Julianna Margulies is back on Broadway, where she shines

 

Julianna Margulies is a marvel as she commands the stage at the James Earl Jones Theatre for nearly the entire 100 minutes of Delia Ephron’s Left on Tenth, the writer’s autobiographical play based on her best-selling memoir.  She’s absolutely radiant and a delight to watch as she portrays a middle-aged woman surprised to find love and romance six months after the death of Jerry, her beloved husband of 33 years, then is fully convincing as she lies in a hospital bed on the verge of death from leukemia, begging for release.  Why has she been away from the stage for so long?  She’s a natural.

Her last Broadway performance was in Festen in 2006.  I saw it but didn’t know who she was at the time so I don’t remember noticing her.  I loved her in her starring role as Alicia Florrick in the six-year run of “The Good Wife.”  She’s a natural for the small screen as well.  With one of the most expressive faces in the business, she was made for close-ups.

With only an awareness of her TV persona, I wasn’t prepared to be so wowed by her stage presence.  She’s a megawatt up there, looking fantastic in skinny black slacks and a large untucked shirt (costumes by Jeff Mahshie).  She gives that old workhorse, the romantic comedy, a brilliant shine.

Under Susan Stroman’s direction the story moves swiftly, and there’s a lot of story to reveal. Margulies as Ephron addresses the audience like a storyteller, unveiling her unusual background.  Born to “angry alcoholic parents,” a childhood in Beverly Hills, the second of four sisters, all writers.  “My childhood was scary, often violent.  With Jerry I found my first true home.  My first safe place.”

She was closest to her older sister, Nora, a writer, director and “reinventor of the romantic comedy.  We collaborated on screenplays for many of the movies she directed.  She often said we shared half a brain.”

Nora died of leukemia in 2012; Jerry of prostate cancer in 2015, “both with long illnesses before.”

For all of this she is alone on stage, except for a few minor characters coming and going.  Scenic designer Beowulf Boritt’s oval-shaped study with floor-to-ceiling books looks as if it could be behind the façade of the beautiful brownstones on Tenth Street in Greenwich Village.  It’s delightful not only to hear her tell her story, but to see her gracefully tap dance around the room as she relives the tap dancing she and Jerry used to do.

The seismic shift in her life, after so many seismic shifts, occurs after she writes an essay about her frustration dealing with Verizon, her phone and Internet carrier, that is published in the New York Times.  She receives an email from Peter (Peter Gallagher), a Jungian psychoanalyst and widower in the San Francisco Bay area who tells her they dated while she was in college after being introduced by Nora.  She has no memory of him but is intrigued enough to begin exchanging emails, followed by phone calls.  Then Peter comes to town and after a slightly awkward first date they continue getting to know each other until they both realize they can love again.  And survive Delia’s cancer, which they do together.  Peter flies back to San Franciso to let his patients know he will be gone for at least six weeks, then sleeps on a cot in Delia’s room.  Recognizing the fragility of her condition he proposes and they enjoy a hospital wedding, complete with friends.

The difference in locations is portrayed mostly by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s projections set above and behind the wall of the study.  They portray the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings on the right and rain on the left.  In one playful scene Yew even gives us a white shadow man silhouette to dance beside Margulies.  The hospital is a sterile white with little more than the bed and cot.  Lighting designers Ken Billington and Itohan Edoloyi create the chilly atmosphere of a hospital.

Kate MacCluggage and Peter Franics James skillfully play about a dozen featured characters, doctors, a Verizon repair man and friends.  Left on Tenth runs through Feb. 2. 

The Notebook The Musical “Lights The Stage in Teal” On Friday, November 1

 

This Friday, November 1, The Notebook The Musical will join more than 1,300 sites around the world to “Light the World in Teal,” bringing awareness to Alzheimer's disease as National Alzheimer's Awareness Month continues throughout November. Teal is the Alzheimer's Foundation of America's Alzheimer's awareness color.

Following that evening's performance at the Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway, cast members from The Notebook will deliver brief remarks to the audience as the stage is illuminated in teal. The event will honor the more than 55 million people worldwide who live with Alzheimer's or a related dementia.

AFA's Light the World in Teal initiative is designed to shine a spotlight on the growing, international health issue of Alzheimer's, which impacts more than 6.7 million Americans and more than 55 million people worldwide. The annual program, one of AFA's signature Alzheimer's awareness initiatives, takes place in November as part of Alzheimer's Awareness Month.  Last year, more than 1,000 sites around the world participated in the initiative, including sites in all 50 states in the U.S. and 13 foreign countries.

“Light the World in Teal aims to literally shine a spotlight on Alzheimer's disease and show support for the millions of people living with it,” said Charles J. Fuschillo, Jr., AFA's President and CEO. “Every site that signs up, whether it's a multi-story building or a single-family home, helps to highlight the issue of Alzheimer's disease. Sign up to shine up in teal for Alzheimer's awareness on November 1 by contacting AFA at 866-232-8484 or visiting www.lighttheworldinteal.com.”  

