Matthew Broderick is delightfully sleazy as Tartuffe at NYTW

 

Matthew Broderick’s wisely low-keyed performance in the title role and playwright Lucas Hnath’s très moderne translation make New York Theatre Workshop’s revival of Tartuffe seem like a new work rather than Molière’s 1664 satire of religious piety that we have seen for years.  It’s hilarious, and a perfect play to mirror the religious hypocrisy of our own time.

Under Sarah Benson’s direction Broderick avoids the temptation to exaggerate Tartuffe’s vileness, allowing the wittiness of the verses to shine.  When well-written plays go wrong it’s because the actors and director fail to follow a major performance rule: TRUST THE TEXT.  Luckily that’s just what this cast and director do.

Tartuffe-like characters flourish in all eras, a charlatan posing as a devoutly religious man who inspires blind acceptance from his followers.  In the play it’s fun to watch.  In our current day, though, it’s frightening what heights of power these blind followers will bestow on one person.  Our very democracy is at risk.

In the play, what’s at risk is the fortune of one wealthy French aristocrat, Orgon (David Cross), who we learn at the start has become so enamored of Tartuffe that he dismisses his family’s concerns and even plans to marry off his only daughter, Mariane (Emily Davis), to the sleazy swindler who, unbeknownst to him, has already tried to seduce his wife, Elmire (Amber Gray).  It’s delightful to watch Broderick ingratiate his way into the foolish Orgon’s household.  We experience Mariane’s horror when her father tells her, “It comforts me to know that a man of divinity will get to be the one who takes your virginity.”

He even looks slimy thanks to Enver Chakartash’s costumes, which are bright and lush for the other characters.  Tartuffe is dressed in a black frock coat and hat, with a wig of long gray hair. (Wig and hair design by Robert Pickens).  But to Orgon he is a spiritual man who should be rewarded and he signs over his entire fortune and estate to him.

The NYTW production is one of two revivals of Tartuffe presented Off-Broadway this fall.  André De Shields brought the self-righteous fraud to the House of the Redeemer, an Episcopal event site on the Upper East Side with seating for 100.  NYTW seats 199. 

Hnath was unaware that that production was in the works until this summer.  He had been thinking about writing a new play in Molière’s style when he decided to create a new version of the original French text using a 1930s English translation, working every day for nine months going line by line to understand the meaning and then devising rhymes, with plenty of profanity, to match.  

One character I would have liked to have seen played bigger was Dorine, the maid who does little work but has plenty to say about the family she serves.  As played by 64-year-old Lisa Kron, she’s slow moving, sitting around commenting on the goings on and doing little work.  I can’t help comparing her to the first Dorine I saw when Baltimore’s Center Stage presented the show in February 1976.  A just-getting-started Christine Baranski stole the show with her sassy, sharp-tongued, lively portrayal.  She became part of the repertory of actors at that exceptional regional theatre where her headshot hung on the wall of the bar/cafe.  That performance will always be Dorine for me.

Stephen Schwartz's 'The Baker's Wife' brings a little bit of French flavor to the East Village

 

The first time I heard of The Baker’s Wife was in 1993 when I bought “Patti LuPone Live.”  To set up a song she tells the audience, “There’s a musical theatre joke that if Hitler was alive today his punishment should be to send him out on the road with a musical in trouble.  We were that musical, The Baker’s Wife.”  Then she sang the lovely song “Meadowlark,” making me wonder why the show was so bad with such a pretty song, which she sang with full heart and obvious appreciation.

The next time I heard of The Baker’s Wife was in 2008 when I received a review copy of the CD “Patti LuPone at Les Mouches.”  It had been recorded in 1980 when LuPone had been performing 27 weeks  of midnight shows at the Greenwich Village nightclub.  After mentioning that her next song would be “Meadowlark,” someone in the audience voiced approval, to which she replied, “You’ve been here before.  Nobody know about that gobbler.”  Again I was curious about the musical and wondered if I’d ever get to see it.

I finally did, last night, thanks to Classic Stage Company, which has given this 1976 musical a shining and joyful production.  Stephen Schwartz’s songs, which are both funny and moving, are well presented by the excellent cast of 20, although I wish director Gordon Greenberg and book writer Joseph Stein had done some cutting.  This sweet little story, based on Marcel Pagnol’s 1938 film, set in a rural French village in Provence in 1935 would be better served as two hours with no intermission rather than its two and a half hours.  The second act dragged for me.

