Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow are roommates

 I hadn’t expected to like The Roommate, the one act play by Jen Silverman at the Booth Theatre.  In fact, I thought I would  hate it.  As a critic I like to approach shows having read little about them.  What I knew was that it sounded like a 2024 version of The Odd Couple — a meek Midwestern divorcee living alone in an Iowa farmhouse who takes in a lesbian from the Bronx sounded pretty ho-hum to me. 

I expected 90 minutes of sitcom humor, which I dislike.  The play does start that way but before long it throws us a sharp curve that gives it a real plot, a funny one that twists with unpredictable turns and momentum.

The show, directed with precision by Jack O’Brien, is a two-hander featuring A-Listers Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow.  I know I don’t have to tell you which role each plays.  While I am not a Farrow fan (to put it politely), her character is so richly drawn for comedy that she manages to steal the show from LuPone, a powerhouse if ever there was one.  Farrow’s timing is perfect and she seems to be having a blast playing Sharon.  She just keeps going as her character veers deeper and deeper into craziness, using just the right amount of subtlety and necessary understatement.  LuPone, as Robyn, can do little more than look on.

I won’t reveal the plot because that would spoil your enjoyment.  You’ll love it, and watching these veteran actors perform together you can’t miss the chemistry.  That’s unsurprising because they have been close friends for more than 30 years and live in the same county in northwestern Connecticut.  Farrow was offered her role first and LuPone joined the show based on the opportunity for them to work together for the first time. 

I like the way O’Brien handles their fame.  Before the play begins he has them walk onstage together to get ahead of that annoying applause American audiences give to famous performers as soon as they appear, often interrupting the story.  Their names are projected large behind them.  He could have skipped that.  We knew who they were before we arrived.  But it was nice to get the exuberant applause out of the way and begin the play uninterrupted.

People more familiar with television than I, which is just about everyone, will recognize the voice of Sharon’s son who calls from New York.  That voice belongs to Farrow’s real life son, the journalist Ronan Farrow.  I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t read that little tidbit. 

As we were leaving I said to my friend, “that was cute.”  She begrudgingly agreed but said she wouldn’t elevate her praise beyond that.  But that’s all it needs to be.  On a Friday night after a long week of work 90 minutes of cute is enough.  I can see complicated dramas another time.  I left the theatre happy.

This heart of rock and roll isn't beating

 

I have not seen a jukebox musical as torturously bad as The Heart of Rock and Roll since Escape to Margaritaville in 2018.  Even Huey Lewis and the News’s songs fail to give a spark of redemption in this two-and-a-half-hour time waster at the James Earl Theatre.

The success or failure of these types of shows is largely with the book writer, in this case, Jonathan A. Abrams, with a story – using that word loosely – by Tyler Mitchell and Abrams.  

Biographical jukeboxes work with a skilled writer because they tell a story.  In shows like Heart the story is contrived to fit around the songs.  Set in 1987, Bobby (Corey Cott) toils away on the assembly line at Stone Box Co. in Milwaukee, producing cardboard boxes while singing with his band and dreaming of a music career.  His love interest will be the boss’s daughter, Cassandra (McKenzie Kurtz), who manages to fill two stereotypes, ditzy blond and Type-A perfectionist.  He’s uninteresting; she’s annoying.

The only somewhat interesting character is Roz (Tamika Lawrence), the smart-aleck HR director.  She’s the one entrusted with probably the best-known song, “The Power of Love,” which I had been singing in my head all day in anticipation of hearing it performed live.  It’s the beloved song from the movie “Back to the Future.”  As I expected, it was the finale, only without the sizzle of Lewis’s recording or the power of a good send-off.  It sounded anemic compared to Lewis’s version.  The entire cast came out to surround Roz, smothering the effect of that good song.

Heart, which is directed by Gordon Greenberg, lacks another element of a good musical.  Lorin Latarro’s choreography relies heavily on the ensemble jumping up and down in number after number, with some somersaults and ballet moves interwoven.  Latarro is also the choreographer for the revival of Tommy, also recently opened on Broadway.  I loved her work on that show.

My guest left at intermission, something she says she never does, but there was nothing about The Heart of Rock and Roll that made her want to stay.  

