New York, New York. So nice they had to name it twice

      I was fairly confident that any show called New York, New York would be right up my alley and I was right.  The new Kander and Ebb musical (with additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda) at the St. James Theatre is a buoyant celebration of the place that became my city of destination at 11 and my home since 1985.  I have been called the personification of the old I Love New York poster and I accept that characterization proudly.

     This musical, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman and inspired by the MGM movie of the same name, doesn’t break any new ground.  Written by David Thompson and Sharon Washington, it is set in 1947 and delightfully retells the story that’s as old as the city —young people, fueled by ambition and dreams, knowing there is nowhere else on earth they want to be.  In this case the seekers are a hot-headed Irish musician, Jimmy Doyle (Colton Ryan), who drinks too much (stereotype?), a Black singer from Philadelphia, Francine Evans (Anna Uzele), a Black trumpet-playing soldier, Jesse Webb (John Clay III), and Mateo Diaz (Angel Sigala), a drummer just arrived from Cuba with his mother (Janet Dacal).  Are they going to achieve their dreams?  Of course.  The fun is watching them get there.  As Jesse says, “Everybody in New York wants to do something you can’t do anywhere else.”

     Which is not to say the show couldn’t be better.  The first act, at 90 minutes, is too long.  It’s patchy and uneven, and doesn’t seem to fit with the second act, in which the plots are developed.  Act One feels repetitive as we hear in numerous ways how nothing is going to stop these young people from making it in New York.  The show runs nearly three hours.  I would cut it to two hours with no intermission.

     Donna Zakowska’s colorful period costumes are delightful and downright gorgeous for the gowns Francine wears once she becomes a hit radio singer.  Scenic designer Beowulf Boritt’s sets and projections, along with Christopher Ash, convey the romance of the city in those hopeful, post-war years, and the energy, with all those neon signs glowing bright.  The scene in Central Park at night with the ground covered in snow and more falling softly is New York at its loveliest. 

     The dance numbers are energetic.  I particularly liked the construction workers tapping on a beam high above the city.  It recalls that famous photo of workers eating their lunch with their feet dangling in the air.  That photo appears as a projection as the first act ends. 

     All of the principals are strong but Uzele stands out.  She uses her voice beautifully rather than to be yet another one of those tedious Broadway belters.  Her bio lists two Broadway credits, Six and Once on This Island.  She will have many more.  She is the star of every scene in which she appears and her story interested me the most — her climb up the ladder of success, intertwined with her romance with and then marriage to Jimmy, her stardom and eventual realization of the price she needs to pay to keep it, which includes her marriage, and how she resolves all for the show’s dazzling final number.  

     Wearing a luscious form-fitting gown for a night club appearance, she starts to sing as the show’s orchestra unexpectedly rises from the unseen pit to extend the stage in front of her.  My spirits soared as I heard those first notes of that title song we all know so well.  As she began to sing the audience also rose and Uzele beckoned us to join in.  She needn’t have bothered.  Nothing could have stopped us.  For that time we were all — natives, transplants and tourists — one big personification of the I Love New York poster, singing our hearts out about the greatest city on the face of the earth.  

     

Why did Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht return to Broadway for this play?

 

 

     It’s always good to see Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht onstage.  I wish, though, that they had chosen an interesting play rather than David Auburn’s Summer, 1976.  I can’t imagine what attracted them to these two boring, self-involved characters who talk, and talk, and talk about themselves but show little emotion, even when they are describing an unexpected pregnancy in college or the infidelity of a husband.  If they can’t be more involved in their lives why should we?

     Another mystery is why veteran Daniel Sullivan would want to direct this play, except that he directed Auburn’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Proof (which I also didn’t like), so maybe it was out of loyalty.  Which might have been Linney's motivation, having worked with Sullivan in Time Stands Still in 2010.

     Linney plays the haughty Diana, a failed artist now teaching at Ohio State University, and Hecht is Alice, a slightly flaky stay-at-home mom.  They don’t like each other at first after having been brought together by their young daughters who are friends.  They enter the stage at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre from opposite sides and sit on chairs at either end of a table.  The only other furniture is a bench at the back of the table.  What is it with bare stages this season?  Set designer John Lee Beatty puts Summer in the club with A Doll’s House and Camelot.

