The Comedy of Errors

Sheer delight is how I would describe director Daniel Sullivan’s staging of The Comedy of Errors, the first of this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park productions, which opened last night at the Delacorte Theater. In 90 fast-paced minutes the Bard’s silliest play becomes a welcome escape into a world of mistaken identity, physical comedy, delicious wordplay and razor-sharp performances, with Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Hamish Linklater leading the way.

 The mayhem unleashed by the plot of two sets of identical twins, separated as children and now both unexpectedly in the same town, could be confusing to follow, especially since Ferguson (left in photo) and Linklater play the roles of each twin, remaining in the same costumes (wonderful designs Toni-Leslie James) throughout. With the slightest change in posture or tone of voice, we know which twin is involved, the longtime resident of Ephesus or the new arrival from Syracuse.

After being torn apart in a shipwreck 25 years ago, the young men are now master-servant pairs living in rival cities. The craziness begins when one pair crosses the border and locals mistake the new arrivals for their neighbors and the new arrivals are dumbfounded trying to figure out the working of this strange land where people act as if they know them. To further shake things up, the pairs who know each other are more often than not separated, so the servant from Syracuse is abused for not doing the wishes of the master from Ephesus and thinks his master is just acting capriciously. That sort of befuddlement continues as the different characters bump up against each other, not knowing they have a mirror of themselves nearby.

In the role of both servants, Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus, Ferguson proves he is a master at physical comedy. Linklater, playing both masters, Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus, is the gentleman (or gentlemen), at least until the wackiness allows him to let loose. Their timing is perfect as they exit as one character only to appear a minute later as the other. These parts are usually cast with two actors who resemble each other, but these brave actors play both roles, and they make each one believable.

I know a bit about identical twins, being the daughter of one and niece of another. One scene reminded me of some family experience of mistaken identity. Antipholus of Ephesus has a wife, Adriana (Emily Bergl) who mistakes Antipholus of Syracuse for her husband and drags him home for dinner, leaving Dromio of Syracuse to guard the door to admit no one. Shortly thereafter, Antipholus of Ephesus returns home and is refused entry to his own house.

In our family, that confusion played out when my parents started dating and friends would report to my mother (a brunette) that they had seen John (my father) with a blonde, who was actually my Aunt Ruth out with her husband, Ed. Ruth would hear the same accounts of “Ed” being out with a brunette -- our own little comedy of errors. The play has a bit of this too, when Antipholus of Syracuse falls in love with Luciana (Heidi Schreck) , Adriana's sister, who is appalled at the behavior of the man she thinks is her brother-in-law.

Adding to the sparkle of this production are John Lee Beatty’s colorful cartoon cutout sets evoking a theatre, church, hotel, train station and jewelry store in an upstate New York town in the late 1930s. They are turned to go from one to the other just as seamlessly as the twins slide from one character to the other. An ensemble of dancers swing to music from the period (choreography by Mimi Lieber) before the show and during scene changes, enhancing the lively sense of fun.

Many other incidents of whimsy abound. I loved when an off-stage Antipholus of Ephesus calls for his wife, Adriana, in a gruff voice that immediately conjures up Sylvester Stallone’s famous “Yo, Adrian” from “Rocky.” All that was missing was the ‘yo,” but I’m sure everyone old enough to remember that feel-good 1976 film heard it.

The Public Theater’s production of The Comedy of Errors continues through June 30. I hope it moves to Broadway. It’s a joy!  

Hildegard of Bingen and the Living Light

  Since its 2012 release, the landmark DVD “Hildegard of Bingen and the Living Light” (Paraclete Press) has continued to attract a growing audience captivated by the production’s unique exploration of one of history’s most intriguing saints.  This week, in celebration of the first anniversary of Hildegard’s long-awaited canonization by the Vatican, an enhanced version of the DVD is being made available with Spanish and German subtitles to further increase its international appeal.

