the projections by Jamie Goodwin should be given a punching-up. And certainly the complicated medley at the end will improve mightily once the cast has more performances under its belt. Yet, the let's-put-on-a-show vibe is precisely right here.
The notes by Charles Wright give a wonderfully detailed look at the show and the career of Bagley, who delivered a string of revues and even more influential run of albums. When Wright says this 1965 revue prompted a reassessment of Porter, I'll assume he means a reassessment of what shows and what songs mattered. A number of the songs here are standards, but the suggestion is that Decline and Fall rescued them. Mind you, Porter was hardly forgotten by 1965. He had a string of hit Broadway musicals into the 1950s, ending with Silk Stockings. And the feature film High Society opened in 1956, the same year Ella Fitzgerald launched her legendary tribute albums with Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Song Book.
Porter's legacy was ensured. Still, even now a good chunk of the songs in Decline and Fall aren't well-known or often recorded but are a treat to hear. As Bagley knew and this Decline and Fall revival prove, string them together and present them with care and you can have a swell party indeed.
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.
Terra Firma is a muddled allegory of a play by Barbara Hammond. It features a hugely impressive physical presentation, but that can't compensate for several flaws. Acting styles range all over the map, basic information is withheld from the audience without cause and the setting is fundamentally wrong.
The plot is simple, even fable-like, though it's closer to one of those dark and disturbing Grimm tales, not the sort of story that ends with "and they all lived happily ever after."
In the not-so-distant-future, a group of people live on a gigantic steel platform somewhere out on the "Vast Sea." It's an abandoned relic from earlier days (a War era naval defense platform, per the show notes). The three inhabitants style themselves a Queen (Andrus Nichols), a King (Gerardo Rodriguez) and Jones (John Keating), a Citizen.
Their impromptu world is invaded by a man known only as the Hostage (Tom O'Keefe). The Hostage says he's a fisherman but who can be certain? The inhabitants of this platform call it Terra Firma and feel beset on all sides. It's one of eight such platforms they can spy in the vicinity and the others are exploding into bits, the victims of some nefarious enemy, they believe. The Hostage might in fact be a Spy! And so they keep him tied up and under guard, with occasional breaks for a game of chess.
Paranoid, scared, defensive and longing for attention, the people of Terra Firma simply don't know what to do about the Hostage or much of anything. They slip messages into bottles and toss those into the sea, wondering if anyone will ever acknowledge their existence. They long for the return of their children, the Prince and Princess who left some time ago. And every once in a while another explosion rocks their world and another platform is blown into bits. Are they next?
Soon, Prince Teddy (Daniel Molina) clambers back on board, though where he's been and what he's seen is barely hinted at. Then another stranger appears, a self-styled Diplomat who found one of their messages and tracked them down. He offers his services as negotiator for the Hostage, though adding that a crust of bread would also be quite welcome. What follows are multiple games of chess, fireworks, a boxing match, a pistol (fired, as per Chekhov) and the spooky falling of ash, accompanied by a reference to nuclear winter.
We spend most of the show simply wondering what is going on. At some points it leans toward Beckett, at others a satirical comedy, but never much of anything for long. And once Terra Firma reveals its hand by telling the audience what the characters have known all along, it has nothing else to say and ends.
One can't praise the technical elements of this show enough, a real credit to the hotly anticipated new theater company The Coop. The playwright certainly can't complain about her work's presentation. However, the real-world specificity of the set works against the show's inclination towards absurdity and allegory. (It's no coincidence the script begins with a quote from Gulliver's Travels.) Still, the physical production is a triumph.
The stage is filled with a massive steel platform solidly placed on top of giant round cement pillars. We're told it rises 60 feet above sea level and you never doubt its solidity and immense presence. A rickety staircase leads skyward on the right, with one step tilting dangerously down. Each cement tower houses unseen lower decks, including a spiral staircase on the right and a more cellar-like entrance on the left. Even better is the curved screen that hugs the entire stage, depicting a vast and beautiful ocean as far as the eye can see. The effect is wonderfully convincing.
That scenic triumph is by Andrew Boyce and it works hand in hand with all the other tech elements. The lighting by Eric Southern is a treat, from explosions to fireworks to the simple but necessary suggestion of life on the water. Ditto the sound design of Jane Shaw, which is just as essential for bringing this world to life without ever calling attention to itself. (Though I must admit, I did tend to look around wondering if there was an actual cat wandering around.) The costumes by Ntokozo Fuzunina Kunene similarly manage to be realistic and yet attuned to each character's plight. Even the fight choreography by Carman Lacivita is a treat. Realistic fights are never easy to do under the best of circumstances; here she has the added challenge of actors tumbling around the lip of a platform with a pretty serious drop to the ground below.