Based on the bestselling novel by Nicholas Sparks that inspired the iconic film, the new musical The Notebook is playing on Broadway through Sunday, December 15 before kicking off a 2025 national tour in Cleveland, OH, with other cities to be announced. Produced by Kevin McCollum and Kurt Deutsch, The Notebook features music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson and a book by playwright Bekah Brunstetter (writer and producer on NBC's “This Is Us,” The Cake). The production is directed by Michael Greif (Dear Evan Hansen, Next to Normal, RENT) and Schele Williams (Aida, The Wiz), with choreography by Katie Spelman (Associate Choreographer on Moulin Rouge! The Musical).

The cast of The Notebook features Tony Award-winner Maryann Plunkett as Older Allie, Dorian Harewood as Older Noah, Aisha Jackson as Middle Allie, Ryan Vasquez as Middle Noah, Anna Zavelson as Younger Allie, Benji Santiago as Younger Noah, Andréa Burns as Mother/Nurse Lori, Carson Stewart as Johnny/Fin. Playing various roles are Yassmin Alers, Alex Benoit, Chase Del Rey, Hillary Fisher, Jerome Harmann-Hardeman, Dorcas Leung, Happy McPartlin, Juliette Ojeda, Kim Onah, Charles E. Wallace and Charlie Webb.

Allie and Noah, two people from different worlds, share a lifetime of love despite the forces that threaten to pull them apart in a deeply moving portrait of the enduring power of love. The musical is based on the book that has sold millions of copies worldwide and a film that is one of the highest-grossing romantic dramas of all-time.

The Notebook features scenic design by David Zinn and Brett J. Banakis, costume design by Paloma Young, lighting design by Ben Stanton, sound design by Nevin Steinberg, hair and wig design by Mia Neal, and projection design by Lucy Mackinnon. The production's music supervisor is Carmel Dean, who also collaborated on arrangements with Ingrid Michaelson and on orchestrations with John Clancy, and the music director is Geoffrey Ko. Casting by The Telsey Office, Patrick Goodwin, CSA.

The revival of 'Sunset Blvd.' in one word: DARK

The atmosphere is set from the moment you enter the St. James Theatre where British director Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Andrew Lloyd Webbers’ Sunset Blvd. opened last night.  The house lights were so dim I couldn’t read the Playbill.  Even before the first note from the orchestra, the theme of darkness was pervasive. 

Banking on the success of his Olivier Award-winning London production earlier this year, Lloyd is taking the chance that American audiences will appreciate two and a half hours of bleakness.  In his desire to tap into the grim 1950 film noir of the same title, Lloyd recreates that sensibility as much as possible.  Past Broadway productions have not been this stark and dark. I saw the 2017 revival with Glenn Close, who also starred in the original 1994 Broadway production, but it was much more subtle and so not as depressing. 

Soutra Gilmour’s costumes are all black and white.  In the first act the chorus of dancers wear black T-shirts except for a couple of white ones, black pants and black sneakers. They look as if they’ve stepped out of a Gap ad.  The attire is an appropriate match for Fabian Aloise’s athletic choreography.  

In the second act the women wear black slip dresses although they fade into the background in comparison to the ultimate wearer of a black slip dress, Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, the former Hollywood silent film star now living in obscurity in her mansion with her ever-attentive manservant, Max (Olivier nominee David Thaxton).  Railing thin with straight shiny black hair that falls past her shoulders, the Olivier Award winner and Grammy nominee is the self-involved ice queen devoid of any humanity.  Her dancer’s body, in that clinging black dress for the entire show, is as flexible as rubber.  She is, as she should be, always the center of attention whether it’s as her fully dimensional self or one of the distracting projections.

Gilmour is also credited as scenic designer but not one speck of scenery is used.  It’s just the big, black stage and designer Jack Knowles’ appropriately joyless lighting and lots of smoke and fog. Not one drop of color appears until the final blood-streaked scene.  OK, we get the idea of a black and while film but just in case someone doesn’t, the actors appear in film projections behind them, some reaching as high as the proscenium.  It’s effectively eerie but overdone.  Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom provide the video design and cinematography.

I did like their filming of Joe Gillis (Oliver winner Tom Frances), the down-on-his-luck screenwriter who ends up moving into Desmond’s mansion to write a script to bring about her “return” to Hollywood (she hates the term “come back”).  In a scene I don’t understand but enjoyed, Gillis is filmed, in black and white, of course, backstage in his dressing room, then walking through the Theatre District followed by the dancers and stared at by the mingled tourists and theatergoers.

The scenes without the filming and without the chorus were the most effective for me, thanks to Max who is the only one who truly loves Desmond.  With the three of them alone on the black stage and a spotlight focus on them -- Desmond in the middle with the men on either side of her -- he reveals that he is her first of many husbands and that he has been sending the fan mail that she is so proud to still be receiving and that he faked a call from Paramount Studios asking her to make a new film.  “I made her a star and I will not let her be destroyed,” he sings.  He’s a big bruiser of a man but he’s the heart of the show.

Were I not a Drama Desk voter I would have happily passed on seeing this show again.  The anxiety of our close election is too upsetting.  We need a little Jerry Herman, right this very minute.  Mame, please.

 

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.