'The Wiz' is belting on down the road

 

If you like camp, silliness, intense neon colors everywhere and BELTING, you will love the Broadway revival of The Wiz at the Marquis Theatre.  I often appreciate camp, rarely enjoy silliness, like neon to an extent and never like belting, so it was a mostly tedious two and a half hours for me.

I’ve never seen this all-Black retelling of The Wizard of Oz so I didn’t know what to expect.  I’ve had the original cast recording for decades and love the songs. I’m glad I had that album because the sound quality last night was so poor I needed to rely on hearing the songs in my head instead of from the stage.  With songs that weren’t on the album, I was lost, especially when the Scarecrow (Avery Wilson) sang.  My friend Mary, a singer, also had difficulty understanding the words. She thought for awhile that they were lip-syncing but decided by the end that they probably weren’t.  With music supervision and orchestrations by veteran Joseph Joubert they definitely would not have been lip-syncing.

This is a shame because Charlie Smalls’s score is fantastic, a combination of gospel, soul and R&B.  The actor I could most consistently understand was Phillip Johnson Richardson as the Tinman.  I loved his “If I Could Feel.”  I also loved when Dorothy, Scarecrow and Tinman sang and danced “Ease on Down the Road,” a song that was playing in my head from my record before I even entered the theatre.  

The star of the show for me was the actual star of the show, Nichelle Lewis, making her Broadway debut as Dorothy.   At 24 she is older than Stephanie Mills, who was 17 when she originated the role in 1975, but Lewis has a youthful and energetic spirit that is endearing from start to finish.  She was every bit a girl on an adventure for me and I could understand most of what she sang, except during her extreme belts.  She’s got an easy rhythm and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself.  I just wish she had Toto but for some reason she goes on her journey to the Emerald City without her trusted dog, who isn’t even mentioned.  Rounding out the threesome who do join her to find the Wiz (Wayne Brady) is Kyle Ramar Freeman as the Lion.

Any subtly in the show ends early when scenic designer Hannah Beachler’s gray and white Kansas farmhouse transitions into Oz.  I liked how choreographer JaQuel Knight created the tornado from swirling dancers in gray jumpsuits and capes (costumes by Sharen Davis).  It was all busyness after that.

Schele Williams directs this production for which Amber Ruffin has updated William F. Brown’s book. The original 1975 show won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical.  I don’t expect this one to be anywhere near as honored.

Eden Espinosa is dynamic as Lempicka on Broadway

 

Many times over the years I’ve walked out of a Broadway musical thinking, I want to go back.  Never, though, have I been so enamored with a show as I was with Lempicka that I’m now considering booking a flight across the country because I want more.  More of this fascinating woman, that is. 

Tamara de Lempicka was a sought-after artist in the 1930s and 40s in Paris before falling into obscurity as tastes changed.  Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould are telling her story -- “inspired” by her life and art -- and Eden Espinosa is brilliantly bringing her to life at the Longacre Theatre in a new musical directed by Rachel Chavkin.  I was so captivated by her story and artistic vision that I reread a New York Times feature that mentioned her work will have its first major museum retrospective in the United States, at the de Young Museum in San Francisco starting in October.  I immediately wanted to plan a trip.  I was only in that charming city once, when I was in college, and have always hoped to go back.  Now I have a good reason. 

Lempicka was a strong, independent woman who painted portraits and modern women like herself in a modernist Art Deco style; a great many were nudes.  Although the story spans more than a half century, little is known about her early life except that she was born in the 1890s in Poland to a Russian mother and a Polish father whom she describes as a Jewish merchant.  We first encounter her as an old, forgotten and alone woman on a park bench in Los Angeles who tells us her story, beginning in 1916 when she was a pretty young woman married to a Russian aristocrat, Tadeusz Lempicka.  The 1917 revolution toppled that privileged life in St. Petersburg when her husband was jailed and she had sex with his Bolshevik captors to free him.  “You walked in here a little rich girl,” one of them tells her. “Now you’re walking out a whore.”

They leave Russia with their infant daughter and little money and settle in Paris in 1918.  Tadeusz, unaccustomed to work, can’t find a job.  She had always loved to paint so she began formal training and started displaying her work in the streets of Paris, taking on the role of breadwinner while following her passion.  Her work catches the attention of intellectuals and Paris’s modern set, and she was the toast of the city’s fallen aristocrats and nightclub goers. 

