'Schmigadoon!' is one of the funniest and most creative shows of the season

 

My guess is that people with little knowledge of mid-20th century American musicals will still enjoy Schmigadoon!, the new musical comedy at the Booth Theatre, if for no other reason than the joy of director and choreographer Christopher Gattelli’s lavish, full-scale dance numbers that were a cherished feature of that Golden Age. For those of us who have loved the genre since childhood, book, music and lyrics writer Cinco Paul’s show is a funny and appreciative nod to shows like Oklahoma!,Carousel, The Music Man and, of course, the one apparent from the title.

Even before the first number we get a hint of what we’re in for.  The show begins with Melissa Gimble (Sara Chase) and Josh Skinner (Alex Brightman), doctors who meet at a hospital vending machine, which quickly converts to a bed and they realize they want more of each other than just a one-night stand.

Several years later, though, their relationship has devolved into arguments highlighting their differences, one of which is that she loves musicals and he hates them.  After joining a couples retreat to see if they want to continue together, they wander off and get lost in the woods.  After crossing a small foot bridge they end up in the cheery square of a tiny hidden town in about 1918 where “life is a musical every day,” they are told by a leprechaun, and they can’t leave until they find true love.  Schmigadoon! meets Brigadoon and Finian’s Rainbow.  (Colorful scenic design by Scott Pask). 

They are greeted with the entire cast smiling, dancing and singing their hearts out in colorful period costumes (by Linda Cho) for the “Schmigadoon!,” Paul’s homage to Oklahoma!:  

And there’s hope for all

Whether great or small

There’s no fol-de-rol

Bring your parasol

And we call it Schmiga –

Schmiga!  Schmiga! Schmiga! Schmiga!

S-C-H-M-I-G-A-D-O-O-N!

Schmigadoon!!!

Then everyone goes about their business as if nothing happened, another laugh at the old musicals.

Josh thinks they’ve stumbled into a theme park and wants to get out fast.  It will take a few more of those big song and dance numbers for him to realize he’s actually in a musical and then he really wants out.  Melissa, musical lover that she is, enjoys it and makes friends with the locals.  In one of the most hilarious scenes she counsels a young couple who are about to have a baby after the town doctor refuses to help them because they are having a child “out of wedlock.”  Melissa and Josh had already gotten the no premarital sex experience when they were required to book separate rooms at the hotel so they couldn’t continue “living in sin.”

The expectant mother, Nancy (Lyrica Woodruff), tells Melissa she knows the baby must come out but she can only think of two ways and they both seem “CRAZY.”  Melissa tells her it will come out her vagina.  Freddy (Zachary Downer) is shocked to hear the word.

Melissa tells him it’s just a word and nothing to be afraid of.  “Let me see if I can make it easier for you”.  She sits on the examining table and reaches for a guitar – musical instruments are always at the ready in old time musicals – and patiently educates them, in song, of course, “Baby Talk.”   Hear in your mind Julie Andrews singing “Do-Re-Mi” to her young charges.

Genitals are how we reproduce

Ovaries make eggs for you and me

Urethra is how the sperm get loose

Cervix is where they can swim free

Fallopian tubes are where both of them meet

Uterus is where cells start to sprout

Placenta is how they get to eat

‘Til the baby comes straight out –

Freddy won’t say vagina but Melissa reproves him, saying it’s a medical term and don’t turn it into something dirty.  “Now sing with me:”

Genitals 

All: are how we reproduce

Melissa: Ovaries 

All: make eggs for you and me

The back and forth continue until all end in ‘Til the baby comes straight out the vagina

With this kind of play off of classic musicals Schmigadoon! Is one of the cleverest shows of the season.  

Paul has said the show isn’t just a parody.  He wanted to write songs that sounded as if they were unused discoveries from a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.  For Gattelli,  Schmigadoon! isn’t making fun of the old musicals but rather honoring the thrilling large dance numbers.  