That's where the consistency ends. The actors seem in warring camps when it comes to style and one must blame the director Shana Cooper and more to the point a story that doesn't know what it wants to be. Nichols is the Queen and she's been a treat on stage before. Here she walks around in a comic opera style, her hand raised high in the air to maintain a self-defeating "royal" air. That mild absurdity is echoed by T. Ryder Smith as the Diplomat. They're good but seem in a different show from the rest.
Tom O'Keefe is closer to them as the Hostage, thanks to a shifty accent, but he seems to exist in the real world. As does the inestimable John Keating as the citizen Jones. Invariably at home in any setting, Keating is a solid center here. The playwright doesn't always know what to do, but his character is never in doubt. Less can be said about Rodriguez as the King and Molina as Teddy since it's never clear what sort of people they're meant to be. They're not comic figures of even a modest sort like the Queen and the Diplomat. But they aren't flesh and bone either, like the Hostage or Jones. They barely register at all.
How much blame can one place on the notes in the program? It goes to great lengths to describe the inspiration Hammond took from the real world "country" of Sealand, an abandoned WW II military platform now claimed as the smallest nation in the world by its precious few inhabitants. That platform has been the site of a pirate radio station servicing the UK, pitched battles both real and legal and ultimately the "founding" of Sealand complete with Constitution and national anthem.
The media loves the place, needless to say. You can learn about its story everywhere from the movies to countless newspaper articles and the new book The Outlaw Ocean by New York Times reporter Ian Urbina. (He devotes a chapter to Sealand.) Hammond even used a grant to visit the platform herself and soak up its history and anarchic spirit. I can't imagine why since the real story of Sealand doesn't inform the fanciful play in the least.
She doesn't quite mock our brutal desire for nationalism above humanity. And she doesn't quite skewer how people reject society a la Burning Man...and then inevitably start to recreate that society in their own brave new world. All she does is give us people trapped in a strange, perhaps desperate situation that teeters between reality and fantasy. We don't quite grasp their predicament until the very end. In this case, withholding information from the audience doesn't create poignancy, just annoyance.
Here's the problem. Sealand represents a rejection of the real world, an escape from a stultifying life. You don't get trapped on Sealand; you choose Sealand. It's a powerful symbol of nonconformity. And it makes no sense as a setting for a post-apocalyptic story, where characters by definition are forced into desperate straits. You can't turn your back on the world if the world no longer exists. Better to have played out this story on the iconic "island" of countless cartoons and comics, a mound of land with a lone coconut tree floating in the midst of an empty sea. That would be a start. But then Hammond would need to figure out what story she wants to tell, rather than just hinting at it.
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.
Sometimes, thankfully, you just do the play. Classics can bring out the devil in artists. What meta conceit can they slap onto a familiar drama to "bring it to life"? Change the time period? Perform it Kabuki style? Cast all men? All women? They become so desperate to leave their stamp on a classic that they forget it's a classic for a very good reason. The play is worth doing, as is.
This new production of The Glass Menagerie co-directed by the estimable Austin Pendleton & Peter Block implied some high-concept makeover this war horse doesn't need. Press releases threatened it would be Wes Craven meets Tennessee Williams, with a score inspired by The Exorcist. Boo! Well, the trick was on us. No, the set is not filled with props made out of glass, just the usual display of glass animals on a side table. The score by Sean Haggerty is moody but not intrusive, as indeed are all the other tech elements. Sure, the sad and ghostly Laura (who already haunts the house when not roaming the streets) can often be seen holding a lonely vigil behind a scrim when she's not onstage.
And that's about it. This is your mother's Glass Menagerie and thank goodness for it. It's modest pleasures are a straightforward presentation of the text. It's not tilted towards one character over the others. The directors don't strive you to think about what they're doing instead of what Williams was doing. They honor the text. This production may not catch fire, but at least it has the decency to hold the play up to the light and let it illuminate what they do, rather than the other way around.
Surely you know the story. The Wingfield family is a sad group, living on dreams of yesterday or tomorrow because today is too depressing to bear. The father took off years ago, leaving behind a wife and two children, his only contact being a postcard from far away stating "Hello Goodbye." His photograph looms over the stage and their lives.