The story opens as folks gather in the village square in eager anticipation of the arrival of the new baker.  They have been without bread for three weeks since their baker got drunk, fell in a ditch, broke his neck and died.  For the French, this is a grande horreur — being without their fresh bread, not the death of the baker.  Denise (Judy Kuhn), wife of the café owner, describes life there in the opening song,

Ev’ry day as you do what you do ev’ry day/You see the same faces who will fill the cafe./And if some of these faces have new things to say/Nothing is really different.  

Kuhn, a multiple Tony, Olivier and Grammy Award nominee, is a winning commentator throughout.

When the baker, Aimable Castagnet  (Bill English last night filling in for Scott Bakula), arrives with his wife, Geneviève (Ariana DeBose), the villagers joyously surround them and comment among themselves on why such a beautiful young woman would marry such an old man.  Much is made throughout about the age difference and it certainly is a major plot element but I think it would have been more obvious with Bakula, who is 71, than English, who is 63 but with his boyish face could easily pass for a decade younger.  DeBose is a mature and sexy 34.  

Geneviève had been in love with a married man who refused to leave his wife for her.  Aimable was a devoted patron of the café where she was a waitress, every night sitting at her table and ordering veal au gratin because she had laughed the first time he ordered it.  It was the start of his devotion that he sings about after they are married, “I will try to make you happy.”  Even though it’s a rebound marriage for Geneviève, she seems genuinely fond of her husband and determined to be content with their marriage.  

That is until she meets Dominique (Kevin William Paul), the handsome young servant of the Marquis (Nathan Lee Graham).  He pursues her at every encounter and she tries to resist until, after singing “Meadowlark,” she gives in and they leave town.  The song is about a story Geneviève had loved as a child about a blind lark and an old king who takes her in and she sings for him with a “voice that could match the angels in its glory.”  One day the god of the sun sees the beautiful lark and grants her sight.  He encourages her to fly away with him, “come along,” but “the old king loved her so” that she wouldn’t leave him.  When the king comes down the next day, ”He found his meadowlark had died.  Every time I heard that part I cried,” Genevieve sings, and proclaims she won’t miss her chance.

“Oh, just when I thought my heart was finally numb, a beautiful young man appears before me, Singing ‘Come/ Oh, won’t you come?’”  And she does.

It’s a wonderful song but DeBose ruins it with wild flinging and waving of her arms throughout.  How could Greenberg have allowed that?  It’s annoying. 

Act Two finds the villagers once again longing for their bread because Aimable is so despondent he has stopped baking.  Trying to entice him back into his kitchen they dance and sing around the square in a couple of numbers that show off Stephanie Klemons’ choreography but that I would drop to move the show along.  I did love the scene in which Geneviève and Dominique dance a sensual pas de duex (in photo) as Aimable stands looking on; this is what he is imagining. 

Scenic designer Jason Sherwood uses the tiny performance space well, creating the atmosphere of a tiny French village with flowers climbing the walls at front and back, with three café tables at one end and the storefront of the BOULANGERIE (bakery) at the far end.

I won’t reveal the ending, which I loved.  The show is finishing up its run but you may be able to catch it later since I’m thinking this production is a testing of the waters for a possible Broadway transfer.

The power of Mark Strong and Lesley Manville's performances in Broadway's 'Oedipus' will leave you drained

 

When I was in first grade our teacher used to trick us into being quiet by telling us to put our heads on our desks and listen for her to drop a pin.  It worked.  We were as still and quiet as we could be.  I thought of that Monday night as the tension mounted at director Robert Icke’s riveting reimagining of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex.  The audience was intensely focused on the stage at Studio 54, spellbound by a story for which they already knew the outcome.  But then, it’s unlikely anyone has experienced anything like Icke’s Oedipus.

Mark Strong and Lesley Manville give powerhouse performances as Oedipus and his wife, Jacasta.  When the show played London’s West End last fall the production was nominated for four Olivier Awards, winning one for best revival and another for best actress.  I expect similar results with the Tonys in June, except I would honor Strong and Icke with top honors as well.

A taut two hours with no intermission, the show takes place in the present, although no location is mentioned.  Oedipus is a politician rather than a king and it’s election night after a hard-fought campaign that he is expected to win in a landslide.  