Produced by critically acclaimed mezzo soprano Linn Maxwell, the production features a powerful film adaptation of Maxwell’s compelling one-woman stage play and more than three hours of supplemental content.  Extras include an annotated script and production notes, a two-part seminar for church or academic group discussion, and a variety of topical interviews with many of the world’s leading Hildegard scholars, authors and experts.

“Having the opportunity to invite modern audiences to meet this extraordinary 12th-century nun, writer, composer, healer and prophet continues to be a remarkable privilege,” Maxwell said.  “Those who do agree she has many important things to say, and it is not surprising that her voice – impossible to silence in her time – continues to grow in relevance and strength today.  The addition of new film subtitles in both Spanish and German will only amplify Hildegard’s international appeal.”

Hildegard has been an admired and controversial figure both inside and outside the Catholic Church for centuries.  Beginning in earliest childhood, she experienced powerful, recurring visions that called her to express herself through her many talents and assume a role of unique leadership in the medieval church – one that often challenged the establishment head-on.

International interest in Hildegard has enjoyed a powerful resurgence following her May 10, 2012 canonization and October 2012 naming by Pope Benedict XVI as a “Doctor of the Church.”  This rare title, bestowed over nine centuries on individuals of extraordinary importance in the life of the Church, has placed Hildegard in the highly select company of only 35 individuals, only four of whom have been women.

Written and performed by Maxwell, the film adaptation of the play “Hildegard of Bingen and the Living Light” is based on an original production directed by Erv Raible that has won widespread critical acclaim after 80 performances in both North America and Europe.  Writing in the New York Theater Review, John Hoglund has said, “Hildegard returns...through the artistry of Linn Maxwell in a commanding performance that is as scholarly as it is relevant today;” according to The Times of London, “Hildegard is reborn as mezzo Linn Maxwell,” with her “hypnotically beautiful song.”

The DVD features Maxwell as Hildegard, performing the mystic’s compositions on authentic medieval instruments and, through Hildegard’s actual writings, reveals the life and passion of an extraordinary woman who lived centuries ahead of her time.

Maxwell has performed on the stages of major orchestras including the Chicago, Cleveland, Seattle and Toronto Symphonies, and the Berlin Radio Orchestra, among others.  Her operatic engagements include San Francisco (Placido Domingo conducting), the Cincinnati Opera, Netherlands Opera (with Nicholas Harnancourt), Hungarian State Opera and recital halls across the United States and in 27 countries worldwide.  In addition to her extensive performances of the stage version of “Hildegard of Bingen and the Living Light,” Maxwell has also performed cabaret and one-woman shows in New York City and made her European cabaret debut in 2006 at Frankfurt’s International Theater.

A Picture of Autumn

In the middle of the last century, playwright N.C. Hunter was known as “the English Chekhov”, an appropriate title judging from his 1951 family drama A Picture of Autumn, which opened in its American premiere last night at the Mint Theater. Director Gus Kaikkonen and a for-the-most-part capable cast give life to the themes of aging, memories and a clinging to the past.

 A Picture of Autumn is a sensitive and often comic portrait of a once aristocratic family’s attempt to gracefully accept the changes that time enforces. Charles and Margaret Denham (Jonathan Hogan and Jill Tanner, in photo) are in their 70s, living in disarray in their decaying ancestral home with Charles’ 80-year-old brother, Harry (George Morfogen), and their demented servant, Nanny (Barbara Eda-Young).  With 18 bedrooms, 60 acres and little money to hire help, Margaret is ready to accept the inevitable when her elder son, Robert (Paul Niebanck), returns to England after several years abroad with the intention of convincing his parents and uncle to sell the estate to a college and move to smaller, more manageable quarters.

“It’s like living in a badly kept museum,” Margaret acknowledges.

Designer Charles Morgan does the place justice, having created one of the largest sets I’ve ever seen at the Mint, with a sitting area before a fireplace and mantel, dining room and imposing circular staircase that illustrate what a grand home this once was. It is largely through Margaret that we learn of the dry-rotted wood and the unkempt grounds. What we see looks both elegant and comfortably livable, making it understandable why leaving is so hard, especially for the brothers who have lived nearly their whole lives there.

