Jean Smart returns to Broadway in 'Call Me Izzy'

 

The minute Jean Smart stepped onto the stage at Studio 54 the audience greeted her with enthusiastic applause.  I said to myself, She must be from television.  When I checked the Playbill after the show I found I was right.  She comes from “Hacks,” in which she played Deborah Vance, and “Designing Women,” where she played Charlene Frazier.  I’ve never seen either or even heard of the first.

The last time she was on Broadway was a quarter of a century ago in The Man Who Came to Dinner, which I saw but don’t remember her.  Theatre is obviously in her blood, though, because she ably holds the stage for 80 minutes in Jamie Wax’s one-woman play Call Me Izzy, directed by Sarna Lapine.  I do wish she had a better play for her return.

Smart portrays Isabelle Fontenot whose first battle, of many to come, is as child insisting on being called Izzy.  At 17, right out of high school, she marries Ferd Scutley, five years her senior and leaves her childhood trailer park in Mansfield, Louisiana, to settle into another with him.  It’s not long before Ferd begins beating her.  To escape, at least mentally, she writes poetry, having fallen in love with the genre in fourth grade after being chosen over the whole class to recite Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.”

For reasons I don’t understand unless it’s that the playwright thinks it’s cute, Izzy writes her poems on the toilet seat cover using toilet paper and an eyebrow pencil.  Are we to believe there’s not a single pen or piece of paper in the trailer she can take into the bathroom with her, or that she couldn’t buy them when she does her grocery shopping?  (Sets by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams; lighting by Donald Holder).

Eventually, though, she gets some notebooks, filling hundreds of them, she tells us, and hides them from Ferd.  It’s no spoiler to tell you what becomes of them because the play is predicable from start to finish.  Ferd discovers them and burns them. 

Along her journey Izzy has impressed people.  A high school teacher visits her shortly after she’s married, coming while Ferd is at work.  She brings a thick envelope containing a letter of recommendation and an application for a full scholarship to LSU, saying she wants Izzy to continue writing.  But as you can imagine, you-know-who isn’t about to go for that.  After seeing the envelope and reading the contents he storms out, coming back drunk.  He hurls, “like a grenade against the wall,” all the Precious Moments figurines Izzy has collected since she was a girl.  When he is through Izzy sweeps up the pieces and dumps them in the trash with the application.

“It’s alright,” she tells us, breaking the fourth wall as she has from the start to tell her story.  “I’m a married woman now.  And Ferd needs me.  And we never talk of it again.” 

Her second significant friend is a neighbor two trailers down who introduces her to the library where she gets a card and begins reading Shakespeare’s sonnets, then plays.  But doesn’t the neighbor notice the bruises or hear the beatings?  There can't be that much space between trailers that she doesn’t hear what’s going on.

Izzy will prevail, of course, although not before the beating that finally sends her packing, ending up where all the plucky runaway heroines end up, at a bus stop, heading to an unknown but surely successful future, based on all that has come before.  She vows to keep writing her poems but declares never again on (expletive) toilet paper.   

One-act plays are challenging.  They can be brilliant, like this past season’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in which Sarah Snook (another TV star, from “Succession”) took on all 26 characters in Oscar Wilde’s classic, or they can be deeply moving, like Rueben Santiago-Hudson autobiographical play, Lackawanna Blues, which had me still crying as I walked up the aisle after his long, well-deserved standing ovation.  In both of those the material as solid.  

Another hackneyed story of a battered wife triumphing over her abusive husband doesn’t cut it for me, especially one set 1989 as this one is.  That subject’s been done so many times.  I know domestic violence is still a problem but the play would have been more effective if Wax had set it 10 or 15 years earlier.  This story wouldn’t have been familiar back then.  Police reporters never wrote about domestic violence because it was considered a private matter.  I remember that as an intern at The Baltimore Sun.  

But the 70s brought the Women’s Movement to the forefront.  The 70s also featured popular made for TV movies, back in the days when television was ABC, CBS and NBC only.  These kinds of stories were regulars, usually starring a popular TV star, especially in the sweeps months (when ratings were assigned) of November, February and May.  That’s what Call Me Izzy reminded me of.  Many, many seats were empty when I was there Friday night.

  

The producers have added an additional element to the show, The Izzy Project, a social impact campaign to “extend the conversation beyond the stage” with talkbacks on a variety of subjects, such as overcoming adversity and how to recognize the warning signs of abuse.  For subjects and dates, visit https://callmeizzyplay.com/resources. https://callmeizzyplay.com/resources.

