Hugh Jackman and 'The Music Man' finally make it to Broadway

 

          When it was announced in our pre-pandemic world that a revival of The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster was coming to Broadway, musical theatre lovers cheered.  But then all live performances shut down, and then stayed shut down, and the show became, to borrow from Tennessee Williams, “the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for.”

     And now it’s here, in an exuberant production at the Winter Garden Theatre.  Director Jerry Zaks and choreographer Warren Carlyle give us the kind of high-energy, big song and dance musical that made so many of us fall in love with the form as children.  This presentation of Meredith Willson’s book, music and lyrics — with its cast of 42! — is just what we need now.

     Jackson’s mega-watt smile and charm go full blast throughout the two hours and 45 minutes.  He’s 53 but as limber as a 20-year-old as he leaps up onto desks, tables or anything else nearby.  His age is beginning to show in his face, though, so I couldn’t help but think the Professor Harold Hill character he portrays would have been in jail because his con artist ways would have caught up with him. He also didn’t convince me he was a deceitful schemer.  He was too darn likable.  But who wants realism?  This is musical theatre — and Jackman.  

     I didn’t feel this same joy with Foster’s Marian Paroo.  I had been skeptical about that casting from the start.  She’s a Broadway belter if ever there was one.  Luckily either Zaks contained her or she toned herself down because Marian, a small town Iowa woman in 1912, should not be a belter.  

     While she moderated her voice I still wasn’t sold on her interpretation of Marian.  Through her gestures and facial expressions she imbues Marian with a kind of comic sensibility that is only a few degrees away from Lucille Ball at times.  And she sings “My White Knight” way too fast, missing its lovely sense of longing and hope. 

     I’ve seen Foster put this kind of spin on characters before.  Most unforgivable for me was her portrayal of Jo March in Little Women many years ago.  She gave full reign to her belt and comic antics.  In no way did she bring to life the 19th century New England girl I had loved as a child when I read the novel.  I did like her in Thoroughly Modern Millie because that part, a spunky 1920s New York City career woman, was perfect for her talents.  She also gave one of the most powerful and moving performances I have ever seen when she starred Off-Broadway in Sweet Charity.  I wished that show had gone to Broadway so more people could have seen her.

     Another problem I had was the lack of chemistry between Jackman and Foster in regard to romance.  I didn’t feel they were two people who had fallen madly in love.  I didn’t see what would attract one to the other, or at least what he would see in her.

     Having said that, I can say again, who cares?  I wasn’t  there for realism, I was there for a big, optimistic, good time musical and that’s what I got because everyone of the musical numbers was spectacular.  Scenic designer Santo Loquasto, who also designed the  lovely costumes, wisely keeps the sets to a minimum to make room for full stage dancing.  The sets he does provide include the elegant train car of the opening number, a fairytale-like cottage for Marian, her mother (Marie Mullen) and her little brother, Winthrop (Benjamin Pajek), and a well-stocked library.  He uses the side of a red barn that fills the stage from top to bottom as a backdrop that can open its doors in part to frame little scenes that play against drops painted like those of Iowa painter Grant Wood.  The barn disappears entirely for the large numbers. 

     One rousing song follows another as we delight in all of those we love so much — “Ya Got Trouble,” “Seventy-six Trombones,” “Marian the Librarian,” and “Wells Fargo Wagon.”  Mercifully the orchestra, with orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick, is not overly amplified.  I had gotten out my earplugs before the show started, thinking I would need them as I do at practically every Broadway musical, and some Off-Broadway, but I put them away unused. 

     

     More needs to be said about other performers.  Pajek, in his Broadway debut, steals every scene he’s in as Marian’s shy younger brother with a lisp.  You won’t be disappointed in his “Gary, Indiana” or anything else he does.  Mullen, who is 68, is a strange choice to play the mother of an 8 or 10-year-old boy.  When the family is together they look like three generations, the grandmother, mother and child.  The vast difference in age between Marian and Winthrop is also odd.  Perhaps this is meant to usher in age blindness just the way color blindness, which is a part of this production as well, took hold at least two decades ago.

     For comedy, the always-reliable Jefferson Mays and Jayne Houdyshell ham it up as the Mayor and his wife.

     As we were leaving the theatre my friend Amy heard a woman say, “Now I can die.”  I was definitely happy too.  This long-delayed show is a gem. 

'Intimate Apparel: A New Opera' makes me long for the original play

 

          Lynn Nottage’s 2004 play Intimate Apparel has been reimagined as an opera, now playing at the Mitzi E. Newhouse.  My reaction to the two shows couldn’t be more different.

     I loved the original, which starred Viola Davis as Esther, a 35-year-old Black spinster seamstress longing for love in 1905 New York City.  It was a simple yet lovely story that made me fall in love with Esther and want her to be happy.

     She was strong, but she felt left out of life.  Over the years she attended nearly two dozen parties at her boardinghouse for the other women who were getting married, each time thinking “Why ain’t it me?”

