I saw actress Jane Krakowski, currently of NBC's 30 Rock, in the lobby of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre coming out of a performance of Salvage, the third part of Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy up at Lincoln Center.
I have loved her for years on stage, television, and in films. The first time I ever saw her was in Grand Hotel on Broadway. She was simply amazing in that.
There were rumours that she'd be back on Broadway this season playing the lead in the soon-to-open stage version of Xanadu, but she, apparently, pulled out of the show at the last minute. It's really too bad...she'd have been terrific.
ADDENDUM: Coast of Utopia playwright Tom Stoppard was also in the audience of Salvage tonight. Perhaps he was there for the whole marathon; I didn't know what he looks like. He was called onto the stage after the curtain calls, along with director Jack O'Brien, and both men got a huge ovation from both the audience and the cast.
Well, I'm going to have to be the contrarian yet again. Most of the opinions I've heard have rated the second play of the trilogy, Shipwreck, as the best. But, having just seen plays one and two, I, so far, prefer play number one.
There is an old couple sitting next to me and the man obviously cannot hear very well because every now and then he will ask his wife to repeat a line for him. That gets old quickly. I have no idea why he's not using an infared hearing device. I'm considered getting one myself and offering it to him for play number three. Would that be rude?
Looking forward to getting back. Just made myself some Four Cheese Rice-A-Roni to get me through the evening. Mmmm...
I'm writing this on the lunch break of today's marathon performances of all three of Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia plays at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre.
Got tickets to all three plays about an hour before the 11.00am curtain time of the first one. Thank goodness for rush tickets!
I really liked the first play of the trilogy, Voyage, and I'm very much looking forward to returning for the second part, Shipwreck, in about an hour.
It really is a Chekhovian epic and I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying it thus far, considering that I'm no great fan of either Chekhov or Stoppard.
The "all star cast" nature of it hasn't been distracting in the least either.
I'll report back later on the dinner break.
Saw actor Nathan Fillion, currently the star (but maybe not for long) of Fox's Drive in the lobby of the American Airlines Theatre on West 42nd Street after a performance of the Roundabout Theatre Company's current revival of Craig Lucas' Prelude to a Kiss.
Presumably he was there to see his Serenity co-star Alan Tudyk who was playing Peter in the show.
Anybody else remember this guy from his runs in Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place and One Life to Live?
So I'm finally getting around to writing about some of the theatre I saw in London. Yeah, I know...I've been busy, cut me some slack.
So the first thing I saw was a revival of a 1960's French sex farce called Boeing Boeing by Marc Camoletti (translated by Beverley Cross) at the Comedy Theatre. It tells the story of Bernard, a Parisian with three fiancees, all airline stewardesses for different airlines. Because of the different schedules, the three ladies are never all in town at the same time...until one night when unexpected storms and the introduction of faster Boeing jets bring all the ladies to Paris on the same night. And chaos ensues, as they say. Bernard is aided and abetted in his quest to keep the women from finding out about each other by his friend Robert and trusty maid Bertha.
This was tremendous fun as well as being a window into a whole other era of air travel, a time when traveling by plane was a luxury enjoyed by the very few...the "jet set" as it were.
Anyway, the reason I went to see this in the first place was that Frances De La Tour was playing Bertha, the maid. I'd seen her on Broadway in The History Boys and loved her performance there and jumped at the chance to catch her in something else. And she was a sardonic delight tossing off one liners with aplomb and reacting to the ever increasing nuttiness in ways that allowed her to steal scenes just with a facial expression.
The actresses playing the three fiancees all had a high time embracing and sending up their characters' nationalities. Tamzin Outhwaite played the bubbly blonde Gloria, an American girl in the service of TWA, Daisy Beaumont was the sexy Italian Gabriella of Alitalia and Michelle Gomez nearly stole the show as the German Dietrich-like dominatrix Gretchen, who is, of course, an employee of Lufthansa.
Roger Allam played Bernard as the ultimate player and Mark Rylance was his befuddled friend Robert.
This is just the sort of thing that would never make it on Broadway these days. Plays are always a hard sell, but frothy comedies on the Great White Way are few and far between, almost as though they are simply not important enough to warrant being presented. Even the original production of this play in New York ran only 23 performances. But I'm so glad that I saw it. It's just a goofy good time in the theatre and there's not a thing wrong with that.