I liked Hildegard Bechtler’s single set, although it doesn’t look like any campaign office I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been in plenty as a former political reporter and press secretary.  It’s far too neat and sparse for a campaign office, even at the start of the effort, but it’s a good choice.  With little more than a large table with chairs at the center and a sofa on the far right, and with Natasha Chivers’s bright lighting, our attention is focused fully on the unfolding story.  One important detail is a digital clock measuring days, hours and minutes, ticking them down as the play progresses.

Before we get to this set, though, Tal Varden’s full stage, floor-to-ceiling video projection shows the candidate surrounded by supporters carrying Oedipus signs on sticks as he continues with his speechifying, using language that could be attributed to Zohran Mamdani or Barack Obama.

“They deliberately dragged us backwards to a time when the rich were rich, and the poor were poor, backwards to when people who weren’t like us deserved persecution, backwards until rumors and lies were the same as truth, and we’ve seen that in this campaign.  My opponent loves the idea this country isn’t my country.  He doesn’t say I couldn’t do the job.  He says I’m not from here.  My identity doesn’t fit.”

And he promises he will release his birth certificate to appease some critics.  Of course, unlike Barack Obama, we will learn that releasing his birth certificate is one promise Oedipus can’t keep.

Another reference to our times is when Jacasta is revealing her painful past.  She talks about the considerably older man who sexually abused her for years when she was a young teenager, which sounds like the testimony we’ve heard from Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.  I was amazed by Manville’s timing of this revelation.  As soon as she uttered the final word the digital clock went to 00.  I never saw her look at the clock and yet she timed her heartbreaking disclosure to the second.  This is especially impressive because Icke didn’t allow Manville and Strong to rehearse the horrifying conclusion until a week before previews began, telling the New York Times they “had to understand what was going to be lost before that loss counted for anything.”

The supporting characters are all skilled but the show belongs to Strong and Manville, who are onstage for nearly the entire, tense, two hours.

'Ragtime' revival is likely to be the best show of the season

 

As I was wiping my tears and reaching for a tissue, I caught the eyes of a woman walking up the aisle who, wide eyed, mouthed an exaggerated I know.  Such was the forcefield that is director Lear DeBessonet’s revival of Ragtime at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.  Being gripped this intensely by a production is rare for me, even though as a Drama Desk voter I attend far more shows than the average person. 

This is how it should be given that the show is built from E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 genius of a novel by the same name. It has always been my favorite of his books.  I liked the all-star 1981 film version and loved the original 1998 Broadway production so much that I went out the next morning and bought the cast recording.  I enjoyed the 2009 revival too, although I now can’t remember anything that stands out from it.

DeBessonet’s envisioning will be on my short list of most moving shows for as long as I am attending theatre.  The original was a Livent (U.S.) Inc. production, meaning it was large scale in sets and every other element of a Broadway show.  DeBessonet’s vision is the opposite, next to no scenery, thus keeping the brilliant story and engaging characters front and center.  She is aided by the powerful score, one of my favorites in musical theatre, by Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics), which won them Tony Awards in 1998 along with Terrance McNally for his book.  The songs are magnificently showcased by a 28-piece orchestra under the direction of James Moore.

Lighting designers Adam Honoré and Donald Holder lower the lights in the second, climactic act, creating the sense of foreboding that will lead to the inevitable tragic ending for one of the characters.  Scenic designer David Korins uses a turntable to give the feeling of this new era, early 20^th century, unfolding and to emphasize the swiftly moving story.  His two major props are an upright piano and a shiny new Model T, representing the main character, Coalhouse Walker, Jr.

As for characters, Doctorow brings forth three groups of fictional folks who would never have contact with each other and believably has them deeply intertwined by the end, mixing in historical figures such as J. P. Morgan (John Rapson), architect Stanford White (Billy Cohen), anarchist Emma Goldman (Shaina Taub) and vaudeville showgirl Evelyn Nesbit (Anna Grace Barlow).

Their story opens in 1906 as a prosperous WASP family living in New Rochelle, New York, a Black family from Harlem and an immigrant family from Latvia represent the changes that will take place in our country as the new century enfolds.

The WASP clan is headed by a traditional, for the time, couple, Father (Colin Donnell) and Mother (Cassie Levy, photo center), their son, Edgar (Nick Barrington), Mother’s Younger Brother (Ben Levi Ross) and Grandfather (Tom Nelis).  Only Edgar has a name because he represents the bridge into the future, and he can also predict it.  At the start of the play, he calls out to the illusionist Harry Houdini (Rodd Cyrus) after a performance, “Warn the Duke.”  We don’t see the culmination of his prophesy until the end with the start of World War I, which was triggered by the assignation of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.