Jeremy Jordan stars in 'Floyd Collins'

 

I was disappointed by the production of Floyd Collins at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. I have wanted to see this musical since 2006 when I heard Brian Stokes Mitchell sing “How Glory Goes” on his first, self-titled, CD.  He sang it with such feeling that I got up to check the disc case to find out more about it.

I learned that the music and lyrics were by Adam Guettel and that it was from a musical called Floyd Collins, which I had not heard of.  It’s easy to understand why it was unfamiliar to me.  It premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 1996 and played for only 26 performances.  From time to time after I became aware of the show I would see it listed for performances in regional theatres but I had a long wait for it to make its Broadway debut this spring.

It wasn’t the acting and singing or the production values that disappointed me.  It was Tina Landau’s book, which made the show seem both too long and at the same time underdeveloped.  This is her second show on Broadway this season.  She wrote the book for Redwood, which was wonderfully staged but suffered with her clichéd story. 

In the case of Floyd Collins Landau, who also directs and provided new lyrics, had a real life story to work from, and one that was certainly dramatic.  In the Kentucky hills in 1925 Floyd Collins, a farmer and cave explorer, became the most famous man in the country for a time after becoming trapped 200 feet underground for 14 days in what was called Sand Cave.  His well-being and the attempts to free him not only made national news but attracted crowds at the cave’s opening as well as opportunists and other vendors who set up attractions that turned the rural area into a country fair and carnival with fireworks and balloons. 

Broadway favorite Jeremy Jordan left his role as Gatsby in that Broadway show to take a pay cut to play Floyd.  His enthusiasm for the role is obvious in his performance but enthusiasm was less obvious in the audience.  Many, many seats were empty the night I was there. 

Jordan nicely spans Floyd’s emotional journey, which is impressive since he portrays most of it from a tilted platform representing his confined condition.  (Stark set and lighting by dots and Scott Zielinski.)

Going into the cave at the start Floyd is enthusiastic.  After hollering down the opening and hearing an echo he imagines a bright future for himself.

“My losing streak is over, boy.  Gonna find my treasure underground.  This cavern’s gonna be the biggest attraction ‘round these parts and this time folks are gonna pay me to tour her wonders.  They’ll be tearing up this mountain.  They’ll be camping in the snow.”

He sings his first solo, “The Call”:

If I follow that sound,

I could find what I’m lookin’ for.

It could be glory callin’,

Callin’ me.

He retains his optimism for a few days even after his left ankle gets crushed under a huge rock, rendering him unable to escape.  His younger brother, Homer (Jason Gotay), is able to reach down to comfort him and his young sister, Nellie (singer/songwriter Lizzy McAlpine in her Broadway debut), father, Lee (Marc Kudisch), and the town folks keep vigil above ground. 

A reporter from the Louisville Courier-Journal, Skeets Miller (Taylor Trensch), comes to interview Floyd.  He’s small in size — like a mosquito, hence his name — so he is able to talk to Floyd from just above where he’s trapped and becomes emotionally involved, so much so that he eventually crawls down with a jack and crowbar, risking his own life, to try to rescue Floyd.  After his story is published interest in Floyd picks up quickly.  (In real life Miller won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the tragedy.)

By the start of the second act reporters have come from New York City, Chicago, Bowling Green, Butte, Savannah and more to report on the man “buried while still alive.”  Dressed in navy suits with matching bowler hats (costumes by Anita Yavich) they do a little syncopated dance in their zeal (dance sequences by Jon Rua). 

All the while Floyd is losing hope as the days pass until he comes to accept this is the end for him and he calls upon God: “I’m ready now, Lord.  I know I weren’t no Sunday school mama’s boy.  But faith is hoping for something, believing what you can’t see.”  Then he shouts: “I HAD FAITH ALL MY LIFE.  I want to ask you something.”

Which he does in the lovely  “How Glory Goes” in which he wonders what heaven will be like:

“Is it warm?

Is it soft against your face?

Do you feel a kind ‘a grace inside the breeze?

Will there be trees?

“Is there light?

Does it hover on the ground?

Does it shine from all around,

or just from you?”

As he continues his final exploration, this one in song and imagination, he sits up, finally free in impending death.  

“Are we ev’rywhere?

Are we anywheres at all?

Do we hear a trumpet call us

and we’re by your side?