Before I get to writing about the plays and musicals I saw in London (and I will, I promise), I wanted to mention that this week I caught a preview performance of a new play called Corum Boy on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre, that is here in a production that originated at the celebrated Royal National Theatre.
This was a preview, so I won't go into details here, but it was really good and I can't recommend it highly enough.
I knew nothing about it going in, but it turned out to be an epic of Dickensian scope. It reminded me of nothing less than the Royal Shakespeare Company's landmark 1981 production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
It's shorter though.
Oh, and do you like the music of Handal? This thing is overflowing with it sung by a huge choir. If you tend to tear up at annual presentations of Messiah (and I can't be the only one), you'll love this.
Apparently, there are still issues with the comment function here rejecting comments for "questionable content." No idea why. I seem to have two options here: I can either remove all filters and spend all day every day erasing spam comments or I can use the filters that also, apparently, block many of you from leaving comments.
Sorry.
There is one way around this. If you click on the link to make a comment, there is another link at the top of the comment window to register for the TypeKey service. This is really easy and gets you around the filter system.
I love hearing from people, so I encourage everyone to go ahead and do it. You only have to do it once and then you're cool for any and all future comments.
In the meantime, here's something that came via email from my friend Tim in Chicago.
Gotta admit, I don't read your blog that often, but I really loved
your post about OKLAHOMA! This is exactly what I have always said
about R&H, and esp. OK!
I love the elements of this show (book, music, dancing), but put
them together and it's a messy, three-hour bore (I also think the
same of CATS). A local company here (American Theatre Company:
www.atcweb.org) just wrapped up a critically-acclaimed production
that I missed, but will be remounted this summer (I may catch it
then). It's another one of those "let's-scale-it-down" productions
that actually looked enjoyable. Originally, they had planned on
casting it entirely with minorities (which, in actuality, is more
accurate of a lot of the people that went to OK for the free land
that was being given away), but they scrapped that idea for reasons
I'm unsure of. Would have liked to see that take, though.
As for R&H, I believe their more popular musicals are that way
because of their movie versions. The movie for SOUND OF MUSIC is
glorious: perfect casting, incredible cinematography, and several
breathtaking scenes (the gazeebo, anyone?). But the stage version is
a snorer that goes on way too long. The same for OKLAHOMA! The
movie, I think, is much better than the stage version.
Whereas the best R&H shows, IMHO, had mediocre movie versions.
CAROUSEL being the best R&H show ever, followed by KING & I (yes, I
think the movie is a stinker) and SOUTH PACIFIC [(again, not the
best film version(s)]. Everything about these three shows is
remarkable (and KING & I even has a better ballet number than OK!),
and yet the other two get more stage time. 'Tis a puzzlement.
I agree with Tim's assessment of the R&H films. I hadn't thought about it before, but it's true that Hollywood was not as kind to the truly briliant R&H shows as it was to what I call the "second-tier" shows. Although Tim doesn't mention it, the film medium was also kind to Flower Drum Song, another second-tier R&H show if only because the film's existance kept the show from completely disappearing after it's original production. Even the "revisal" version of this one that ran for a short time in Los Angeles and here on Broadway has completely dropped off the radar.
And, just so we're being fair and you know where I'm coming from in my own assessments of the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon, I have never seen a production of Allegro, Me and Juliet, or Pipe Dream. I have never seen a production of the original version of Flower Drum Song. But I've done the research and I know all about this shows, even if I've never seen them.
Thanks, Tim!
On Sunday, I happened to catch a very solid production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, courtesy of the Village Light Opera Group here in town. It really got me thinking about the show as a whole and I've come to a (to me) shocking realization.
I don't like it. I don't think it's very good. You can give it a pass because it was the very first collaboration between the two authors, but it doesn't hold a candle to some of their later works, including Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I.
And the problems are mainly Oscar Hammerstein's, even though the musical is based on a play by Lynn Riggs called Green Grow the Lilacs.
Here's the thing...nothing much happens in this show. There's not much plot to speak of and Oklahoma! really seems to presage the "concept" musicals of the 60's and 70's. It's an idea, rather than a story. This, in and of itself, is not a problem. However, in this particular case, there's a lack of plot coupled with an utter lack of characterization. Based on the book and lyrics, you know nothing about this people. The characters are one dimensional cardboard cut outs, ideas of farmers and cowboys from the minds of brilliant writers who never spent much time west of the Hudson River.
Okay, to be honest, the production I just saw was not perfect. However, it was a far cry from the horredous semi-professional production of the show I saw in Florida a couple of years ago.