Andrew Samonsky portrays her husband and Amber Iman her lover, Rafaela, with whom she carries on an affair in full knowledge of her husband with whom she maintains her marriage.  Standing at least six feet tall and railing thin, Iman is soulful, with a vulnerable core.  I believed in both relationships.  “I had the great good fortune to love not once, but twice,” Tamara tells us at the beginning.  “And I had the great misfortune to love them both at the same time.”

They have beautiful voices and Kreitzer has given them lovely lyrics that movingly and clearly tell their stories and the larger one, with music by Gould.

Raja Feather Kelly’s choreography has all the sizzle and excitement a show about this artist deserves.  And Paloma Young’s costumes are a lush delight.  Scenic designer Riccardo Hernandez’s layered platforms allow the story to move easily from apartment to nightclub and to the street.

It’s been 14 years since a friend suggested to Kreitzer, a playwright who likes to write about unconventional women, that she look into the complex and glamorous life and extraordinary talent of Lempicka, who was always better known in Europe than here, saying this woman who was far ahead of her time would be a good subject.  Several well-known people already knew this.  Madonna, Barbra Streisand and Jack Nicholson are collectors.

As Kreitzer researched, she began envisioning a musical as the proper vehicle, even though she had never written one.  Over the years it had readings, workshops, regional productions and premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2018 with Espinosa starring.  The pandemic slowed its arrival on Broadway.  

The friend who came up from Virginia to see the show with me and loved it -- we were both in tears at the end -- wants to go with me to San Francisco for the art exhibit and a friend from high school who heard about my plans wants to come too.  I feel this is going to happen.  Thank you to all involved with Lempicka.   California here we come. 

'The Who's Tommy'

 The music and dancing in the Broadway revival of The Who’s Tommy at the Nederlander Theatre are fabulous but I left feeling disappointed by the production, which is directed by Des McAnuff.  After an exciting first act the story more or less falls away in the second.  And Ali Louis Bourzgui, in his Broadway debut, doesn’t have the magnetism to carry the act as the adult Tommy, or at least he didn’t when I saw him last night.  I was surprised to read in Playbill that he won a Jeff Award for his performance in the Goodman Theatre pre-Broadway production last summer.

I’ve loved the music since it was released as a rock opera concept album in 1969.  I was in elementary school but I appreciated the electrifying score.  I bought the cassette and wore it out.

Pete Townshend’s music, under the direction of Ron Melrose, is still thrilling.  And choreographer Lorin Latarro’s syncopated dances with the large chorus are exciting as they fill David Korins’s stylized, minimalistic sets.  Amanda Zieve’s broodingly dark lighting interspersed with vibrant colors and Peter Nigrini’s projections all create the perfect atmosphere for the popular rock score.

So much drama is packed, and carried out well, in the first act that there was hardly anywhere left for the book, written by Townshend and McAnuff, to go.

It’s a creepy story, starting in England in 1941 when Mrs. Walker (Alison Luff) get a telegram that her husband, Captain Walker (Adam Jacobs), was killed in the war.  She is pregnant and months later gives birth to Tommy.  I was happy to hear “It’s a Boy” again.  It’s been years since I’ve heard any of this music.

Four years later Tommy (Olive Ross-Kline last night) is at home with his mother and her lover (an unnamed Nathan Lucrezio) when Captain Walker unexpectedly comes home after being released from a P.O.W. camp.  When a fight breaks out between the men, Mrs. Walker turns Tommy away, unaware that he is now looking in the large mirror of the wardrobe.  Captain Walker shoots and kills the lover and Tommy witnesses it all.  Frightened, his parents sing frantically and insistently to him: “You didn’t hear it./You didn’t see it./You won’t say nothing to no one/ever in your life./You never heard it./How absurd it’ll/seem without any proof.”  They conclude with: “Never tell a soul/What you know is the truth.”  From that point on Tommy is emotionally “that deaf, dumb and blind kid” we know so well from “Pinball Wizard.”

Most of this, like all of the story, is told through song and pantomime.  Little dialogue is used.  That’s interesting to watch even if it distances the story.