     We learn about Diana and Alice initially as they sit and address the audience.  In time they interact but never really breach the distance between them for long.  I’m assuming the play is supposed to be a comedy.  The audience certainly laughed enough.  Here’s an example of what passes for humor throughout the 90-minute show.  Diana tells us Alice thinks of herself as a hippie but she isn’t really, she just has a messy house.  The audience roared.  My theory about shows like this is that people who have watched sitcoms all their lives are programmed to laugh after every line because the studio audiences — and in years past, the laugh track — laugh after every line.  People have been conditioned by stupid TV shows to laugh.  I’d like to be able to push a pause button and turn to a couple of people and ask them why they found that funny.  I bet they couldn’t answer.

     But even if that comment had been funny, the hippie reference is odd for a play set in 1976.  Hippies were so 1960s.  I remember that summer well.  I was between my sophomore and junior year in college.  The country was full of joyful celebrations marking its Bicentennial.  Why set a play in such a specific year and ignore that?  The Tall Ships came to us in Baltimore but surely something must have been going on in Columbus, Ohio, where the play is set. 

     Diana and Alice seem oblivious to something else that was happening at the time that was even more important to me — the women’s movement.  Did these two midwestern women not know what was going on?  I don’t understand setting a play in such a specific year and then ignoring these two events that came to my mind as soon as I heard the play’s title.

     Their clothes (costumes by Linda Cho) don’t reflect the period either, but I suppose we are to associate them with the older characters reflecting on their past.  Diana wears black slacks and a black T-shirt and Alice is in a long, flowy, drab blue and red peasant dress.  Both women would look right at home today in the East Village.  The 70s was the decade of disco.  Fashion reflected the “Saturday Night Fever” look.  

     Auburn was born in November of 1969 so he was probably ready to enter or had just finished first grade in the summer of 1976.  He should have bounced this play off of his mother.  She could have helped him be more year specific.  Maybe she could have even helped him give his two female characters depth.    

Sean Hayes, classical pianist? Yep

 

     Fans of Sean Hayes associate him with comedy.  This is natural considering his 11 years playing Jack McFarland on the TV sitcom “Will and Grace.”  They won’t be surprised to hear his comic timing and delivery now on Broadway in Good Night, Oscar.  

     They might be surprised to see his dramatic chops as he plays pianist and intellectual wit Oscar Levant, a man who suffered from serious mental illness and drug addiction.  When he falls to the floor writhing in a breakdown several times during the 100-minute show Hayes brings us the tortured man behind the humor.

     But what is likely to be the bigger surprise for Hayes fans is that he is a classically trained pianist.  Portraying Levant performing on “The Tonight Show,” he sits down at the piano and plays a seven-minute excerpt from George Gershwin’s challenging “Rhapsody in Blue.”  The audience at the Belasco Theatre went wild.

     I was right with them because I love that piece and because it’s a joy to see these unexpected gifts from an actor I had only seen in “Promises, Promises” and “An Act of God” on Broadway.

     Under the direction of Lisa Peterson, Doug Wright’s play is an encapsulated story of the man whose gifts and demons fought each other for control of his life.  Levant was widely regarded for his interpretation of Gershwin’s music.  He also appeared in the film “An American in Paris” and frequented TV talk shows where he joked about his mental health struggles and drug addiction.

     Set in spring 1958 in an NBC studio in Burbank, CA, the play centers around the first night of host Jack Paar’s (Ben Rappaport) “Tonight Show” in Los Angeles.  He reluctantly agreed to relocate from New York after NBC president Bob Sarnoff (Peter Grosz) offered him wide freedom to select his guests.  

     This sets the scene for some delightful commentary about New York vs. Los Angeles.  When Paar reminds his boss that he’s had to leave behind “those late-night sophisticates back in New York,” Sarnoff tells him Los Angeles audiences “can be very discriminating.” To which Paar replied, “Sure they discriminate.  Against talent.  Against intelligence.”  He calls L.A. “the one city in the world where a good tan beats a college education.” 

     All of this takes place backstage in Paar’s office, with Rachel Hauck’s sets offering the appropriately bland, low-key look of the late 1950s.  Paar and Sarnoff are sparing over the host’s insistence that Levant be his lead guest for this first West Coast show.  Sarnoff worries about Levant’s dependability in terms of showing up and then keeping his sharp commentary in line with censor and sponsor expectations.  He wants to replace him with Xavier Cugat, “the King of the Rhumba,” who is in town appearing at the Coconut Grove.  No way will Paar agree to that switch for his L.A. premiere. 