This one had serious pacing issues that lead to a 3 hour running time...way too long for a show without much story. The central Curly-Laurey-Jud triangle was complicated by the fact that the Jud, though possessed of a fine voice, was completely miscast in that there was no sense of menace, no dark cloud over him all the time, no creepiness...in short, no reason for anyone to be afraid of him or see him as a threat. And when there is NOTHING in the text to justify why everyone dislikes this person, it has to come from the casting of the actor himself.
Just as a sidebar, I wonder what would happen if a black actor was cast as Jud? Then it would be easy to put everyone's supposed hatred of the guy down to the casual and overt racism of the times. It would be a shorthand of sorts. But that means the audience would be expected to sympathize with a bunch of racists and actually root for them in their persecution of a black man. That could be interesting actually.
Anyhow, there was nothing major wrong with this production that I saw. It just needed little tweeks here and there. The pacing could be helped by cutting some of the dance breaks and the actors picking up their cues faster. Some of the tempos (tempi? Never sure about that) could be brighter and faster.
The big ensemble numbers tend to resemble costumed chorale concerts with the large ensemble standing around the stage in a semi-circle singing straight out front.
There were little directoral things I'd have done differently had I been in that chair. For example, Laurey's first entrance doesn't work as well as it should because she's coming in too early and it's throwing off the timing of a funny wisecrack she makes at Curly's expense. It's not a disaster, by any means, just something I'd fix if I were directing.
Set-wise, there's a swing onstage that seems to hang from nothing that bugged the shit out of me for awhile till I just got used to it being there hanging from nothing.
The ballet was well-done, and even if it didn't employ the original choreography (that, to be fair, is probably out of the reach of most non-professional dancers), it still got across the point.
And it was grand to hear the score being performed by a full sized professional orchestra (one of this company's greatest strengths) and an ensemble that must number 40-50 members. There are times when this really makes you think about the state of Broadway, where a large ensemble these days is no more than 8-10 people.
So my problems with the piece are not so much with this production, but with the show itself.
The show's secondary triangle of Will-Ado Annie-Ali Hakim is so much more developed in terms of character and plot that I almost wish the show was more about them. Although, to be honest, more might be a bit too much. But it's nice to understand who characters are and why they do what they do and to get that information from the text. In the production I just saw, these actors had something to play and were, therefore, much more successful. The actor playing Ali Hakim even earned a round of applause on one of his exits.
I don't understand why everyone gets down on their knees and genuflecks to this show. It's got a great score, to be sure, and a genuine place in the history of musical theatre, but...the book is as weak as the 1930's musical comedies that the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows have always been said to have sent packing.
It's simply a revolutionary ballet complemented by a brilliant score, wrapped in a paper thin book in which there are holes big enough to drive a surrey through, fringe on top or not.
If you're looking for the reputed Rodgers and Hammerstein brilliance, you really have to start with their next project, a little show called Carousel, that packs the same wallop now that it did in the 1940's.
Trust me on this, Oklahoma! really belongs in the second tier of the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon alongside The Sound of Music and Flower Drum Song.
Got a phone call from the parents, who are back on US soil after their trip to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. Everything was lovely and they had a wonderful time. They are presently en route from Los Angeles to San Francisco, where they will spend a couple of days with my uncle and aunt in Marin County. Then it's back to Florida for a week or so before heading to South Carolina for my sister-in-law's college graduation and then up to New Jersey for the summer and fall.
I am relieved that they survived the South Pacific. And vice versa.
If you happen to be in the Chicago area next week, you should definitely check out A Handbag Happening, a benefit party/show for Hell in a Handbag Productions. I bet it's going to be great and I really wish I could be there myself. If you go, tell the Handbaggers that Jere said "Hi."
Details here...
A HANDBAG HAPPENING
The songs that got away... almost.
Join us for the WORLD PREMIERE of newly discovered musical treasures from the Handbag vault. Hear songs from past, future and imaginary shows.
POSEIDON! An Upside Down Musical
Joan Crawford Goes to Hell Again featuring The Joans
Touched by Jayne Mansfield
Showgirls - The Musical
Pretty Baby - The Child Beauty Pageant Expose'
Valley! (Of the Dolls)- A Musical
Not Without My Daughter, and more surprises!