The characters are recognizable too.  A big hit with the audience was Carson (Ayaan Diop), a precious little boy with a super high voice who is being raised by his schoolmarm older sister, Emma (Isabelle McCalla).  Think Winthrop and Marian Paroo from The Music Man.

Schmigadoon! is produced, in part, by Lorne Michaels, the creator and long-time producer of “Saturday Night Live” and is based on the award-winning Apple TV+ series of that name.  The stage show played last year at The Kennedy Center.

The hit movie "Beaches" is now a Broadway musical

 

I’m glad I never saw the 1988 movie “Beaches” because I could enter the Broadway version that opened last night at the Majestic Theatre with no previous visions or expectations.  I couldn’t have enjoyed Beaches: A New Musical more than I did.  The acting, the music and the costumes are excellent and the story, though predictable and involving a death, is funny.  I laughed throughout at Iris Rainer Dart (whose 1985 novel inspired the film) and Thom Thomas’s script.  Lonny Price and Matt Cowart direct.

The humor is largely thanks to the character of Cee Cee Bloom, played to perfection by two of the actors who portray her, Jessica Vosk as an adult and Samantha Schwartz as the pint-sized firecracker child Cee Cee.  It’s a hoot just looking at Little Cee Cee dressed like a miniature burlesque queen in a shiny red satin leotard (brava to Tracy Christensen for the dazzling costumes for this character throughout), with heavy make-up and her long curly red hair surrounding her tiny face. Practically everything that comes out of her mouth is a wisecracking delight.

Her opposite in every way is Bertie White (Kelli Barrett, adult, and Zeya Grace, child).  We first encounter her as a pretty little girl with straight dark brown shoulder-length hair walking on the beach in a light blue dress, white anklets, black patent leather shoes, a white straw hat and white gloves.  That was the look of proper little girls in that time,1951. She looked like me at that age, except for the straight hair, and I wasn’t born until four years later.

The two meet as children on the boardwalk in Atlantic City where Cee Cee already has her own one-girl show in which she sings, dances and tells jokes, many borrowed from the acts of popular comics.  Bertie is visiting from Pittsburgh with her uptight, domineering mother Rose (Lael Van Keuren).  The girls are instantly attracted to each other and sing the nice little duet (music by Mike Stoller and lyrics by Dart) “Wish I Could Be Like You.”

 

Bertie: My world is gonna stop

           If you’re not there to spin it.

 

Cee Cee: Don’t want a world that

                Doesn’t have you in it.

 

Together: Like ice cream goes with pie

                It will be you and I.

 

Schwartz has a rich, clear voice but I had trouble understanding Grace both when she sang and spoke.

The friendship continues into their teens through letters rather than actual contact.  Bailey Ryon plays Cee Cee and Emma Ogea is Bertie.  Their roles are small but the children return throughout and at times all three ages dance together to Jennifer Rias’s choreography.

As they move into adulthood one of my favorite scenes takes place in Beach Haven, New Jersey, where Cee Cee is performing in summer stock, but only in small parts, the most frustrating of which is as the dog in Peter Pan – in costume.  Bertie arrives looking like the proper young woman she has been raised to be, an older version of her child self, wearing a light blue suit with an A-line skirt below the knees and a matching pillbox hat, quite a contrast to the bohemian 1964 beach community.  She’s escaped from her mother and the wealthy stuffed shirt she’s expected to marry, Michael Barron (Ben Jacoby) and since she’s not a performer but is good at math, she’s assigned to work in the box office, for free.

By the time her mother’s tracked her down Bertie is in a long, flowing white peasant dress and, not seeing her mother, holds a costume for a production of Gypsy.  “I fixed Electra’s light-up tits. Now it’s right tit, then left tit then . . .”  She spots her mother and freezes. The furious Grace orders her home immediately but Bertie’s not leaving.

“I don’t care how things look anymore, Mother.  Now I care how they feel.  A miracle has happened.  Can’t you see?  I am changed.  I’ll shout it out loud.”