The mother Amanda (Ginger Grace) tells and retells about her glory days as a desirable catch, the bygone era when gentlemen callers would floor her porch. The daughter Laura (Alexandra Rose) pretends to go to typing school but spends most of her time wandering the parks of St. Louis. Mostly, she hides at home, dreamily fussing over her glass menagerie, obsessing over a physical defect (a slight limp) and on rare good days remembering the boy in high school she fancied. The son Tom (Matt de Rogatis) struggles with the strait jacket of his life. He is trapped in a miserable job at a shoe warehouse, can't find a moment's peace to do the creative writing he longs for and wonders how he became the sole support for two women. He's not the one who chose to get married and have kids so why is his life over before it began?
With one eye on heading out to sea as a sailor, Tom invites over an amiable coworker named Jim (Spencer Scott) as a potential love interest for Laura. Jim turns out to be the very high school boy she had a crush on, raising and then crashing all the hopes of the Wingfields one last time.
The best aspect of this show is the balance. Sometimes, the character Amanda dominates this drama. Other times it's the dreamy Tom as a stand-in for Tennessee. And once in a while, Laura steals the show, especially when her time with the Gentleman Caller Jim raises our hopes even when we know better.
Not here. Everyone is admirably in their place. Amanda nags Tom, but isn't an overbearing harpy, thus allowing us to forgive him for running away at the end. She can also be played as semi-delusional, like Blanche at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire. Grace keeps Amanda relatively grounded and real. Though Tom is often played as gay (he's a stand-in for Tennessee, after all), de Rogatis presents an angry young (straight) man restless with a yearning for freedom. He shines especially during the monologues addressed to the audience.
Often the Gentleman Caller is played by a drop-dead gorgeous actor, the better for us to suspend our disbelief. But Scott convincingly looks the part of a high school star who has gotten soft in the years since those glory days. His athleticism is far behind him and Jim yearns for those who can still remember the big man on campus he once was. Spencer makes his moments with Laura make sense. A dreamboat who kisses her can seem hard to believe or even cruel. (Amanda is quite fragile and strange after all.) But this Jim is swept up by finding someone who remembers him the way he was and not the way he is. Her attention to him is just as intoxicating as his attention to her.
The weak link unfortunately is Rose, making her professional debut. In a production titled towards the mother or son, her lack of readiness for such a major role wouldn't matter as much. But the balance they strive for simply can't work when one of the four legs of this sturdy table isn't ready to bear its weight. So it's uneven and ultimately unsatisfying. Yet a Glass Menagerie that doesn't attempt to outdo Tennessee will always be welcome.
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.
Wrestling with your faith is a noble and essential effort. You'll find many examples in the Torah, various Christian Bibles and commentary on the Koran, to name just some religious texts. Jacob wrestles with the angel. Moses kvetches with Yahweh. And Abraham argues with G-d about the possible destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. True, that last one didn't turn out so well. But the very act of questioning is the point. Indeed, in the Jewish faith, for some, arguing and challenging and thinking about ethics and morality and whether this rule applies to that situation can seem the purpose of religion.
Playwright Will Arbery hastens to assure us he moved far beyond this movement and its politics. "I uncoiled myself from their world," he writes in an author's note to his new play Heroes Of The Fourth Turning. And yet, that world informs who Arbery is, as surely as William F. Buckley Jr. and William Safire and Michael Novak informed me, a Catholic conservative turned independent turned progressive.
Like Jacob, Arbery wrestles with the angels of his childhood: the parents who embraced a far-right strain of Catholicism (and hosted a political event for Pat Buchanan), the isolated Wyoming school where they flourished as academics and inspired so many students, and the deeply conservative friends he grew up with and studied with and debated and argued with far into the night. He wants to understand and empathize and humanize the people he loves, but agonizes over whether this might legitimize some of their poisonous beliefs and actions.
The result? His play is set in August of 2017 as four friends come together to celebrate Gina, one of their moms and a mentor to them all becoming the head of the Catholic college that has defined their life. Two of them remain true believers. And while two of them are either questioning some of those stances or so fucked up they can't help but question everything, they're far too timid in their tentative steps towards the light (or away from it, depending on your point of view), that they can't really challenge the relentless convictions of the other two.
It's like hanging out with in-laws or old friends. You might hint at a difference of opinion, but just don't have the energy or heart to get into it. Or you think, "What's the point?" And so the apostates, the ones who have realized not all liberals are the devil in disguise, are simply too afraid to righteously speak their minds. The true believers are happy to question themselves, but only when it comes to tactics.