Tensions about moving take shape in Act Two, as do the family dynamics that make the decision such a challenge. Memories bubble up right and left, with one having a lovely visual incarnation as Robert’s stepdaughter, Felicity (Helen Cespedes), descends the grand staircase in a 40-year-old blue gown last worn by Harry’s wife, who died all those years ago at the estate. (All the costumes by Sam Fleming are first rate.) She stands out as a sparkling school girl who represents the future while appreciating the elegant past, the bridge between both worlds.

Harry is the hardest to convince, but by Act Three he is seated with the rest of the family, surrounded by draped furniture and partially packed boxes, waiting for the taxi that will take them to the train and a new life.

“Nobody appreciates it, of course, but this is actually a historic moment,” he proclaims with his gallows humor. “This is the fall of the House of Denham. There has been a Denham at Winton Manor since -- when, Charles?”

Charles tells him 1762.

“Since 1762,” he continues. “And now we pass, shuffling out of our inheritance with no more ceremony than if we were cattle being driven to the slaughterhouse.”

Margaret tries to quiet him, but he goes on.

“Thank goodness, I’m perfectly capable of looking at the thing objectively. Let us at least be conscious of what we are doing,” he says, looking around the room. “It’s a fine house -- solid, well-proportioned, light and spacious. We shall not look upon its like again. It was built in the days when Englishmen appreciated good craftsmanship. Even if we have capitulated at last, we may, I suppose, be proud to have delayed its surrender to the barbarians. The spirit was willing, though the flesh was weak. . . Lower the flag and let the enemy advance.”

But as it turns out, departure may not be as imminent as it seems. Hunter has a few surprised in store, although the ending is poignant no matter how it goes.

 A Picture of Autumn has held up well, although it’s a bit long (two hours and 20 minutes) as plays of that era tended to be. The third act definitely drags. I could have done without Nanny, a stock character sent in for laughs. As portrayed by Eda-Young, she could use more work with dialects coach Amy Stoller because she mostly sounds American, when she isn’t sounding cockney or Irish. The two other actors, Katie Firth as Robert’s wife and Christian Coulson as his younger brother, are fine in their rather predictable roles.

The show is scheduled to run until July 14, although Mint productions tend to get extended. This one deserves to.

For information, visit www.minttheater.org.

Tea for Three: Lady Bird, Pat & Betty

 Meeting a friend for tea is usually a pleasant get-together, a chance to spend a little time in a comfortable setting for a some chatting and often a bit of soul-baring. That is the experience actress Elaine Bromka creates in her intimate one-woman performance of Tea for Three: Lady Bird, Pat & Betty, which she wrote with playwright Eric H. Weinberger. Under the direction of Byam Stevens, the three former First Ladies share their stories and, even more effectively, their feelings in this engaging 80-minute show at The 30th Street Theatre.

Set in a parlor of the While House in 1968, 1974 and 1976, each Lady spends just enough time with us to draw us into her world and her reactions to it without going on too long. This impressed me. These kinds of plays where the character addresses the audience about her or his life can get tedious to the point where I feel like screaming, “Get over yourself.” I felt that last season with the popular one-woman Broadway play Ann, about the late governor Ann Richards. In Tea for Three, each Lady left me feeling sorry to see her go.

The clever device that links the three segments is that each woman, after reminiscing about her husband’s nearly completed administration, is preparing to greet her successor with tea and a While House tour. Lady Bird heads out of the parlor to greet Pat, Pat to meet Betty and Betty to meet the unseen Rosalynn. In between, the lights come up a bit for some brief set adjustments but no intermissions interrupt the flow. (Set coordinator Matt Kapriellian created a simple room with a desk in the background and coffee table and chair at front so the Ladies’ stories are the real focus.)

I also was grateful that Bromka didn’t try to imitate the women’s voices, rather she transforms herself swiftly from one to the other through a change of wig and dress. (Costume design by Patricia Carucci, Bunny Mateosian and Robert E. McLaughlin, who also designed the wigs.) She’ll use an appropriate drawl or speech pattern, but no mimicry.