The company members gather around her as she sings “The Brand New Me.”

 

I’ve fallen in love with a girl and I’m proud,

And the girl’s the brand new me.

 

I am dancing to my own tune.

I’m a butterfly who’s escaped the cocoon.

So take back my pedigree.

And accept the girl you see.

 

Of course Rose will have none of it.  She storms off, telling Bertie she would regret her behavior.  Bertie is stunned by her own courage.

“Good heavens,” she says.  “That was so scary.  I’m still shaking.  Does anyone have a joint?”  Every member of the cast pulls out a joint from their pockets and offers it to her.  It’s hilarious.

The plot as they move through life is predictable, but that was OK for me.  I liked both women and enjoyed far more laughs than I’ve had in a show in a long time, right up to the final line, delivered by Bertie’s daughter, Nina (Harper Burns), who, like her mother, is transform by Cee Cee.

                                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

 

 

Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson make their Broadway debuts in 'The Fear of 13'

 

Making his Broadway debut in The Fear of 13, Adrien Brody portrays the true story of Nick Yarris, a man who spent 22 years on death row for rape and murder before being exonerated by DNA.  Under David Cromer’s direction, at the James Earl Jones Theatre, Brody tells that story with anger, humor, empathy and frenetic energy that left me feeling overwhelmed.  As my friend, looking equally exhausted, said at the end, “It’s a lot to take in.”  Especially in under two hours with no intermission.

This is also Tessa Thompson’s Broadway debut.  She offers an engaging portrayal of Jacki Miles, the real life volunteer who visited Yarris weekly in the Pennsylvania prison to offer a bit of humanity in the living hell of a death row existence. 

The play is adapted by Lindsey Ferrentino from David Sington’s 2015  documentary about Yarris who, after his conviction, spent more than two decades in solitary confinement until DNA evidence exonerated him following an arduous wait of year after year of up and down hopes as samples made their way through the snail’s pace of the testing process, some being destroyed along the way.  The play comes to Broadway following a sold-out run at London’s 250-seat Donmar Warehouse.  Brody earned an Olivier Award nomination for his performance.

While Yarris wasn’t guilty of murder, he was on a criminal path when he idiotically through he could get a lesser sentence if he offered the police information about the horrendous murder of a young mother that he read about in a newspaper that had been left behind in his holding cell.  He gives them the name of someone he knows who he assumes is capable of such an act but when the man is found to have an airtight alibi the spotlight turns on Yarris.

An excellent 10-member ensemble plays the parts of attorneys, prison inmates and childhood friends.  They appear in spotlighted scenes with Brody, scattered around Arnulfo Maldonado’s nearly bare set, with Heather Gilbert’s lighting, as Yarris recounts his saga to Miles.  Many of the stories are believable, others sound as if they came from the books he spends his days reading — early on he tell Miles he read 1,000 books in his first three years on death row.  

Being in his cell 23 hours a day — he’s allowed one hour for exercise — he has plenty of time to read, especially since Wesley (Ephraim Sykes), the sadistic guard, refuses to allow the condemned men to talk to one another, requiring silence.  Time shrinks and expands.  As Yarris tells us, “in the blink of an eye 10 years are gone from your life. . . But then you look out the window and it takes all day for the sun to go down.”  

The bond between Yarris and Miles deepens during their weekly meetings to the point where she vigorously works to have his case reexamined using DNA that is then available.  Eventually they marry, touching only as they slide rings under the prison screen.  In real life, they were assisted by The Innocence Project, a nonprofit that works to free people who are wrongly imprisoned.  The organization is partnering with the production. 

The play’s title is never explained.  Harris is one of 13 people to be exonerated from death row; the number 13 has been considered unlucky.  Maybe those are behind the name.  After he was exonerated in 2003 Yarris wrote several books about his experiences of fighting through that grueling process. 