These people are afraid to confront their own doubts and failings because doubt is for nonbelievers. And if someone else tries to open up (which they all do, however tentatively), it's met by an embarrassed silence or an angry closing of the topic. This is a thoughtful, well-acted, sometimes frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying drama worth wrestling with. But one element of the production is spot-on: Heroes Of The Fourth Turning takes place in near-total darkness.
The action takes place mostly in real time at the tail end of a party. First we met the quiet, stoic Justin, a burly man of few words who is always carrying a weapon. At the beginning of the show, he shoots a deer from his back porch but then has trouble gutting it. Then during the party, he casually sports a pistol jammed casually into the back of his pants. If the culture wars break into real violence, Justin will be ready.
He's paired in our minds with Emily. She is dealing with a debilitating illness and the fact that everyone around her insists on seeing Emily as a paragon of suffering virtue and the illness as a wonderfully ennobling cross to bear. And with a word here and a gesture there, we sense Emily and Justin have an unspoken, un-acted upon bond. Towards the beginning of the show, Justin says he has something to tell Emily and we know precisely what she is hoping for.
Emily is the daughter of Gina, the woman named the new president of the tiny Catholic Transfiguration College of Wyoming. (Picture Ave Maria University, the school founded in Florida by Tom Monaghan of Domino's Pizza. He fondly hoped the nearby town would be free of pre-marital sex, contraception and pornography. In short, Pope Benedict, yes. Pope Francis, not so much.) But she's ever so cautiously the most rebellious of her friends. That amounts to being friends with someone who works for Planned Parenthood while still quickly agreeing abortion is murder full stop, but it's something.
Maybe Emily is simply shaking off the restrictions of being the daughter of two rock star parents, the people everyone around her admired and loved and indeed worshipped. Their friend Kevin, however, is just messed up. Maybe his cloistered childhood where any intimation of sex or desire was painted as ugly and sinful is to blame. Maybe Kevin would have had issues even if he was raised by two lesbian moms of color. But Kevin is a hapless figure, drinking too hard and incapable of going five minutes without mentioning masturbation or his penis or pent-up sexual desires. He's not a train wreck because a train wreck might actually leave some damage in its path. Kevin will only hurt himself.
He shows up unexpectedly for the party, and is thrilled to discover Teresa has popped in as well. She's a fire-breather of a conservative thinker a la Ann Coulter, seemingly making a name for herself delivering diatribes for a Breitbart-style website. Arbery is at his best bringing Teresa to life. He may not agree with her views, but he knows the power and poetry of a steam-rolling monologue and Teresa gets the best of them.
These friends banter and bicker back and forth and it's all rather familiar. Of course, instead of debating the dotcom bubble or Occupy Wall Street's importance, these four debate the culture wars, the incipient violence sure to engulf America (a truism of true believers on the far right and the far left) and various theological ideas. But mostly it amounts to dredging up old issues and new desire. Teresa had pre-marital sex but was allowed to remain in school, for example. And Kevin desperately wishes the engaged Teresa had shared that bit of sinning with him.
Like any party, Heroes of the Fourth Turning has an up and down rhythm. Something of interest takes place and then it all settles back down again before something else worth noting happens. It's never boring, but stretches of the show simply happen, a problem when your characters are afraid or uninterested in confronting one another. Oh, they argue and fight and make up and argue again and Kevin throws up (of course) but the unspoken mostly remains just that.
Director Danya Taymor keeps things on an even keel, though I'm not as sure about the technical side. The costumes by Sarafina Bush are solid. But the setting is too solid. A large imposing rock or the intimations of a hill or mountain in the distance turns what might have been the wide open spaces of Wyoming into a constricted suffocating location. Maybe their world is as cramped as their ideas seem, sure, but that vaguely imposing structure is too hard to make out in the too-dark lighting of Isabella Byrd. Instead of a specific setting or a symbolic one, it remains...insubstantial.
Then Gina shows up and the play comes to life. Gina is Emily's mom and the mentor they all admire. She's also the first person ready to tangle. Why would the new President of Transfiguration College of Wyoming hesitate to put these kids in their place? So Teresa has a worthy opponent and they go at it with vigor. Gina also takes Emily, Kevin and Justin down a peg or two, but it's Teresa who cuts the most formidable target and Gina doesn't hesitate. Michele Pawk commands the stage every moment she's on it.