Tea with Lady Bird is tea with a southern gentlewoman who tells her daughters the idea of a woman having a life of her own is for their generation, not hers. Making Lyndon happy is her goal in life. But this was not easy as their time in the White House was marred by rising protests against the Viet Nam war, and she shares the anguish she and the president felt. Publicly they had to carry on as chants of Hey, L.B.J., how many boys did you kill today followed them. But she lets us know that privately her husband was so anguished he used to go downstairs at night to check on the latest causality counts -- for a war he inherited, she makes a point of telling us. She is a staunch defender of her husband throughout. But like a proper southern gentlewoman, she does not linger in complaint, pointing out the positive changes she has been able to make, such as highway beautification.

Next, having tea with Pat (photo by Ron Marotta) was the most interesting because she is the most complex character. We see the spirit she had that she suppressed before the public. Her early life growing up in a small California town was marked by economic hardship and a heavy domestic load cooking and caring for her father and brothers. She dreamed of travel and an acting career and those dreams light her face as she talks. But an even deeper passion -- anger -- takes over when she talks about the 1960 election she believes the Kennedy campaign stole from her husband through voter fraud and when she discusses Watergate. She is like an animal trapped in a cage when she describes how that unfolding scandal kept her inside, pacing the room -- she can tell you how many rotations it takes to make a mile -- or slipping out at night with daughter Julie to the worst parts of town where no one was out so she could walk and walk, Secret Service agents following, until they could walk no more from exhaustion. I really felt I had been let into a private world in this segment and gotten close to the real character.

Betty was my least favorite portrayal, although she was my favorite of those three First Ladies. I had fun with her, but she was a little too much of the good time gal, giddy from painkillers and booze, while I would have preferred more depth, such as when she discussed how she was able to use her breast cancer, discovered only one month after her husband assumed the presidency, to encourage women to be screened. She maintained rather a whoopee attitude throughout, rather than displaying more of a range of emotions. Having had such a great time during her husband’s term, she is not the least bit ready to leave the White House. She illustrates this by mentioning that when she was having her First Ladies’ tea and tour after Nixon resigned, Pat had pointed to a red carpet and told Betty she’d get sick of them. I never did, Betty tells us with glee. She departs to welcome Rosalynn, the wife of the man who has deprived her of four more years of excitement in the White House, playfully speculating on whether she could offer Rosalynn a drink instead of tea.

Bromka has been performing Tea for Three since 2005. It was inspired by her appearance opposite Rich Little in The Presidents, which she performed across the country and on PBS.  Called upon to impersonate eight First Ladies, she spent months poring over videotapes of the women. Studying nuances of their body language and speech patterns to explore psychologically why they moved and spoke as they did, she became more and more drawn in by their personalities.

“These were women of intelligence and grit who suddenly found themselves in a fishbowl,” Bromka has said. “I realized I wanted to tell the story from their point of view. And I wanted to explode myths. Pat was called ‘Plastic Pat’ in the press, for example, because she was always smiling. Look more closely at her eyes, though. There’s nothing plastic about her. You see the eyes of a private, watchful survivor.”

This Amas Musical Theatre production of Tea For Three will run through June 29. For information, visit www.teaforthree.com.

The Testament of Mary interviews

 I wrote this feature for the May 10, 2013 issue of National Catholic Reporter. When the Tony Awards were announced yesterday, playwright Colm Toibin was nominated for best new play, but actress Fiona Shaw and director Deborah Warner were ignored so the show is closing Sunday. I am sorry to hear this because it was the most moving and powerful theatre I’ve seen in a long, long time. I walked out of the theatre dazed. I didn't know what century I was in, or where I was or which way to turn. Other women have told me they felt this same way. 


For centuries, she has appeared on medals, in paintings, been sculpted into statues, sung about and worshiped in prayer, making her the most iconic woman of all time. Now, in what must be her most unlikely appearance yet, Mary, traditionally considered to be the mother of God, is the star of a Broadway show.