His second foretelling is when he and mother are awaiting a train on the platform in New Rochelle.  The widower immigrant artist Tateh (Brandon Uranowitz, photo right) and his daughter (Tabitha Lawing) are waiting for a train to Massachusetts.  After the two adults exchange pleasantries and Edgar tries to draw out the daughter, Tateh and the girl leave on their train.  Edgar says, “We know those people,” and Mother replies, “Don’t be silly.  They’re poor foreigners.”  To which Edgar counter, “Then, we’re going to know them.”  Mother dismisses this with, “Who puts such thoughts in your head.”  But the future will prove how on-target he is with his unlikely forecast.  (An interesting note about Uranowitz:  He played Edgar opposite the late Marin Mazzie in the original production.) 

Finally, Edgar predicts death in one of the final scenes.

The Black family consists of Coalhouse Walker Jr. (Joshua Henry, photo left), a rising jazz musician, his beloved Sarah (Nichelle Lewis) and their son, Coalhouse Walker III (Kaleb Johnson and Kane Emmanuel Miller rotating performances).  They become entwined with the WASP family after Mother finds an abandoned infant buried in her garden.  His mother, Sarah, is soon found by the police and Mother, in a move that was fully out of character with her background, assumes responsibility and has the two take up residence in her attic.   She makes her decision alone because Father is off on a year-long expedition with Admiral Perry (John Rapson).

Mother reflects on her decision as well as Sarah’s in one of the many moving songs “What Kind of Woman?”  “What kind of woman/Would do what I’ve done?/Open the door /to such chaos and pain!/You would have/ gently closed the door,/And gently turned the key/And gently told me not to look/, For fear of what I’d see./ What kind of woman/Would that have made me?

The final, and permanent, coming together involves Tateh, after he has become a successful movie maker posing as a Baron, and Mother, two parents who meet, as far as they are aware, for the first time and connect over their love for their children. They are in Atlantic City, where Father has moved his family to shelter them from the vengeful path Coalhouse has taken following the desecration of his cherished Model T and the death of Sarah that follows.  While Coalhouse is pursuing a murderous spree, Mother and Tateh find peace on the beach watching their little ones play harmoniously together and sing a duet of another gorgeous song “Our Children:” “See them running down the beach./Children run so fast/Toward the future/From the past./There they stand,/Making footprints in the sand,/And forever hand in hand,/Our children./Two small lives,/Silhouetted by the blue,/One like me/And one like you./Our children./Our children.”

All the songs are rich and perfectly sung, lovingly for “Our Children” and forcefully for “What Kind of Woman?” and, thank God, they are never belted and aren’t amplified to within an inch of their life the way far too many Broadway songs are.  At the center is “Wheels of a Dream,” which Coalhouse sings to Sarah while he is still full of hope for the future.  “Yes, the wheels are turning for us, girl,/And the times are starting to roll./Any man can get where he wants to/If he’s got some fire in his soul./We’ll see justice, Sarah,/And plenty of men/Who will stand up/And give us our due./Oh, Sarah, it’s more than promises./Sarah, it must be true./A country that let’s a man like me/Own a car, raise a child, build a life with you.”

It is also the song the entire cast of 41 comes on stage to sing at the conclusion. 

Linda Cho’s costumes are exquisite, especially Mother’s rich Victorian gowns, like all her family’s clothes in shades of white and cream, representing the privilege and purity of their place at that time.

All the performances are stirring, although my friend and I had some trouble understanding the words in Sarah’s songs.  I felt Lewis was rushing them and her volume was too high.  But that’s one small complaint in an otherwise perfect production, which played to one of the most enthusiastic and appreciative audiences I have experienced in a long time.  It’s early in the 2025-26 season but I feel I have already seen the best show of the year.

 

Elizabeth McGovern returns to the New York stage as Ava Gardner

 

I don’t recall ever hearing such noticeably tepid applause as I experienced last night at New York City Center following the performance of Ava: The Secret Conversations. This is especially significant because the star of the show, and its playwright, is Hollywood darling Elizabeth McGovern. 