The problem is that these two alpha women are not really challenging each other. Teresa is a firebrand who is convinced the culture wars will soon turn violent. She sees Christians in the US as an oppressed minority, even though most American Christians (even most Catholics) don't agree with her far right stances on abortion, gay rights and the like. She mocks identity politics, sees Hillary Clinton as essentially the anti-Christ and pitys the fool who would try and out-debate her on any of this. I'm sure Gina would agree with every word.
Sure, Gina mocks Teresa for admiring the yahoos in the new Trump administration. Teresa responds by questioning Gina's embrace of Pat Buchanan, a stone-cold racist who paved the way for Trump and his ilk. But they're not really hitting at the core of their beliefs. It's all about tactics. Later, when Emily apologizes for her mom's brusqueness, Teresa brushes off their argument as fun. And she means it. We've been waiting all night for someone to either embrace their beliefs in a convincing manner or question them with power and authority. Ultimately, all Arbery can bring his characters to do is hint at the more radical break they might make some day.
The cast is strong, but the writing lets them down at the crucial moment when their masks are dropped. Justin begins the show by killing that deer and then hesitating to gut it. But if there's a connection to that and his character during the rest of the show, I missed it. Indeed, Justin wants the school to add marksmanship to the curriculum. He's a true believer and a Christian soldier. (Gina says no to adding weapons training, but purely because of the optics. Again: tactics!)
Kevin blurts out his feelings repeatedly yet they're so entangled with self-loathing it's hard to listen. He could use a lot of therapy, if far right conservatives believed in therapy.
Teresa briefly, shakily confesses she thinks her wedding will be a disaster because she doesn't really have friends, because she keeps everyone at a distance...because she really doesn't know how to love at all.
Emily shakes off the sickly martyr label everyone slaps on her and even insists her Planned Parenthood friend maybe isn't a Nazi. But what she really longs for is someone to care for her like a woman and we just know the monk-like Justin won't be the one. Their moment of openness with each other might have been a strong ending for the show.
Instead, Arbery gives Emily a fit, to the point where she's practically speaking in tongues. For a moment it even seems she might be literally sitting on Justin's face after collapsing, forcing the issue of sexual intimacy. That outrageousness would be preferable to her out-of-character aria about sleeping around, which is both unconvincing and beside the point. Kevin maybe just needs sex; Emily needs love. When a character spends the entire show primly saying "gosh" to this or that bit of profanity, it's too easy to have them curse as a way of insisting they're revealing their authentic selves.
Let's be clear. Jeb Kreager is quietly convincing as Justin and doesn't overplay the gung-ho military aspect at all. Julia McDermott is strong as the pain-wracked Emily, who is more pained perhaps by slowly understanding her faith is misplaced. John Zdrojeski takes an over-the-top loser like Kevin and keeps him rooted in reality, so consistently a loser you accept him rather than tire of him. Zoë Winters dives into the big speeches of Teresa with fervor. And yet none of their big emotional scenes truly work. It's not their fault. Arbery perhaps prefers his characters with their masks on because taking those off -- even for a moment -- feels like a betrayal. They don't want to remove their masks, so how can he do it for them? I'll be very interested to see his next play, a show that doesn't come freighted with so much of his specific childhood.
And a final metaphysical flourish fell utterly flat for me. Is it hinting at the End Times? The coming War? Are the walls of Jericho falling? No thanks, not in a show that strives to be rooted in flawed but sincere people. Arbery wrestles here with the angels of his childhood. But unlike Jacob and Moses and Abraham, I don't think he was playing to win.
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.
Newsies. A Bronx Tale. The Bandstand. Honeymoon In Vegas. Paper Mill Playhouse is a powerhouse when it comes to launching new musicals to Broadway. So naturally, the world premiere of a show about Judy Garland's journey from vaudeville to a starring role in MGM's The Wizard Of Oz raises one big question. Is Chasing Rainbows ready for Broadway? Absolutely.
They've got a great cast, make smart use of classic tunes, deliver some rousing choreography, tell a good story and -- most of all -- have a star in the making. Ruby Rakos acts sweetly, dances winningly and then sings with a voice that immediately relaxes anyone worried about some kid measuring up to one of the great entertainers of all time. Can she belt 'em out like Garland? You bet. It's easy to picture the amiable, entertaining, family friendly Chasing Rainbows on Broadway as is. Rakos could be reliving Garland's first triumphs on the Great White Way just as Renee Zellwegger is in movie theaters depicting Garland's last triumphs in the bio-pic Judy.