“Will my mama be there waitin’ for me,

smilin’ like the way she does

an’ holdin’ out her arms,

an’ she calls my name?

She will hold me just the same.”

 

Miller comes on to give his final news report: “The prisoner’s body was wedged so tightly there was no longer any room at all between his chest and the cave ceiling.  A cave cricket perched on his nose, nibbling away at the tip.  The cause of death was listed as starvation and exhaustion.  The carnival at Sand Cave packed up and went home.”

Floyd finishes his song:

“Only heaven knows how glory go,

what each of us was meant to be.

In the starlight, that is what we are

I can see so far.”

He stands, walking into the open space, lifts his arms and turns in a slow circle, as if ascending into the light around him and follows it until he disappears into it as the stage lights blacken.

'Smash', mediocre TV becomes mediocre Broadway

 

Mounting a Broadway musical is an expensive proposition, in the ballpark of $25 million, and risky if it happens to be a new, untried show.  So why would producers base one on a mediocre TV series that only lasted for two seasons?  Maybe it was because all but one of the songs were already written and the story-within-a-story was developed, somewhat.  But building from mediocre doesn’t make great.  In the case of Smash at the Imperial Theater it just creates more mediocracy.  Even veteran Tony Award-winning director Susan Stroman can’t redeem it.

For me the biggest weakness is the book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice.  The theatrical show is being billed as a musical comedy (the series was more of a melodrama) but their intended laugh lines and jokes are so lame only one or two are somewhat funny but then forgotten in a minute.  The 18 energetic songs are by Marc Shaiman (music) and Scott Wittman and Shaiman (lyrics). 

For anyone who liked the TV series — Is there anyone out there?— the writers have made major changes.  The basic story is the same, a show about people trying to put on a musical about Marilyn Monroe called Bombshell.  Martin and Elice have focused on the competition over who will play Monroe to the exclusion of most of the relationships featured in the series.  They’ve made the initial choice an established Broadway diva, Ivy Lynn (Robyn Hurder), as opposed to the mid-level actress played by Megan Hilty in the series.  She’s chronically late and tempestuous to work with.

Her longtime understudy, Karen (Caroline Bowman; Katharine McPhee in the series), fills in for Ivy on her many absences.  She is equally as talented and is also dependable.  The series kept people wondering who would end up with the part.  The writers have added a third contender, Chloe (Bella Coppola), an associate director who says she’s happy to have gotten out of the competitive acting world but after she’s encouraged to sing one song, the composer, Jerry (John Behlmann), is convinced she should be cast.  Voting then goes on between Nigel (Brooks Ashmanskas,) the director, Anita (Jacqueline B. Arnold), the lead producer, and Tracy (Krysta Rodriguez), the lyricist who is married to Jerry.

The trouble with making this competition the center of the show is that none of the three characters is developed enough for us to care about.  We know little of them other than Ivy was raised by a single mother who worked two jobs to support them, Karen is always an understudy and Chloe quit her acting career.  In the series other plots were spinning.  The songwriting team, played by Broadway veterans Debra Messing (Julia)  and Christian Borle (Tom), weren’t a couple.  Tension came from Julia’s relationship with her husband, Frank (Brian D’Arcy James), a high school chemistry teacher on whom she cheated, and Tom’s search for love.  The director, called Jack (Derek Wills), was played as an overbearing perfectionist who slept with women who worked for or wanted to work for him.  In the Broadway variation Nigel is a silly wimp who never could have handled steering a Broadway musical.  

The worst change from the series is the utterly, totally and completely annoy character of Susan (Kristine Nielsen) who was hired by Ivy as an acting coach.  Dressed from head to toe in black with a black scarf wounded so tightly around her head that only her face and big glasses are seen, she looks like a religious peasant.  She hangs around rehearsals and encourages Ivy to stop cold to consult her before delivering every line, even if one of them is only a single word.   She’s meant to be a comic character but distracts big time from whatever interest you may be developing in Ivy, or the show.

What I liked: I want to give full praise to all three of the would-be Monroes, each with gorgeous voices that don’t devolve into that screeching but popular Broadway belt.  Joshua Bergasse’s choreography is sexy and sweeping (he also choreographed the series) and Alejo Vietti’s costumes are exquisite.  