Walker is cleared after a court rules he acted in self-defense.  The parents spend considerable time taking Tommy to doctors who lift and manipulate his tiny body trying to connect with him, to no avail.  Olive plays unresponsive beautifully, not tensing her body or allowing it to go rag doll limp.  Ten-year-old Tommy (Quinten Kusheba) is also excellent in Tommy’s unresponsiveness as he is sexually molested by Uncle Ernie (John Ambrosino) and bullied and physically abused by Cousin Kevin (Bobby Conte).

But Cousin Kevin ends up giving Tommy a surprising new way to live.  He takes him to an arcade where Tommy outplays everybody through “sense of smell” and “intuition.”  The act ends in a rousing “Pinball Wizard” performed by the Local Lads, Cousin Kevin and the Ensemble.

After all that drama and trauma Act Two dragged for me.  Even Tommy’s awakening seemed anti-climactic.  It was nice to hear “I’m Free” again but, as I mentioned, Bourzgui didn’t give it the electricity it needs.  The show is only two hours and 10 minutes.  Doing it without an intermission would have helped. 

'Water for Elephants' is water for the soul

 

The circus has come to town, and it’s wrapped in a new Broadway musical, Water for Elephants, at the Imperial Theatre.  Together, under the thoughtful direction of Jessica Stone, they complement each other perfectly to create an enchanting evening of escape and joy.

What I appreciated was the simplicity.  Ever since Andrew Lloyd Webber’s shows began transferring regularly to Broadway in the 1980s musicals have competed to add more and more extravaganza, which I tired of long ago.  

Elephants has the element of a real life circus in it, which sounds as if it is an extravagance, but this circus is set in 1931 when skilled women and men performed with just their highly trained bodies.  To watch them soar, suspended by just a single rope, and perform their acrobatics is thrilling, a significant contrast to today’s overdone circuses like Cirque du Soleil with all its bells, whistles and high tech.  

I was transported to the circuses of my 1960s childhood.  My father took me and my friend Gina every year to both the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and the Shine Circus in Baltimore.  My favorite was the Shrine Circus because it had just one ring for me to focus on, rather than three. 

Those good memories are the basis of my appreciation for what Stone has created.  She cast seven professional circus performers to bring to life the circus at the heart of this story.

Elephants was first a best-selling book by Sara Gruen, then a movie, neither of which I was familiar with.  It’s a simple story, which as you can tell is appealing to me.  A young man, Jacob Jankowski (Grant Gustin) is all set to go into a veterinary practice with his father.  Right before his final exam at Cornell University his parents are killed instantly in a car accident.  Two days later a sign arrives in the mail, Jankowski & Son.  Broke after the bank took their house and with no other family, Jacob leaves school without taking his final to qualify him to practice and hops a train heading to upstate New York.  He sings “Anywhere”: This train is bound for anywhere./I’m going there too./Don’t care much where we end up/as long as it’s new/and free of everything behind me.”  

Once onboard, he learns it’s a circus train taking the show from town to town  He asks Camel (Stan Brown) for a job for one day so he can buy food.  The other workers see him as a threat but he assures them he’s not trying to take their jobs.  “Just a day and I’ll be gone/I’ve got nothing left to lose.”  That’s fine with Camel, who tells him, “You didn’t jump just any old train, son.  This here’s the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.  Welcome to the circus.”

And so Jacob’s new life begins.  When the Ringmaster and circus owner, August (Paul Alexander Nolan), a dazzler in the spotlight who abuses his wife, Marlena (Isabelle McCalla), employees and the animals, finds out about Jacob’s background he hires him for “three bucks a week” as a traveling vet.

The unfurling is nicely framed by the elderly Jacob (Gregg Edelman), now a retired veterinarian living in a senior residence, visiting a contemporary circus and regaling them with tales of his experience.  “Man,” he says with feeling, “this place.  The sawdust, the smells.  It’s old but it’s new.”

Jesse Robb and Shana Carroll’s choreography never overwhelm the story.  Neither does Carroll’s circus design.  In keeping with this balance are Rick Elice’s book, Pigpen Theatre Co.’s music, Takeshi Kata’s scenic design, David Israel Reynoso’s costumes and Bradley King’s lighting.  All elements come together like clockwork.  The two hours and 40 minutes flew by.