So the yellow brick road is tantalizingly in view. But if Chasing Rainbows wants to succeed on Broadway, they've got work to do.
The story begins right at the climax, with Judy Garland, the small town girl with a big voice finally putting on the red shoes of Dorothy Gale. She's about to tackle the lead role in a movie based on the Harry Potter of its day, one of the best-selling books of all time. And Judy is the star! Not just Mickey Rooney's sidekick, not just a co-star, but the honest-to-goodness star. How did she get here?
The show immediately jumps back to a black-and-white childhood, thanks to sepia-toned sets and photo-backdrops that paint the monotone world Garland grew up in as Frances Gumm. Her family are entertainers, complete with a stage mother of a mom, a cheerleader of a dad and three sisters who can sing and dance with the best of 'em. But Frances is the star and everyone knows it. They're leaving their hometown and excited by the prospect of California. So it barely registers on little Frances that some of the local men are glowering at her dad. The Gumms are choosing to leave, but it's clearly under a cloud as dad's awkwardly emotional goodbye to another man hints at problems to come.
Chasing Rainbows captures the travails of an "ordinary" girl next door striving to become a star in the movies. (It helps to be one of the most talented people on the planet.) But it also lasers in on the deep love between Frances and her dad Frank (Max Von Essen). As with so many men in her life, Frank is gay, causing tension in the family and creating one of many roadblocks on the way to Oz.
So the Gumms jump in their car and head to...well, not Hollywood, but a town just a few hours from Hollywood where Frank bought a theater/movie palace as a base of operations. That's close enough for Frances!
Before you know it, she's closer and closer to stardom. Despite being told a hundred times by every man and woman in sight that she's no looker, too fat, an ugly duckling, plain, boring, etc., Frances somehow ends up at MGM. She befriends a swell, gawky young guy at the studio school for budding talent and he turns into Mickey Rooney. After a road trip to the World's Fair to work the crowds, a few radio slots and some canny support from studio head Louis B. Mayer's secretary, Frances Gumm soon turns into Judy Garland.
But she's still not a star, not even close. With the future bombshell Lana Turner and budding sensation Deanna Durbin as classmates, is it any wonder Judy starts to believe she'll never make it? (In real life, Elizabeth Taylor was also a classmate, enough to make anyone else in the world feel dumpy.) Dad's her biggest fan, but he's stuck in that town a few hours away, drawn into yet another doomed and forbidden romance. Mom is quietly dating as well. Her sisters long for a real life. And Mickey Rooney seems to be hitting on every woman in Hollywood except Judy. Maybe she doesn't even want to date him herself. But it sure would be nice to say no.
And just when her dream project of The Wizard of Oz is announced as an upcoming MGM movie, they also announce its star: Shirley Temple. Judy is heartbroken. Again. We know she's going to sing "Over The Rainbow" by the end of the night, but how exactly will she get there?
Recap the complicated plot of this smoothly performed show and you realize how much ground they cover. A family's travails, the studio system and the chaotic production history of The Wizard Of Oz are all deftly interwoven, but that's just the start. A closeted dad, a growing dependency on pills to battle weight, a young woman's desire for a little romance and a starlet's yearning for the spotlight are also in the mix, along with Mickey Rooney, Roger Edens (an MGM talent who also championed Judy) and Louis B. Mayer, here showing an inability to realize what a gem he's got. They casually toss in more: the profitable and corny Andy Hardy series of movies, the way a studio party could help launch a career and Mayer's sharper-than-sharp secretary/right hand woman Kay Koverman are all convincingly brought to life.
And did we mention this is a musical? A few serviceable new numbers pop up for specific scenes, especially early on. But mostly the show cannily works in classic fare, including "Bill" from the musical Show Boat, old warhorses like "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" and Garland signature numbers like "Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart," "Dear Mister Gable," and of course "Over The Rainbow."
The book by Marc Acito weaves them in nicely, along with hints of other songs from The Wizard of Oz. Full credit to David Libby, who adapts the music into all sorts of new situations and provides additional music as well. The entire show was conceived by Tina Marie Casamento, who also delivers some additional lyrics. Normally I'd beware of someone's passion project, but she poured her heart and years of her life into this and it paid off.