“I was trying to bring the audience with me and see where it would go,” says Irish novelist Colm Toibin, creator of this latest vision of Mary. “It’s not mockery. I’m serious. What I was trying to do was capture someone real.”

This real Mary of Broadway, in the world-premiere stage adaptation of Toibin’s 2012 novella, The Testament of Mary, does not believe her offspring was the son of God or that he performed miracles, calls his followers misfits -- “fools, twitchers, malcontents, stammerers” -- and was not at the foot of the cross at his death, having fled for her life after watching at a distance. Decades after the crucifixion, living in Ephesus under the guardianship of the disciples, she wants her side of the story to be heard, and she tells it for 90 minutes with fierceness, anger, sarcasm and humor, making for the most powerful theatre on the Great White Way this season, or any other in recent memory.

Two weeks into preview performances, with tweaking taking place daily before the April 22 opening, Toibin and director Deborah Warner spoke in separate phone interviews about developing this piece, a one-woman play starring Fiona Shaw, the irish actress acclaimed for her work on British and New York stages who recently has appeared as Petunia Dursley, Harry Potter’s annoying aunt, and Marnie Stoenbrook in HBO’s “True Blood.” The show is scheduled for a 12-week engagement through June 16 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

“We were able to develop it when we saw it as storytelling,” Warner said, describing the awesome task of turning a work that was in the form of a novel rather than a play, with one character -- a revered and historical one at that -- into an evening of theater on a vast stage in a Broadway house. “People love having stories told to them. It goes back to Sunday school. That aspect absolutely plays to the child in us in the hands of a great storyteller. We really give ourselves over.”

Not that Testament is a story for children. Shaw’s portrayal of Mary’s guilt and her agonized memories of watching her son’s suffering as he was nailed to the cross are raw. She draws the audience in, leaving them transfixed.

“Everybody in the theater is silent,” Warner says. “The density of silence is everybody working through their understanding of the story. It’s an extraordinary thing happening at the same time, their parallel experiences of the story. It’s different for everybody.”

Bringing this realism to life was an excruciating journey for Toibin, a self-described lapsed Irish Catholic who no longer believes in God. While creating the passages of Mary’s memory of the crucifixion he only wrote when other people were in the house and always kept the door open. One particularly vivid image is that after his first arm is nailed to the cross and he roars in agony, he fights so hard to hold his other arm on his chest that other men have to come pry it off to nail it.

“I had to imagine it to the fullest,” Toibin said. “I couldn’t just write it. I had to almost see it.”

When he emerged one day after writing, a friend looked at his face and asked with concerned, “Are you all right?”

Toibin, who lives part of the year in New York while teaching English literature at Columbia University, was inspired to give Mary a voice by two paintings he had seen in Venice -- Tittian’s “The Assumption” and a Tintoretto painting of the crucifixion. As a child, kneeling daily with his family to pray the rosary, Mary had not only been the Queen of Heaven, but the Queen of Ireland as well. He realized that other than the Magnificat, “a literary convention,” she had for the most part been silent throughout the gospels.

The trick was to find the right voice. She had to live in a real house, “but not the house next door.” She would have to have grandeur in her tone, as well as deep fragility, with nothing in between.

“She’s not a housewife,” he said. “I couldn’t bring her down, she’s not someone you see in the store. That regal thing had to be there.”

For this reason, she had to be alone onstage. She recounts her arguments with the disciples -- they are trying to get her to verify their accounts of her son’s life so they can start a new movement and she refuses -- but no ordinariness of somebody making tea and moving about could disrupt her story.

This presented a challenge to the actor and director. Warner meets it by allowing the audience to take the place of other characters. Before the show they are encouraged to go onstage, walk around the set and handle the props. This device brings to life the sense of restlessness and ferment described in the book as surrounding the crucifixion. The lines of people waiting to go onstage remind Warner of people on a pilgrimage.