This is obviously a passion project for the long-time Lady Cora of “Downton Abbey” fame.  When the original playwright dropped out, she decided to pen the script herself.  This seems to have blinded her to how thoroughly unlikeable she was making the characterization of the 1950s and 60s film legend Ava Gardner.  Eighty-five minutes of watching and listening to that vulgar, profanity-spewing person was miserable.  I saw the woman next to me look at her watch three times.

McGovern based her script on the book The Secret Conversations by British journalist Peter Evans and Gardner.   Directed by Moritz Von Stuelpnagel, it is set in 1988 when Gardner is recovering from a stroke in her sumptuous London flat.  (Scenic design by David Meyer.)  It’s more about Gardner’s three disastrous marriages – to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra – than the woman herself.  Her relationship with the physically and emotionally abusive Howard Hughes is also highlighted.  All of these famous folks are pictured in projections by Alex Basco Koch and portrayed by Aaron Costa Ganis who is also onstage as Evans interviewing Gardner.  His accent goes from believable English to the kind of exaggerated English we use when pretending we are British.  It also sounds American at times and I’m sure I heard some Brooklyn in there as well.

McGovern, looking slim and striking in Toni-Leslie James’ Hollywood glam costumes, also hams it up, making Gardner a caricature. 

Gardner died at 67 in 1990, the year her cleaned-up version of her life appeared as Ava: My Story.  Evans later gained the rights to his notes and tapes for his book, which was published after his death in 2013.

Ava: The Secret Conversations premiered in London, where McGovern has lived for decades, in 2022 and had a run at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles the following year.  After New York it is scheduled for Chicago and Toronto.

Joy comes to town

 

 Joy: A New True Musical is a rags to riches story about a divorced, recently fired Long Island woman who makes a fortune inventing a different kind of mop.  A mop?  Yep, it’s unfathomable why millions of people would fall in love with a mop but that’s what happened to Joy Mangano whose unlikely story is being told at the Laura Pels Theatre with Betsy Wolfe starring. It is based on Mangano’s memoir,  Inventing: Dare to Build a Brave and Creative Life.  A 2015 film starred Jennifer Lawrence.

The show, with a book by Ken Davenport, begins with young Joy (Nora Mae Dixon) sitting alone in front of a box of her inventions. She pulls out her favorite, a glow-in-the-dark dog collar.  In “The Shape of Things” (music and lyrics by AnnMarie Milazzo), she describes its usefulness: I see a dog collar glimmer/ brightly lit up/ made out of cardboard and glow tape/ like a bike reflector for a pup. It shines like a star/ so my neighbor’s dog won’t be hit by a car.

It’s a great idea, one that makes somebody else lots of money years later because she didn’t pursue her idea.

It takes the grown-up Joy getting fired from her airport job to spur her to action. With a house full of people she is more or less supporting -- her teenage daughter, Christie (Honor Blue Savage), her mother, Toots (Jill Abromovitz), who hasn’t gone out in years and spends her days on the living room sofa watching TV in her robe, her father, Rudy (Adam Grupper), and her ex-husband, Tony (Brandon Espinoza), who lives in the basement with her father – she energetically begins trying to sell the product she invents by accident, a mop with an super absorbing cotton top that can be tossed in the washing machine for use again and again, and that can be wrung out without someone bending over.  While this might sound as if it were happening in the 1950s, she invented the mop in1990 when she was 35.  Why anyone at any time, much less the 90s when the whole world was on the verge of changing with the creation of the Internet, would get excited about a housecleaning tool, with the unlikely title of Miracle Mop, is beyond me but as the musical’s title indicates, it’s a true story.

The first act is a frenzy of the core cast and the 11-member ensemble coming on to say why they feel frazzled, especially the women. Director Lorin Latarro does a great job of controlling the swirling action. 

All of this makes for a fun first act but in the second act the novelty starts wearing out. Joy achieves phenomenal success on QVC convincing all those frazzled people that her mop will save them time for other things.  This in spite of a disastrous start when she freezes in front of the camera on live TV.  Because of her father’s carelessness in managing her business affairs, she ends up in court on the brink of bankruptcy and fighting for her patent. 

Choreographer Joshua Bergasse, who nicely handles the chaos of the show, has a cute number with the five QVC judges, the SUITS dancing to “We Sell Stories.” As a giant QVC sing descends they sing: We’re a heritage of the same old boys. It’s a department store/ Laid out on your living room floor/ Reinventing how to make a sale/ We are blazing a trail/ Place and order and it’s in the mail. 