We were cleaning out our handbag and among the empty lipsticks found a treasure trove of songs! Mr. Cerda had stashed away for a 'special' night like this one. The entire Hell in a Handbag ensemble and some very special guests will be there for an evening of food, drink, eyeliner , and entertainment Handbag style, to benefit our 2007-2008 season.
Got something to share?
You can also help out Handbag by donating goods or services to be auctioned off during our event. Download THIS FORM and send it to us (details on the form)
WHERE: The Spot, 4437 N. Broadway Ave (just north of Montrose)., 773-728-8934
WHEN: Tuesday, April 24, from 7-10pm
WHAT: Open Bar 7-9, Open Buffet from 7-10,
Entertainment from 8:30-9:30, raffles and silent auction.
COST: Only $40 donation in advance*, $45 donation at the door
* there is a $1.46 service fee on PayPal
For more information, check out the website.
I had another dream last night about being in a relationship with Prince William. In this one, we were trying to get away to beautiful seaside cottage for some alone time away from the pressures of the palace. William was attempting to cook dinner, but, every now and then, we could hear the papparazzi cameras clicking away in the bushes.
You see, there were a lot of windows in this house, so we were fairly well exposed to the prying eyes of the press while we went about our business.
William got fed up with it eventually and stepped out onto the porch and basically yelled into the darkness that he was going to have to start kicking some ass if we weren't left alone.
After that, it was fine.
Hey, conicidentally, I understand that Prince William has just broken up with his long-time girlfriend, Kate Middleton. Hmmmm...
Think I stand a chance?
I got the following email today from my father:
"Thanks, Jere. We'll be anxious to hear what's going on with you. Mom rode a donkey the other day! Ask her about it when you see her. Love, Dad"
The parents, you see, are in the midst of a 3 week trip to the South Pacific and sent this email from New Zealand. They are also spending time in Australia and Fiji while they are out there.
Can't wait to hear all about it.
So I spent the first two weeks of my vacation in Florida, visiting my parents at their condo in Stuart. As you may or may not know, I try to get down there every winter. It's really great, just hanging by the pool. And that's pretty much what I did. I hung by the pool. For two weeks.
Well, not really. There were a couple of visits to Whitehall, the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum in Palm Beach. That's always fun. And I took my father, for his 70th birthday, to see a production of Man of La Mancha at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in Jupiter. The show was quite good and the theatre was modern and comfortable and there wasn't a bad seat in the place.
Dad really enjoyed it too. It's one of his favorites, but my mother doesn't care for it, so I planned our outing for an evening when Mom was joining friends at a Kris Kristofferson concert.
What else did I do in Florida? Not much...I swam in the pool, looked at my parents' view and had some major league rest and relaxation.
Let's see if I can post some pix later on.
So how's everybody enjoying this Easter Nor'Easter? I went out to church this morning and, by the time I got home, I looked like I'd been swimming in my clothes. I was just SOPPING wet.
Anyway, I've been to the theatre some since I got back. What have I seen? Well, I'll tell you...
I caught Essential Self Defense, a new play by Adam Rapp, over at Playwrights Horizons. This play tells the story of Sadie, a lonely woman who makes an unlikely connection with a man whose strange behavior soon makes him a town pariah. Rapp plays this odd blooming geek-love relationship against the mystery of the disappearance of increasing numbers of children from the small town's elementary school. The play is a sort of meditation on fear in our society, both on the individual level (Sadie has what may or may not be an irrational fear of...something...stalking her and waiting to attack) and on a societal level as we see the townspeople get increasingly frantic and militant as more and more children vanish.
While the actors here, including Heather Goldenhersh of CBS' The Class and Broadway's Doubt as Sadie, are excellent, I'm just not sure what Rapp's objective for this piece was. I have no idea what he was trying to say here.
I enjoyed it...I just didn't quite GET it, if you will understand the distinction. Interesting ideas, great cast, not sure what it all meant.
Also saw the most recent Encores! concert at City Center, the 1932 Irving Berlin/Moss Hart musical comedy Face The Music. Now this is exactly the sort of production that Encores! should be doing...a forgotten piece by two giants of the American theatre that could never be revived in a full scale production. This is basically a story of boy-meets-girl in depression-era New York, boy and girl hatch a plan to put on a show, and chaos ensues.
Despite the show's pedigree, neither the score nor the book for this one is all that great. However, there was plenty of fun to be had in the lovely dancing, the corny jokes, and a crackerjack cast headed by Broadway diva Judy Kaye.