“The audience is in partnership. They have a relationship with her before she appears,” she says, adding that people had had a relationship with Mary’s son that caused crowds to follow him. “The challenge is to surprise people to be more open to listen and hear. He had been a success, people flooded to where he was. That’s harder to get with just one of you onstage.”

Sound designer Mel Mercier enhances this feeling of a Middle Eastern landscape with original music and the sounds of movement and animals and marketplace noises.

Interestingly, as in the novella, Jesus’ name is never mention. Mary refers to him as “my son” or “the one who was here.” Toibin had two specific reasons for this.

“First of all, I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” he said. “That was moving into space I didn’t want to go to. I didn’t want to make the name ordinary.”

Secondly, he was struck by something he discovered while research his book Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush. As he read the papers of this great patron of the theatre in Ireland at the New York Public Library, he noticed that after her son, Robert, had been shot down over Italy in 1918 during World War I she never mentioned his name again in her letters. Toibin realized it must have been too painful for her.

And the Mary Toibin has created shares this pain, although in far greater measure because of her guilt at not stay until her son died, at not having done anything to stop his public preaching, which she found annoying -- “his voice all false and his tone all stilted” -- and her rage at the disciples for trying to make of his death something it was not. No one will listen to her memories because they don’t confirm the story the followers are preparing to spread, so she roams her home alone reliving the truth for herself. 

“It is what really happened that is unimaginable, and it is what really happened that I must face now in these months before I go into my grave or else something that happened will become a sweet story that will grow poisonous as bright berries that hang low on trees,” she says. “I do not know why it matters that I should tell the truth to myself at night, why it should matter that the truth should be spoken at least once in the world.”

By the end of the show, she turns this rage on the disciples. “I was there,” she told them. “I fled before it was over but if you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.”

Although Toibin is no longer a believing Catholic, he is grateful for his upbringing in the tradition and sees no negative influences.

“The iconography and language and experience stays with you and can be summoned up easily,” he says. “It gave you an extraordinarily rich way of perceiving beauty in the world.”

When asked how he wanted people to see Mary, he paused before saying he’s not a theologian, that he used his imagination and is not trying to convince anyone.

“I’m just a poor fiction writer. All I was trying to do was find a voice I thought would be credible during that time at the theatre. I am in the business of creating images which are fictional. That’s powerful.”

He says he has received no hate mail, only a few e-mails, which were divided between people who were upset or who wanted to debate. The responses on Amazon were angrier, he added. About 50 protesters organized by the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, a conservative Catholic organization based in Pennsylvania, gathered in front of the theatre before the first preview.  An earlier version of the show was performed in Dublin without protest.

While director Warner has collaborated theatrically with Shaw for a quarter century, this is the first of their efforts to premiere in the United States. She says the journey from deciding to do this project and getting to Broadway has been an endurance test.

“We spent many nights in the desert. We were often in agony, asking ourselves, ‘Why do we do this?’”

Having grown up as a Quaker in England, her only association with Mary was “mostly through 2,000 years of art history.”

“There’s something about the guise of the story that’s right,” she said. “It’s contemplative and a jolly good story at the same time. It’s not a traditional Broadway show, but great storytelling is part of the Broadway tradition.”

Toibin hopes audiences will experience the show in their nervous systems, bypassing their intellect.

“I want them to have an experience in the theatre that will matter to them.”

Motown: The Musical

If Motown: the Musical, the latest jukebox show to hit Broadway, had had a good book, instead of the anemic and self-serving one written by Berry Gordy, it would be a powerhouse. Still, thanks to that music, which to me is among the greatest of all time, Motown is one immensely entertaining evening that sent me out of the Lunt-Fontanne filled with joy and memories.

The show, directed with little imagination by Charles Randolph-Wright, is drawn from Gordy’s 1994 autobiography, To Be Loved: The Music, The Magic, the Memories of Motown, about the creation of his pioneering music labels, most notably Motown. Gordy presents himself in a far kinder and milder light than that of Curtis, the Gordy figure in in the far better written -- and by all accounts except Gordy’s, more accurate -- Dreamgirls. (Gordy is also one of Motown’s producers.)