Director Denis Jones keeps the elaborate story moving swiftly from start to finish and also delivers some top-notch choreography. He peaks with three big numbers: a school house jam called "All Ma's Children;" a playful performance of "Swing, Mister Mendelssohn," in which Mickey and Judy struggle to teach the operatic Deanna Durbin how to play with the beat on a number; and a tap-dancing finale that wows.
The lighting by Japhy Weideman is also key on that last number, adding nicely to the intensity of the moment. Throughout, the colorful and character-specific costumes of Linda Cho, the hard-working sets of Alexander Dodge and the other tech elements carry the story along with them. One expects a Broadway-ready production from Paper Mill and it delivers here, including a 14 piece orchestra led by conductor Lawrence Yurman that sounds even bigger. And the cast is pretty much flawless.
Max Von Essen is endearing as Judy's loving, troubled dad and Lesli Margherita equally memorable as a mom who keeps her eye on the prize of stardom without ever letting us doubt she loves Judy just as much. Indeed, her role might easily have played as a heavy or faded into the background with so much emphasis placed on the bond between father and daughter, but Margherita's innate warmth shines through. Their relationship is complicated but never maudlin or tragic, no small feat.
Karen Mason scores with two plumb parts: a quick but vivid turn as the teacher in that studio school and as Mayer's very savvy secretary. Her big number lets Mason paint the picture of how some smart women navigated Hollywood: they pushed for what they believed in and left enough room for the men to believe it was their idea all along. Colin Hanlon is right there with her as Judy's other supporter Edens. A handsome fellow, he also endures Cho's one big misstep in costumes: maybe the grey slacks and red shirt and scarf he sports at one point is historically accurate, but it sure doesn't do him any favors. When Judy sports something unflattering, the show is making a point. Hanlon deserves to look more dashing.
Michael Wartella is goofily winning as Mickey Rooney. He drums with authority, dances with pleasure, sings with pep and utterly convinces as a rising young talent. It's a miracle Judy never points out the obvious: how come guys don't have to be matinee idols to be stars? And yet Wartella has the magnetism of a love interest both onscreen and off.
Stephen DeRosa is not too broad as studio head Louis B. Mayer, a mensch, if a little slow on the uptake. Violet Tinnirello does a wicked little spin on Shirley Temple. (Though I think Rooney's taunting of her in "This Is A Happy Little Ditty" should be tweaked to be more like friendly teasing than disgust.) And on and on the list goes, from Judy's two sisters (played by two sets of fine actresses) to Christina Maxwell as Deanna. She too might have over-played this operatic teen star as the butt of jokes. Instead, director Jones ensures everyone is playing a real person instead of a punchline.
Above all, there's Ruby Rakos as Judy Garland. She's poked and prodded and overlooked by the studio system. She sings and dances and then sings again, all in numbers made famous by one of the biggest talents we've ever seen. And you never doubt for a second she's turning into that powerhouse star. Sure, the voice can belt out, but Rakos also captures little things like the "cascading" style Judy often used and the focus on lyrics that made her much more than a little girl with a big voice. Her character is indeed "In Between" (a song Judy sang in one of her Mickey Rooney movies, bemoaning the fact that she's not a little kid but not yet a woman either). Here, Judy is on her way to stardom, but still Daddy's little girl. Rakos embodies that without ever making Judy too babyish or too mature.
So what's wrong? What needs fixing? Not a lot in terms of the basic bones of the show, but plenty needs tightening and cutting throughout. First, the very name of the show reveals a lack of confidence. Call it Chasing Rainbows, not Chasing Rainbows: The Road To Oz. That subtitle makes it sound educational, just one step away from calling it Chasing Rainbows: The Road To Oz -- The Story Of Judy Garland and How She Came to Star in The Most Beloved Musical Of All Time. If your audience isn't already aware of what Chasing Rainbows is about, adding in The Road To Oz won't make any difference.
The framing device is also unnecessary. The show begins with Judy putting on the ruby red shoes of Dorothy and hinting at the Big Song in the finale. It's redundant. Again, your audience knows where it's headed: the entire show is about her getting the lead in The Wizard Of Oz. So don't waste their time by telling the audience the one thing they already know: she gets the part. Indeed, Judy's childhood is a more compelling start since that's precisely what most people aren't familiar with. Plus, too many songs and bits of dialogue throughout make reference to rainbows and showers and the like. A little bit of that goes a long way.
The Shirley Temple bit is funny and allows a good joke when it comes to the casting of Wizard. But her character is unnecessary in a show which has so much going on. Yes, the "This Is A Happy Little Ditty" number works on its own, but it doesn't really move the story forward. We know Judy isn't a cute little moppet without needing an entire number to prove it.