     The Esther in the new production, played by Kearstin Piper Brown, asks the same question, only in song, singing, “Love is a music I ain’t ‘ever heard.”   The difference is that the tenderness of the original that made me care deeply about Esther is gone.

     Intimate Apparel, A New Opera, for which Nottage wrote the libretto, has a cast of 16 crowding the small stage.  It is busy almost to the point of frenetic.  Under the direction of Bartlett Sher, with choreography by Dianne McIntyre, cast members go back and forth, back and forth, and in circles in scene after scene and when they’re not moving, Michael Yeargan’s set revolves. 

     The original was enchanting.  I cheered for Esther with her no-nonsense attitude and her refusal to settle just for the sake of getting married, and I worried as I watched her fall under the spell of a mysterious stranger who courts her by letter from Panama where he is a laborer on the Canal, working beside the son of her church’s deacon.  Esther had put away money year after year — $100 for every year she’d been at her sewing machine — to open a beauty parlor for colored ladies.  I waited tensely to see how she would end up.

     I was too distracted by the busyness of the opera and the constant need to look up at the subtitles and not the stage.  These two things, plus having the entire story sung in a form I don’t enjoy distanced me from the character I had loved so much.  I felt no involvement in her life, so when the mysterious stranger, George Armstrong (Justin Austin), showed up in New York, I didn’t care.

     What I did like, besides Catherine Zuber’s rich period costumes, was Ricky Ian Gordon’s music, a blending of ragtime and other early 20th century American music.  It is performed on two pianos, elevated on platforms on either side of the stage, under the direction of Steven Osgood.

     When Intimate Apparel first played in New York, many in theatre circles thought it would win the Pulitzer, but that honor went to Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife.  Nottage went on to make history as the first woman to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, for Ruined in 2009 and Sweat in 2017. 

Drinking from the well of theatre

 

"Theatre has taken on so many different responsibilities.  It's been sacred, and it's been banned, but throughout all of history, it has had a purpose.  And all people come to it to drink from that well."

-- Director, writer, Tony-winning actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson

One of Broadway's best suffers a big setback

 

The pandemic has done so much harm to my beloved Broadway for the last two years and the damage is still occurring.  The producers of To Kill a Mockingbird have announced they are shutting down the show until June and will reopen in a smaller theatre with a reduced cast.  This has been one of the most successful shows in recent years and was one of my favorites.  Click on the play's title here to read my review. 

Mrs. Doubtfire

      I received my first Christmas present last night.  Watching Rob McClure transform himself into the title character in Mrs. Doubtfire, the sparkling new Broadway musical at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, was pure gift.  Under the direction of Jerry Zaks, the first-rate cast of two dozen energetically brings to new life the 1993 film about the extreme measures a divorced father will take to see more of his three children.

     “I’m 15 now but sometimes I feel older than my dad,” says eldest child Lydia Hillard (Analise Scarpaci ).  

     It’s easy to see why.  Dad, Daniel Hillard, is an actor who specializes in voices and who seems unable to stop talking or moving.  The children enjoy him but his wife, Miranda, played with just the right amount of anger and exasperation by Jenn Gambatese, is worn down.  She files for divorce and is granted sole custody, setting in motion Daniel’s inventive way of staying in his children’s lives.

     Robin Williams was loved for his antic portrayal of Mrs. Doubtfire in the movie and McClure will be too for his part in the musical.  Watching the silliness live, though, is so much more fun.

     Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell have written the musical’s book.  Just as in the movie, Daniel comes up with the idea of disguising himself as a nanny when he learns Miranda is looking for one for the children, who also include Christopher (Jake Ryan Flynn), who is about 14, and elementary school-aged Natalie (Avery Sell).  Calling Miranda in response to her ad, he employs the voice of an elderly Scottish woman and, after he hangs up, realizes he’s going to have to look like one.

     Enter his brother, Frank (the always dependable Brad Oscar) and Frank’s husband, Andre Mayem (J. Harrison Ghee), theatrical costumers who tackle the challenge of transforming Daniel with gusto.  In the hilarious number “Make Me a Woman,” the couple envision Daniel as an assortment of glamorous women — Jackie O, Princess Diana and Donna Summer — who materialize in song and dance.  When Daniel remembers the voice he used he asks them for someone “older and studier.”  They quickly switch their fantasies to Eleanor Roosevelt, Julia Child, Janet Reno and Margaret Thatcher.  Choreographer Lorin Latarro has them all dancing together with Daniel, Frank and Andre to pulsing disco-beat music.  It’s a wacky delight, with music and lyrics by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick and lavish costumes by Catherine Zuber. 

     What they come up with when they put aside those dreams is the padded bodysuit with ample bust and derriere, ankle-length plaid kilt and sweater.  A mask gives Daniel a round, pudgy face (makeup and prosthetics design by Tommy Kurzman).  Add glasses and a short, tightly curled gray wig and, voila, Mrs. Doubtfire. 

     Daniel knows just how to work his way into the hearts of the family in his new guise.  But it isn’t long before he encounters his first crisis.  His by-the-books court liaison, Wanda Sellner (Charity Angel Dawson) approves of Mrs. Doubtfire as appropriate for the children.  But trying to play nanny and father come to a head when Wanda wants to talk with Daniel and Mrs. Doubtfire at the same time.  