That’s one of the biggest problems of the show -- no conflict. At 29, after being a failure at every job he’s had, Gordy (Brandon Victor Dixon) borrows money from his family to start a recording company, which becomes the empire known as Motown (a name derived from Motor City, the nickname for Detroit, his hometown) and would launch the careers of some of the best singers and groups of the 20th century -- Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Temptations, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson, to name a few.

Act One shows this unfurling with nearly miraculous ease -- Gordy discovers talent after talent, records are turned out rapidly and all become hits that are accepted on white radio stations as well as black. It’s all too simple and courteous. Dreamgirls (book and lyrics by Tom Eyen) brought out the ruthlessness of the record mogul and the back-stabbing behind the “girl group” he founded, which was based on the Supremes. It portrayed the fight for acceptance, the dirty dealing of other groups in stealing songs and the betrayal of love in that high-stakes showbiz environment.

Gordy also could have taken lessons from Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice on how to write a strong book for a jukebox musical about real people. Their Jersey Boys tells an involving story about the lives and career struggles and successes of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. So it can be done.

The trouble is, Gordy seemed to want to take on the whole Motown history. Even in a show that is two hours and 40 minutes long, that’s not enough time to do more than give a passing nod -- if that -- to the stories of these performers. With more than 50 songs, Motown seems more like a Greatest Hits concert than a Broadway musical.

By the second act, though, I no longer cared about knowing the full story behind the songs because the songs were the story. That’s the music I grew up with in the 1960s and 70s, starting in elementary school when we used to line dance to the Temptations. I carried my transistor radio with me everywhere -- out with friends, to the swim club, the beach, baby-sitting and into my bedroom at night. I listened every waking moment I could.

That’s why Motown was so appealing to me, because it was the soundtrack of my youth, the way the songs of the Hit Parade were for my mother. Music that is so interwoven into our lives will always touch a deep cord. I remember being on the Underground in London in 1984 and seeing a headline on a tabloid across the aisle announcing that Marvin Gaye, a Motown genius, had been fatally shot by his father. I was devastated.

I felt an emotional response in the show when the young Michael Jackson (Raymond Luke Jr. in a standout performance) was introduced to Gordy. It was sad to remember what a fireball of talent he was then, and remained right up through “Thriller” in 1982, but what a pathetic -- and sick -- figure he became.

 Motown only goes as far as 1983, using the framing device of the 25th anniversary TV tribute to the company, its founder and its artists. At the start, Gordy refuses to go, bitter is he that so many of the stars he discovered have moved on and his company is in steep decline, unable to compete with the mega-million dollar contracts conglomerates like RCA can offer. By the end, after recounting what here seems like a breezy road to success over two decades, Gordy relents and joins his superstars on stage for the happy ending.

I liked Valisia LeKae as Diana Ross. Her speaking voice sounds amazingly close to Ross’ breathy, little girl voice, and I especially liked her “Reach Out and Touch” number that had her singing with volunteers from the audience and ended with all of us holding raised hands with our neighbors, swaying and singing along.

Charl Brown as Robinson and Bryan Terrell Clark as Gaye were also strong, even if their characters seem more like bit players in this musical that is trying to fit in so much. The ensemble members were good as they came and went quickly, dancing the steps made famous decades ago by the likes of the Temptations and now choreographed by Patricia Wilcox and Warren Adams. Esosa did a smashing job with costumes, David Korins needed more pizzaz in his sets.

I’m not alone in liking Motown, flaws and all. It is one of the top-grossing Broadway productions of the season, playing to sold-out houses, and, according to Playbill.com, grossing upwards of $1 million weekly for all four weeks of its preview period – a record for any Broadway show to arrive in New York without an out-of-town tryout.

(Photo, by Joan Marcus, of the Temptations, played by Jesse Nager, Donald Webber ,Jr., Julius Thomas III, Ephraim M. Sykes and Jawan M. Jackson.)