 

While all of this seems like a lot of fuss over a mop the show clearly is about far more.  It’s about honoring your creativity, fighting for what you believe in and never giving up. Wolfe portrays it all well. 

'Rolling Thunder' features some of the best music of my life

 

Rolling Thunder: A Rock Journey at New World Stages is Boomer heaven, a two-hour evening of 17 of the top songs of the late 60s and early 70s, which I have always felt had the greatest music of my lifetime.  These songs and a sense of freedom were part of the joy of that era, and the six talented performers evoke those memories with the songs.  But this time was also marked by tragedy.  The Vietnam war, which began in 1955 and continued until 1975, is the backdrop of the show and the songs reflect that as well.

 A program note says the characters are a composite of real people, “their essence and personalities distilled from research, actual letters and interviews with Vietnam veterans.”  Bryce Hallett, an Australian journalist and former arts editor at the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote the book and Kenneth Ferrone directs. 

Projection designer Caite Hevner creates the environment with scenes of the jungle in Vietnam and the soldiers’ letters describing the intense heat and humidity as they carried 90-pound packs on their backs.  Photos and news clips of protests at home, against the war and for civil rights, portray this turbulent and unique time in our history.  We hear from Presidents Johnson and Nixon and Walter Cronkite on TVs.  (My friend and I looked at each other and smiled.  He was our long-time neighbor, and wrote the introduction for my first book.)

After a dramatic opening of the cast singing “Magic Carpet Ride,”  we are introduced to the characters, spotlighted one by one.  Thomas (Justin Matthew Sargent) tells us how he came to join the Marines.  He saw an officer on his college campus and was inspired by his confidence and his uniform.  He thought, “That’s how I want to look.  I’m going to be a Marine.”

Johnny (Drew Becker) says people thought he’d gone mad when he enlisted in the Army “but I’ve been thinking about my one big chance for adventure, to see a bit of the world while I could.”

Linda (Cassadee Pope), Johnny’s girlfriend, says she understands why he’s going.  “I barely blinked as I watched the plane disappear among the clouds.  Johnny’s dad put his arm around me.  We didn’t say a word.”

Andy (Daniel Yearwood) says the training at Fort Campbell was mindless and tough.  “I wasn’t cut out for it.” 

Mike, who also plays Jimi and others, (Deon’te Goodman), a Black soldier like Andy, writes to his childhood friend after hearing he’s been drafted.  “Some of the guys don’t take well to the fully integrated units.  Take your riffle to the mess and the latrine.”

Andy’s Mom, who also plays Nurse Kelly and others (Courtnee Carter), writes to her son.  “I’m so worried.  Please take care and try not to lose yourself.  I will keep your room just the way you left it.  And remember, don’t go drinking that water!  I hear it’s been contaminated from all the chemicals they’ve been spraying.  I love you, sweetheart.  Mom” 

I remembered every one of the songs they sing, even though I was only in elementary school for the 60s.  “Black Magic Woman,” “Born to be Wild,” “Eve of Destruction,” “House of the Rising Sun,” “War” and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” and the others are songs I haven’t heard in decades yet they instantly transported me back in time.  Chong Lim and Sonny Paladino provide the arrangements and orchestration and Paladino conducts the five-piece onstage band and plays keys.

Before the final scene the following appears as rows upon rows of names scroll up the length of the stage:

More than 2 million lives were lost and 3 million people were wounded.

Hundreds of children were left orphaned.

About 9 million Americans served on active duty during the official Vietnam War era between 1964 and 1973.

58,151 died and 153,303 were wounded.  61% of those killed were younger than 21.

1,875 are still unaccounted for.

The show concludes with “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

After the enthusiastic standing ovation all those currently servicing, veterans and family members were asked to raise their hands and were thanked as we applauded.  Then the tone shifted as we were invited to sing along with a medley of songs.  A woman in the audience shouted, “Can we?”  The answer was an enthusiastic “Yes!”

It was a blast to sing my lungs out with songs of my youth accompanied by a rock band in an off-Broadway theatre, not caring if I was off-key occasionally because everyone else was singing and the music was so pulsating no one would have noticed.

In photo, by Evan Zimmerman, are: Pope, Becker, Yearwood, Sargent, Carter and Goodman.