Sadie Sink stars in 'John Proctor is the Villain' on Broadway

 

The description of John Proctor is the Villain, a new play by Kimberly Belflower at the Booth Theatre, sounded promising.  Five teenage girls in 2018 during the spring semester of their junior year in what the program describes as “a one stoplight town, northeast Georgia” are planning a feminist club before school and studying The Crucible in class.  They have a crush on their charismatic teacher, Mr. Smith (Gabriel Ebert), who tells them the play’s main character, John Proctor, is one of the great heroes of American theatre.  But these girls, coming of age in the early stages of the #MeToo movement, see him differently.  He’s a villain for cheating on his wife with a teenage girl in their small Salem town in 1692.

The play, under Danya Taymor’s misguided direction, is being promoted as shining “a blazing spotlight on the eternal fight to claim your own narrative in a world that’s still stuck in the past.”  Sounds good, right?

Unfortunately, it’s not.  After a somewhat slow start to the 100-minute, intermission-less play any speck of subtly is abandoned.  And that was just fine with the audience, which was made up mostly of teenagers.  How did they afford orchestra seats on Broadway?

The show should have a warning like the one on a section of the Sunday Times that says For Kids Only.  This production should say For Teens Only.  They loved it, laughing heartily throughout at references that went right over my head.

They also went wild when Sadie Sink (in photo) made her dramatic entrance as Shelby.  It was clear Mr. Smith would turn out to be a parallel to Proctor but I had been wondering which of the four girls at the start of the play was going to turn out to be Abigail, the 17-year-old servant girl Proctor had an affair with and who then set in motion what became the infamous Salem witch trials.  Beth (Fina Strazza), Ivy (Maggie Kuntz), Nell (Morgan Scott) and Raelynn (Amalia Yoo) were too meek.  

I saw in the Playbill that Sink is a star of “Stranger Things,” a hit Netflix series I had never heard of until I received a press invite to the Broadway incarnation of the show, which I’m seeing next week.  

Any director of The Crucible must be extremely careful in staging the trial scene in which the girls accusing their fellow town folks of witchcraft become hysterical, screaming and pointing out birds flying around the courtroom that no one else can see.  Under Taymor’s directing the girls throw themselves wildly around the stage, laughing and screaming in a scene that is torturous to sit through. 

Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953 when Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy was conducting a brutal witch hunt of his own aimed at exposing people he suspected of being communists infiltrating the government and elements of society such as the movie industry.  Now would be an excellent time to revive the play.  I hope the teenagers will show up for that to see the power of good theatre.  

'Boop! The Musical' earns its exclamation point

 

When I go to a show directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell I expect large, splashy dance numbers and overall well-executed staging and that’s just what I got with Boop! The Musical at the Broadhurst Theatre.  What I didn’t expect was to be wowed by the 25-year-old making her Broadway debut in the starring role.  Jasmine Amy Rogers is phenomenal.

Nothing is between Rogers and her role.  She is Betty Boop throughout every minute of the two-and-a-half hour show, which flew by.  With the cartoon character’s high-pitched voice, which Rogers has said is pretty much her natural voice, and a singing voice that is impeccable, she commands the show.  Even in the exciting full-ensemble dance numbers my eyes were riveted on her.  And she does the whole show in Betty’s beloved high heels.  Ouch.  (I hope her contract calls for lots of massage therapy and foot care.) 

The show, with Bob Martin’s book, David Foster’s music and Susan Birkenhead’s lyrics, was in development for more than two decades. It had a successful pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago in 2023 but bringing it to Broadway with a reported $26 million capitalization is big time pressure for all, especially the novice on whom the success of the whole enterprise hinges.

Twenty or 25 years ago this role would have been Kristin Chenoweth’s.  With her pint-sized sass and resonant voice she also would have personified Betty Boop.  But Rogers, also pint-sized, is not an imitation Chenoweth.  She’s an extraordinarily talented performer all on her own.  Watching her I was reminded of the night I saw Sutton Foster make her Broadway debut starring in Thoroughly Modern Millie.  The role had been written for Chenoweth by Jeanine Tesori and had the show progressed more quickly to the Great White Way she would have been a fabulous Millie.  But by the time the show made it Chenoweth wasn’t available.  At first I was so disappointed not to have her that I missed the charm and talent of the very tall Foster in the place of the 4’ 11” Chenoweth.  But as soon as I dismissed my disappointment I realize I was witnessing a new star being born.