I have long been firmly opposed to the death penalty and have great respect for organizations like The Innocence Project but I found this play to be exhausting.  The first show I saw on this topic was The Exonerated in 2000.  A-list actors from stage and screen sat in a row at a table onstage and read the harrowing accounts of the xperiences of innocent people wrongly imprisoned.  At the end, the real life people came and stood behind them.  One man held his beautiful, happy toddler son and they looked like a Gap ad.  I was in tears.  The creators of the show wisely let the stories speak for themselves rather than further dramatizing them.

Jon Bernthal debuts on Broadway in 'Dog Day Afternoon'

 

The expression “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry” could apply to playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis’ stage adaptation of “Dog Day Afternoon,” Sidney Lumet’s 1975 movie about an infamous, badly botched Brooklyn bank robbery in August 1972. Act One presents some hilarious scenes, most notably when the bank employee hostages debate what bakery has the best donuts as one of their captors negotiates with police to have some delivered. In this farcical exchange even the security guard (Danny Johnson), who has been lying on the bank floor with an apparent heart attack, rallies to put in his two cents.  Act Two shifts into an anguished unrequited love, which, if the script were tighter, would be sad.  Television favorite Jon Bernthal (“The Bear”) makes his Broadway debut under Rupert Goold’s direction at the August Wilson Theatre.

I was happy to see one of my favorite New York theatre actors, Jessica Hecht (in photo), as Colleen, the take-charge head teller.  Even two armed men can’t intimidate her, but then these men -- Sonny (Bernthal) in the role played by Al Pacino in the film and Sal (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, also of “The Bear”) in the role played by John Cazale – are so obviously inept from the beginning that by the end of Act One the tellers and the manager, Mr. Butterman (Michael Kostroff), are sitting with Sonny watching TV and enjoying their donuts.  

Act Two centers around Sonny's love for Leon (Esteban Andres Cruz) who lives and dresses as a woman and to whom Sonny considers himself married. Through both acts Sonny’s been negotiating with Detective Fucco (John Ortiz) who uses the phone at a nearby liquor store.  Fucco humors him, promising he’s working on Sonny’s most outlandish request, a helicopter to take him to JFK and “a jumbo jet airliner with a full bar, stocked kitchen and reclining seats” to fly him, Sal and Leon to any country with no extradition agreement with the United States, opting for “Rhodesia or Algeria.”  Leon, however, doesn’t want to go.  The police have brought him from Bellevue Hospital to the liquor store phone.  He arrives in a hospital gown, drugged out and complains, “I’ve never been so scared in my life, Sonny.  One minute I’m in Bellevue relaxing and the next thing I know all these cops burst in.”  That line drew a big laugh.  No New Yorker would think that city public hospital would be a place where anyone would prefer to stay.  Sonny sobs on the phone trying to convince him.  Bernthal plays it well so it’s a shame Guirgis (who won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for drama for Between Riverside and Crazy) lets it drag on too long. 

Set designer David Korins creates a realistic looking Chase Manhattan Bank outside, which rotates inside easily and alternates back and forth as needed.

The real life bank and the story unfolding around it captivated New Yorkers.  The dog days of summer, an expression I don’t hear anymore, refer to the hot, humid days between early July and mid-August.  I always thought it referred to the way we feel walking around New York City in that disgusting weather, like a dog panting with its tongue hanging out.  (Actually it dates back to the ancient Greeks and Romans and their beliefs about the constellations and the sun at its peak.)  In the time of the robbery, watching it unfold was a break from the news of the day, which centered around the Vietnam war and Watergate.   

The real life Sonny, John Wojtowicz, served five years of a 20-year sentence.  After he was paroled in 1978 he sold the movie rights for $7,500.  He died of cancer in 2006.