So, yeah, pretty much a great time was had by all, even if this wasn't a particularly strong piece.
Next up in the line-up is Boys Just Wanna Have Fun, a new "gay" play by Anthony J. Wilkinson and Teresa Ann Cicala, at the Actors Playhouse in the West Village.
This play was an interesting idea (1980's NYPD cop comes to terms with being gay after being sent undercover to bust a drug dealer in a gay nightclub) pretty poorly executed by all involved. The lone exception is actress Rachel Valdati as a no-nonsense policewoman whose character seems to be the only one grounded in any sort of reality and who realistically portrays her character's conflicts and transitions.
Otherwise, if the dialogue is going to be this cheesy and if the production is going to trot out this many cliches, there has to be a lot more nudity from the pretty cast.
Next up is the Broadway production of Curtains, one of the last musicals from the writing team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (Ebb passed away in 2005), currently playing at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. It's a backstage story of a 1950's musical comedy during an out-of-town tryout in Boston. When the leading lady gets murdered, the company is quarrantined in the theatre where a musical theatre-loving police detective tries to get to the bottom of the mystery while helping the creative staff fix the musical.
David Hyde Pierce turns in a bravura performance as the detective. This is a Pierce I had not seen before. He was playing the role...(for lack of a better word) straight. His voice and accent were perfect and he has managed something I had not thought possible: He creates a believable rabid musical theatre fan who is also heterosexual. There was absolutely no feyness in his portrayal at all.
Pierce's performance, unfortunately, was the best thing about Curtains. The score was unmemorable and the other production elements were all fairly standard and nothing special. Despite the presence of New York theatre stalwards Debra Monk, Karen Ziemba. Ernie Sabella, and Jason Danieley, who are all excellent, there's nothing here that excited me. It just all seemed kind of of derivative of other shows. It had its moments, just not enough of them.
Saw a reading of a new play called Hollywood Nurses at Ars Nova. This play by Sheila Head and Peter Michael Marino and inspired by 1950's lesbian pulp fiction is, in fact, really inspired, and the cast was having a ball. Even the really cute Tom Gualtieri, who was reading stage directions, looked like he was having the time of his life.
Someone needs to pick this up and give it a life. It's got "off-Broadway hit" written all over it.
And, lastly, I recently saw the very first preview performance of a new musical call LoveMusik on Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club's Biltmore Theatre. Since this is work-in-progress, I will not go into detail, but this is a remarkable piece that just needs a little fine tuning and tightening to get where it needs to be.
This show, directed by the legendary Harold Prince, uses the music of Kurt Weill to tell the story of Weill's relationship with his wife and muse, Lotte Lenya. The pair are played by Broadway stars Michael Cerveris and Donna Murphy, who are giving such remarkable performances that I might not have recognized either, had I not had a program in my hand. Both actors should be looking forward to some serious acclaim when the reviews hit and when award season rolls about and, in Murphy, we have finally have a serious challenge to Best Actress Tony heiress-apparent Christine Ebersole.
The rest of the show glows as well, although this mostly a showcase for the leads. There are some issues here, but none that cannot be polished up during the preview process. Prince, who worked with the real Lenya in the 1966 original production of Cabaret, has a winner here and I have no doubt that he's already hard at work making this show the best it can be.
That's it for now. Hopefully, I'll have time to delve into my vacation soon.
So, yes, I made it back to New York.
I've been home almost two weeks, which is baffling to me because it feels like I just got home yesterday.
What have I been doing since I got back? Well, basically, I've been working to dig out from everything that piled up while I was away. And it was a lot of stuff.
But I had a great time, and I'll see what I can do about posting some pictures here and talking about what I did.
One thing that people have been curious about is the theatre I saw. I had the pleasure of taking in 12 productions in the West End over the 3 weeks I was in London.
They were, in no particular order:
Boeing, Boeing
Equus
The Woman In Black
Evita
Blood Brothers
Mary Poppins
The Lady From Dubuque
The 39 Steps
Avenue Q
Billy Elliot
Treats
Cabaret
I'll write about them all as best I can.
About 5 days of my time in the UK was spent traveling around the countryside, mostly exploring Devon and Cornwall. And I'll write about that too.
Anyhow, I'm back.
Drop a line and say hi.
I'm also completely unemployed at the moment, so if anyone wants to hire me for their play or musical, I'm available. Or if you have any other sort of work, I'm also available.
Oh, and Florida was nice too.