Building a Broadway musical around cartoon characters has been done before, most notably with You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.  (For which, incidentally, Chenoweth won her Tony for best featured actress in the 1999 revival.)   The creators of Boop! found a perfect way to bring this cartoon to life.  They transported Betty from her 1930s world into present day New York.  A time machine zaps her from her charming cartoon apartment in shades of black and white (sets by David Rockwell) into a vibrant full color 2025 Comic Con convention in the Javits Center.  Philip S. Rosenberg’s lighting is spectacular as are Gregg Barnes’ costumes, now vividly colorful.  Betty surveys this new world in amazement.  So did I.  (Barnes gives the costumes an especially clever note in the second act when Betty is torn between her two worlds.  The ensemble is in full-color in the front of their apparel but when they turn around the backs are in black and white, one of the many engaging details in this show.)

Upon arrival in New York Betty meets Dwayne (Ainsley Melham), a jazz musician who assumes she’s an actor in an especially authentic costume.  No surprise, he becomes her love interest.  That role can use some development. 

The role that is beautifully developed and played is that of Trisha (Angelica Hale), a teenager fan at the convention who idolizes the cartoon Betty for her strength and independence; she wears images of that Betty all over her clothes. She and Betty become fast friends.  This is also Hale’s Broadway debut, and she is another great discovery.  Only 17, with no theatre credits in her bio, her high comfort level must come from her unnamed performances worldwide and from being the youngest runner-up on “America’s Got Talent.”

The songs are upbeat and fun and Mitchell uses them well, starting with the first, “A Little Versatility,” that has Betty and a full-stage ensemble tapping their hearts out.  I loved it and all that followed.  And I was so happy to have good original songs in a new musical instead of the retreads used in the jukebox musicals that now pass for new Broadway shows.

Another shout out needs to go to Phillip Huber, a world renown marionette artist who, wearing all black, appears onstage to masterfully manipulate Betty’s little white dog, Pudgy.  

In this show full of shoutouts I can’t forget Sabana Majeed’s hair and wig design that gives Betty her signature big black spit curls and, with a mini-pack in each side of the wig, her round cartoon face..

Unfortunately it’s easy to forget Faith Prince, a Tony winner in 1993 for her role in the revival of Guys and Dolls, who is back on Broadway after almost a decade away.  She plays the newly created role of Valentina, a modern-day astrophysicist.  I read that she had a hand in developing the musical and shaping her character.  I wish she had given herself  more opportunity to showcase her talents.

LaChanze makes her New York directoral debut with 'Wine in the Wilderness'

 

After sitting through Classic Stage Company’s production of Alice Childress’ 1969 play Wine in the Wilderness last night I can understand why it is rarely staged.  Set in 1964 Harlem during a hot summer night, the play lack a focus.  I doubt if Tony Award-winning actress/singer LaChanze, making her New York directorial debut, could have remedied that.

A riot is going on outside of the apartment of artist Bill Jameson (Grantham Coleman).  We hear breaking glass — lots of breaking glass — interspersed through the jazz playing as the audience waits for the show to start at CSC’s Lynn F. Angelson Theater.  Bill is working on a triptych about Black womanhood and has asked his neighbors Cynthia (Lakisha May) and Sonny-man (Brooks Brantly) to find him a model for his third and final panel.  The first is of a sweet young girl, the middle painting, which he calls Wine in the Wilderness, is a foxy woman in red.  He wants “a messed-up chick” to pose for the third frame and, from the chaos outside, they bring him Tomorrow “Tommy” Marie (Olivia Washington).  

While initially it seems this will be Bill’s play, before long we see that it is Tommy’s, which is unfortunate.  I liked Bill and how he was portrayed but Washington’s Tommy was annoying from start to finish.  Wearing a wig of long blonde hair with an up-curl and bangs (wig & hair design by Nikiya Mathis), she is the stereotypical ditz.  Until the wig comes off and she isn’t.  But her transformation is so swift I was left wondering why she was suddenly a strong Black feminist.  She overplayed both sides of Tommy.  

Arnulfo Maldonado’s set worked for me.  It’s Bill’s cozy/sloppy artist’s studio with its unfinished triptych at one end and living area with a table stacked with books at the other.  Even though it was only one room it felt spacious

Childress’ play Trouble in Mind had a successful run on Broadway in 2021 starring LaChanze as an actress of a certain age who has spent her career playing mammies, maids and other subservient characters.  When she lands a decent role in a Broadway-bound play dealing with racism, and that racism begins materializing in the rehearsal room she must decide whether to speak up or keep her job.  That had sounded promising to me but I didn’t like that show either so maybe it’s just that this playwright doesn’t speak to me.