Sierra Boggess, Norm Lewis and Adam Jacobs star in the new world premiere musical 'Monte Cristo'

 

Sierra Boggess, Norm Lewis and Adam Jacobs together in a new musical sounded like a theatre lover’s dream but unfortunately these dependable Broadway veterans can’t overcome Peter Kellogg’s weak book for Monte Cristo, the York Theatre’s world premiere production at Theatre at St. Jean’s.  Adapting Alexandre Dumas’s epic 1844 novel of betrayal, vengeance and redeeming love as a musical is a great idea, and maybe after considerable reimagining and rewriting it can work.  Peter Flynn directs.

Jacobs plays Edmund, an uneducated young man content with his life thanks to his love, which is reciprocated, for Mercedes (Boggess), a refined young lady who accepts his marriage proposal but before they can wed Villefort (Lewis), a lawyer, has him arrested for treason to protect his fortune and place in society after learning that Edmund unwittingly delivered a letter written by Villefort’s father that is deemed treasonous.  

When Edmund escapes from prison 19 years later he seeks his revenge.  The events are complicated and Kellogg’s script left me feeling confused.  I asked my friend, who had Googled the plot before coming, to make sure I was following correctly.  Neither of us had read the book but one should not have to in order to follow a play.  The plot wraps up quickly as Edmund settles his scores with ease and the play concludes with a saccharine ending.

I usually appreciate seeing a new musical in the intimacy of Off-Broadway but I felt several elements needed to be enlarged: the story, the space and the running time, which is just over two hours.  Fortunately Anne Mundell went light on her scenic design.  Siena Zoe Allen and Amanda Roberge created lush costumes.

Kellogg, whose script is also based on Charles Fechter’s play, does better with his lyrics to Stephen Weiner’s beautiful music.  The song “Dangerous Times,” sung by the ensemble, could have been written for our times: 

“Be careful whom you speak to.

Someone over there is taking note.

Somebody’s writing down who your friends are.

Somebody is recording how you vote.

There’s a man who sits on a shaky throne.

How much longer, only blood will tell.

But the lofty never fall alone.

The innocent are crushed as well.

Edmund and Mercedes have a lovely duet early on with “You Guide Me Home” and Boggess’s gorgeous soprano is moving in “How Did I Get so Far Away?”  I am happy to say no one in the cast let loose with the dreadful belting that is so popular on Broadway, but then I wouldn’t have expected Lewis, Boggess or Jacobs to do so.  They don’t have to.  They have the beautiful, pure voices to just sing. 

Daniel Radcliffe's powerful solo performance fills the stage, and the aisles as well

 

Daniel Radcliffe, the actor, should be at the top of the list that the character he is playing is creating in Every Brilliant Thing, Duncan MacMillian’s inter-active one-person play at the Hudson Theatre. Brilliant is the word that best describes his energetic and compassionate portrayal of the life of a man shaped by his mother’s first suicide attempt when he was 7. The title refers to the list of happy things he begins compiling for her, a list he continues through the next 20 years of his life, which will include his own depression as an adult. 

MacMillian, with Jonny Donahoe, found a creative way to deal with such serious material. Rather than have Radcliffe alone on the stage telling his story, they broaden his world by having him improv with audience members throughout the show’s 70 minutes. Dressed in a lavender sweatshirt, black pants and white sneakers, with his boyish (Harry Potter) face fully bearded, he is perpetual motion as he cues pre-selected folks when it’s time for their contribution to the narrative. Most have been given numbered cards with printed answers but in some of the best scenes he interacts with people who have been assigned roles, such as his father, the school librarian and his wife.  Radcliffe, under Jeremy Herrin and MacMillian’s direction, handles this potentially risky storytelling with precision and grace. In addition to acting out his script he must remember where every number is in the audience so when he calls one out he knows whether to be looking up at the balcony or to the right or left at the people seated in a U shape onstage  He participates in the selection, along with production staff, by chatting with audience members throughout the theatre for a half hour before the show begins.

“The list began after her first attempt,” he says, addressing the audience from the stage that will remain devoid of any set, with the house lights remaining on.  “A list of everything brilliant about the world.  Everything worth living for.”