Further, the second act leans too often on details about the making of The Wizard Of Oz. Sure, it's fun to run through all the script changes that were added, dropped, added in again and then finally dropped. But it's not necessary to the real story, which is about Judy's coming of age as an artist, not rewrites. Do we really need to be told Buddy Ebsen fell ill due to his Tin Man makeup and had to be rushed to the hospital? Not when you can read entire books sharing the same info about that and cut musical numbers like "The Jitterbug" and other trivia.
So much info is stuffed into the second act, they lost track of Mickey Rooney for a while. Just like the real Judy and Mickey, Rakos and Wartella spark each other every time they're on stage. While Roger Edens also has a role to play, that part feels too big when we're wondering where the heck Mickey has gone too. They're too good together.
A big montage towards the climax depicts all the swirling issues bedeviling Judy. It's tricky, ambitious and convincingly done. But it too is unnecessary. The montage merely recaps the drama we've already seen. A climactic confrontation between Judy and one of the movie's directors is all the drama we need to build to a big finish.
That big finish was teased at the beginning of course...and it's not successful.
Judy is singing "Over The Rainbow" but she's also trying to convince Mayer to keep the song in the movie. So she keeps stopping to explain how good it is, telling us the song is both happy and sad at the same time and why it's crucial to the film. But we know that! The monologue states the obvious and keeps Judy from delivering this classic number in full. She sings and then stops to tell us how terrific it is and then starts and stops again, utterly frustrating the one moment we've expected all along: a beautiful version of a classic song, performed by a great talent. Show, don't tell.
Besides, if she's going to convince Mayer how great the number is, what better way than to just perform it? Sit him down at the lip of the stage with his back to the audience. Deliver the monologue if you must, but put it all up front before the music begins. Let Judy sing the song, for Pete's sake.
For added poignancy, they might have her dad stand behind Judy. Indeed, the father's bond to his daughter is a constant in act one...and then overdone in act two. Despite not being present in Judy's life during act two, Dad is constantly present via clunky devices like flashbacks and improbable duets and by simply bringing him on stage. We get the importance of their relationship from act one. And using that memory in act two will be a lot more powerful if it's done sparingly. The finale would be stronger if Judy sits Mayer down and then faces him (and the audience) to make her plea. She delivers her monologue while her dad silently steps up behind her. Sensing his presence hovering nearby, Judy might even turn in his direction and smile..and then launch into "Over The Rainbow" in one glorious take.
That brings us to the show's fatal flaw. It never gives Judy Garland or Ruby Rakos her "star is born" moment. Again and again throughout the musical, she teases us with bursts of that powerful voice. Rakos joins in with a group already singing or a big solo number is interrupted by dialogue or cut short or joined in on by others. Big moments become duets. Solo spots become family sing-alongs. When Judy is delivering a gem during vocal lessons, her instructor bursts in vocally to tell us he knows this kid is something special.
How about just letting her sing? A big solo on "Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart" at the climax of act one is undercut by a medical crisis. Her "Dear Mr. Gable" is truncated. Dad or Mickey or somebody is always joining in. Even "Over The Rainbow" is interrupted by Judy's own gabfest.
Don't get me wrong. Rakos shines again and again. When she starts swinging "All Ma's Children," the other jaded kids at MGM do a double take with a look that says, "Hey, this one's got pipes!" She's part of some great numbers. And the emphasis there is on parts. Heck, it's possible Rakos doesn't sing a single song in full from start to finish! ("Morning Comes" may be the exception.) That's crazy! Since Rakos clearly has the talent to put them over, it's all the more frustrating.
Other issues have to be tackled, such as the lack of real drama in act two. The show strikes one note: Judy isn't pretty enough to be a star. And while intellectually we know she's having hit records and starring in hit films, it doesn't feel that way. We learn the obstacles in act one and virtually nothing changes in act two until the very end. A better sense of Judy climbing one mountain after another, conquering radio and even starring in hit films would allow her frustration about not getting that one big shot to stand on her own all the more palpable.
But first and foremost, allow her to sing. Give her the close-up in act one. Let Rakos fully shine in a musical number and not with twenty other people sharing the spotlight. Create that magical moment when everything and everyone else drops away and we get a chance to cheer her and her alone. And then do it again in act two. Let the audience be on her side and they'll become just as frustrated as Judy waiting for MGM to see what they see: a star.
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.