While the acrobats are magnificent, a circus is nothing without animals.  These are people-powered puppets designed by Ray Wetmore & JR Goodman and Camille Labarre.  I loved Rosie the life-sized white elephant. 

And I loved the sweet ending, which I won’t spoil for you.  Make your own escape to Water for Elephants. 

Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli headline 'An Enemy of the People' revival

 

Playwright Amy Herzog has once again taken a beloved Henrik Ibsen classic and made it more accessible — and shorter — without cheapening its worth.  This time it’s An Enemy of the People at Circle in the Square, tautly directed by Sam Gold and wonderfully acted by Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli.

I had high expectations having enjoyed Herzog’s adaptation of A Doll’s House last year and I was not disappointed.  I’ve liked both plays since I first read them in college.  Ibsen was a revolutionary.  Many people were outraged to see a wife and mother leave her family in A Doll’s House.  I understood Nora’s need for independence and loved that a man from that time had created her.   But Ibsen was writing for long 19th century Norwegian nights.  Enemy, especially, can drag at times and come off as didactic.  Herzog and Gold’s production is well paced throughout, reducing the five act play to two hours with no intermission.  They are wife and husband collaborating on their first stage production together. 

It’s a story of greed and political self-interest that, unfortunately, is as timely as 2020.  Dr. Thomas Stockmann (Strong) is a small town doctor who discovers that the town’s water is toxic and warns of a pandemic if the situation isn’t addressed.  He could be a fictional Dr. Anthony Fauci.  All we have to do is think back four years to the fierce divide between red states and blue over COVID restrictions and we can understand Stockmann’s plight.  Fortunately Fauci wasn’t stoned as Stockmann is but had he been in a small southern town he could have faced a violent attack. 

When the play opens Stockmann has returned to his hometown on the coast with his grown daughter, Petra (Victoria Pedretti), after living in a remote region until his wife died.  This is one of Herzog’s changes, cutting out the character of the wife who in the original play is a shrill opponent of her husband’s principled stand.  I didn’t miss her.

The town had always attracted, on a small scale, people suffering from various ailments because of the healing power of its hot springs.  In Stockmann’s absence, under the direction of his brother, Peter, who is mayor (Imperioli), big plans to turn the town into a major resort and spa are well under way, creating an abundance of jobs and the promise of wealth to all who invest.

At first the doctor is esteemed for discovering the contamination.  But when he calls for all plans for the resort to be stopped while an expensive, years long rebuilding of the water system is undertaken, the townsfolk turn on him swiftly.

Ibsen, considered the father of modern drama, was a moralist. Arthur Miller said he was greatly influenced by Ibsen’s plays.  Herzog has said the same.  In Miller’s case this is most obvious in his 1948 drama All My Sons in which Joe Keller, a self-made industrialist in World War II, discovers that a plane part at his manufacturing plant is defective but allows production to continue rather than face a costly work stoppage.  When a plane crashes and kills all onboard Keller frames his business partner.  Like Ibsen, Miller knew that when taking the moral road has a high price tag many people will leave their morals on the roadside and keep going. 

The action in Enemy is well served by the scenic design  company dots, as well as the theatre itself, which is in-the-round.  In the first act simple furnishings, in keeping with Norwegian sensibilities, create a dining room, living room and newspaper office.  I was thrown at first by what turned out to be the most unusual set change I’ve seen in a long time.  Before I realized what was happening the furnished rooms gave way to a pub and the audience was invited onstage for a drink in what we were told would be a five minute break.  It turned out to be more like 20 minutes to serve the lines of people waiting.  Some audience members had been asked to take seats onstage to represent the people at what becomes a town meeting.  I didn’t see how that contributed to the scene.  They were incongruous in their sneakers and casual clothes against David Zinn’s evocative period costumes.

But the set allows Stockmann to climb onto the bar to try in vain to make his case.  It highlights him as the solitary crusader he has become, who has now been deemed an enemy of the people.  Luckily he survives their stoning and tells Petra they will go to America where things like that don’t happen.  This draws laugher and applause.  He’s probably right about not being stoned.  We used bullets now instead.

This was the most satisfying production of An Enemy of the People I’ve ever experienced.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Herzog has in store for us next.  Hedda Gabler, please.