     What neither man knows until Levant’s wife June (Emily Bergl) shows up is that she has had him committed to a psychiatric unit and had only now learned he had been scheduled for Paar’s big night.  That’s all Sarnoff needs to hear for him to head for the phone to call Cugat.  But Paar, concerned about his ratings and unconcerned about his friend’s mental health, convinces June to get her husband released on a four-hour pass.  

     Levant’s appearance on the live show, high on pills he had gotten with the help of a studio flunky (Alex Wyse), proves both men right.  Prompted by Paar Levant goes full dagger on the three topics he promised to avoid – political, sex and religion.  The religious joke, involving Marilyn Monroe’s conversion to Judaism following her marriage to Arthur Miller, would probably shock some people today but in the Eisenhower era it brings immediate calls of protest from the Legion of Decency, Cardinal Spellman, and the National Office of the Parent/Teacher Association.  The Methodist church members in the audience and others have left plenty of empty seats in the studio by the time the commercial break ends.

     Sarnoff is now ready to send Levant packing but Paar remains determined to have him perform anything, even “Chopsticks,” just to get him at the piano.  Throughout his time at the studio, and even more at the thought of playing, Levant has been having imaginary conversations with Gershwin (John Zdrojeski), his former friend and idol, and the man whose genius he thinks he has failed to achieve.  These lead to his breakdowns on the floor.  

     Paar wins, though, and the drug-addled Levant staggers to the piano only to brilliantly perform “Rhapsody.” 

     Good Night, Oscar is one of the best shows of the season.  The play is strong and Hayes is dynamic.  It gets my highest recommendation. 

'Camelot' has returned to Broadway after 63 years

 

     I had been looking forward to Camelot since I learned it was coming to Lincoln Center this spring.  I’ve loved the original cast recording most of my life but I’ve never seen the show, just the movie version when I was in elementary school.

     Director Bartlett Sher brought lavish revivals of two other Golden Age musicals, South Pacific and The King and I, to Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre and I expected another in the first Broadway revival of this Lerner and Loewe classic retelling of the Arthurian legend, which opened on Broadway 63 years ago.  Unfortunately I was disappointed, largely because of set designer Michael Yeargan’s decision to present the entire almost three-hour musical on a nearly bare stage.  Even though the show has a 27-person cast and 30-piece orchestra I felt I was watching a concert version.  The actors came on to sing those lovely songs but I felt distanced from the story.

     I was also distracted by the humor throughout.  Having never seen the stage show I don’t know if that was a part of the original or if that is particular to Aaron Sorkin’s book adaptation.  I didn’t like it.  I wasn’t prepared for a musical comedy, much as I might like them in other cases.  It had the feel of television, which makes sense because Sorkin is the creator of the hit TV show “The West Wing.”  

     But he is also a man of the theatre, having made his Broadway debut with his play “A Few Good Men.”  More recently he adapted the book for another classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.  His interpretation greatly strengthened that story.  He did improve Camelot’s book in some ways, such as by taking out the supernatural elements.  I wish he had taken away more.  The show is too long.  I was thrilled to hear the final lines, “Each evening from December to December,” movingly delivered by Andrew Burnap as King Arthur.  Thrilled because they are so touching but also because it meant the show was ending.  Cut more Mr. Sorkin.  I heard other audience members complaining about the length as well.

     The songs, however, do not disappoint.  My heart soared right from the first notes of the overture (music director, Kimberly Grigsby).  “Camelot,” “The Lusty Month of May,” “How to Handle a Woman,” “Before I Gaze at You Again” and “If Ever I Would Leave You” are brought to us with perfection by Burnap, Phillipa Soo as Guenevere and Jordan Donica as Lancelot.  

     Soo is one of my favorite musical theatre performers.  I saw her in her first show right out of school, when she starred as Natasha in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 off-off-Broadway.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.  She played young and vulnerable beautifully and I loved her expressive face.  I listen now to her exquisite voice on the cast recording of Hamilton, in which she played Eliza.   

     She was the perfect Guenevere, whether frolicking around the Maypole (choreography by Byron Easley) in a pink dress (costumes by Jennifer Moeller) or in my favorite scene, the one when she’s leaving Arthur.  She tells him she loves him and by the way she hugs him deeply it is clear that she does.  It’s heartbreaking because they do love each other, except for her it’s not enough to keep her from running off with Lancelot. 

     I wish I could have been that moved by the rest of the show.  The bare stage technique doesn’t have to be distancing.  It works effectively in the current revival of A Doll’s House.  For me it put all the attention on the play and I was involved throughout.  In Camelot it distanced me from the story.