He then called out the number one and a woman from the balcony shouted out “ice cream.”  This pattern continued with “water fights," "staying up past your bedtime and being allowed to watch TV” and more of what a 7-year-old boy thinks makes life worth living.

When he returns to school he is sent to the counsellor, “who was actually just Mrs. Patterson from the library.  She was a wonderful woman, the sort of person you looked at and immediately trusted.”

When she asks how he is feeling he replies, “My mother’s done something stupid.”

They sit in silence until “she did a truly remarkable thing.  A very unexpected, incredibly unusual thing.  Even now, I can’t quite believe she did it.”

She took off a shoe and sock and put the sock on her hand and it magically became a friendly dog who had a conversation with him.  (He’s never given a name in the show.). “It was hard to stay grumpy after that.”

The woman playing her clearly enjoyed it and received hearty applause, as did all the other brave souls who took parts. 

The calling out of numbers continues throughout the show, growing into the hundreds of thousands as the years go by and he struggles with his own mental illness and the failure of his marriage.  It’s not giving anything away to say he will be all right.  Anyone who develops such a coping method as young as 7 has resilience. 

And it has been touching people around the world. The show comes to Broadway following a successful run in London’s West End where four other actors, male and female, also performed the role. It has been performed in 62 countries and translated into 42 languages

When we entered the theatre Tuesday night I was immediately captivated by what sounded like a live jazz band.  Jazz is my favorite form of music, beginning and ending each day for me, coming from my old jazz station, WAER, at Syracuse University, which I listen to now online.  I didn’t see any musicians listed in the Playbill so it must have been recorded.  Tom Gibbons is the sound designer.

The show ends as the character announces his millionth brilliant thing. (We don’t hear all the numbers in between.  They make big skips.) “Listening to a record for the first time.  Turning it over in your hands, placing it on the deck and putting the needle down, hearing the faint hiss and crackle” (we hear this, for those of us old enough to remember that exciting sound) “at the sharp metal point on the wax before the music begins, sitting and listening while reading the sleeve notes.”

He sits surrounded by boxes filled with pages of his list and pages and pages surrounding him on the stage floor.  Then, in an absolutely perfect ending that belongs on his list of brilliant things, Nina Simone’s recording of “Ooh Child,” a song I have loved since 1970 when it was a hit for the Five Stairsteps, begins.  It felt as if the words were descending from on high to embrace him.

Ooh child

Things are gonna get easier

Ooh child things’ll get brighter 

Some day, yeah

We’ll put it all together and we’ll get it undone

Some day

When your head is much lighter

Some day, yeah,

We’ll walk in the rays of the beautiful sun 

Some day

When the world is much brighter . . .

Marcel on the Train

 Long before he was a world renown mime, Marcel Marceau practiced silence of a different kind.  At 20 he was given charge of a group of 12 year olds from a French orphanage for Jewish children with the task of taking them by train from Limoges to Rouen.  From there they would hike into Switzerland and freedom from the Nazis who occupied their country.  This journey is portrayed in Marshall Pailet and Ethan Slater’s play Marcel on the Train, presented by Classic Stage Company. 

While this sounds like a fascinating idea for a play, under Pailet’s direction the story never comes to life.  I didn’t feel the least bit of suspense about whether they would get to Switzerland; their eventual safety was made clear as the play went on in segmented glimpses of their futures.  The characters, especially the children (who are played by adults), are so undeveloped I had little interest in them.  The only one who stood out was Berthe (Tedra Millan) and that was because she was a constant complainer. 

Slater plays Marceau but most of the time I didn’t know what he was portraying in his mimes.  I did like the silhouettes of birds he created with his hands to calm the children when their train is stopped and they hear German voices outside.  Studio Luna provides the lighting design.

Scott Davis makes good use of the small rectangular performance space in creating the inside of a train with little more than two rows of benches and tables.  Caitlyn Murphy is the props supervisor.

The show runs an hour and 40 minutes without an intermission.