     These hijinks take place in Daniel’s apartment (sets by David Korins)  Mrs. Doubtfire and Wanda are in the kitchen and Mrs. Doubtfire says she’ll go in the bedroom to get Daniel, who she has said is her brother.  (Daniel’s lying had gotten away from him.)  From the bedroom, which the audience can see into but Wanda cannot, Daniel calls out in his voice that he’s just getting out of the shower but will be right in.  We watch him frantically pull off the clothes, bodysuit, face and wig, and casually walk into the kitchen in his robe.  

     This is fine until Wanda says she wants to talk to Mrs. Doubtfire again and Daniel has to pull off another switch, only in his haste he knocks the face and wig out of the window.  The artful Daniel comes up with a cleaver prop and then, quickly, another.  McClure is a marvel.

     Daniel has to play this double role again later at a restaurant, dining on one side of the room with the family as Mrs. Doubtfire and meeting with a TV producer as Daniel on the other side.  Only this time he’s not so lucky. 

     This is a musical comedy so I’m not giving anything away in saying that everything works out in the end.  The journey to that end is a joy.  This is the best movie conversion I have seen in a long time.  Gift wrap a couple of tickets for someone you love this Christmas.  It’s a sure fit for everyone.

Peace in the Morning: Images and Meditations to Begin Your Day

     Peace in the Morning: Images and Meditations to Begin Your Day by Daniel B. Ford Jr. is appropriately named because peaceful is how I feel when I sit with this small hardcover devotional, published by Paraclete Press.  Ford combines his photos from around the world, both majestic landscapes and everyday sights, with quotes from his pastor Hal M. Helms’ national bestseller Echoes of Eternity.        

     The book is divided into four sections: Consider, Pray, Look and Live.  I was drawn in starting with the first reflection, which is titled “Interruptions are also of me.”  I need this reminder frequently:  “Do not forget the parable of the priest and the Levite.  Never let your predetermined agenda keep you from seeing My hand in the interruption.  It is there, whether you recognize it or not.”  The simple accompanying photograph is what appears to be the corner of the first floor and basement of a red brick house with a bike leaning against it.  A window box brimming with jonquils rests between black shudders.  

     This was helpful to me as I went through my day because I tend to see email as an interruption and am always eager to get through it so I can get on to my real work, which is writing.  I want to remember that God’s hand might be in the message someone has sent me and can be in the messages I send as well.

     Another reflection, in just 10 words, reminds me of an equally necessary ingredient for my day, gratitude:  “My child, your thankfulness gladdens my heart and strengthens yours.”  The photo looks like a landscape in Tuscany.

     I love the gentleness of the messages as they are combined with the photos.  This thoughtfully put together book, 156 pages, can be combined with a more detailed devotional like the one I am using for Advent, with its assigned scripture readings and thoughtful commentary, or can be used alone by anyone with little time for morning prayer.  It would also be an excellent gift for someone who has never used a devotional in the morning and might be put off by needing to have a Bible at hand to look up scripture passages.  The snippets of wisdom and the beauty of the photos will sustain the ardent prayer warrior and those just beginning a daily prayer life.  And the book can be read again and again since it is not connected with any liturgical season.  You can finish it and then start again.  What a blessing to begin the morning with peace. 

Cheek to Cheek: Irving Berlin in Hollywood

 

     Irving Berlin wrote more than 1,500 songs during his prolific career.  Two dozen of them are brought to life in Cheek to Cheek: Irving Berlin in Hollywood, the charming song and dance revue that opened last night, presented by The York Theatre Company at Theater at St. Jean’s.

     Four-time Tony Award-nominee Randy Skinner conceived, directed and choreographed the 80-minute show, which features six talented singer/dancers and, under the direction of David Hancock Turner, a five-piece onstage orchestra.  Together they transport the audience to an era of elegance and romance.  Barry Kleinbort’s book provides the cast just enough biographical information to introduce each number and keep the show moving at a good pace.

     The tap numbers are terrific, starting with the first, which features Kaitlyn Davidson, Joseph Medeiros, Melanie Moore (in photo), Phillip Attmore and Jeremy Benton (in photo) giving their all to “Let Yourself Go.”  

     I also loved the Fred and Ginger-style dances for their pure escapism.  Writing for the movies starring that pair had a big influence on Berlin as he made the transition to writing songs that were meant to be danced to as well as sung.  This is evident as Benton, Moore and the company (which also includes Victoria Byrd) glide and swirl around the stage for “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing” from “White Christmas.”

     Costume designer Nicole Wee outfits the women in some lovely dresses and James Kantrowitz’s colorful lighting enhances the atmosphere.

    The York’s producing artistic director, James Morgan, wisely keeps the set simple.  Six panels, three on each side of the stage, project old-time movie spotlights alternated by posters of the movies being featured.   

     This show would be enjoyable anytime but the holiday season seems particularly appropriate for this kind of nostalgic singing and dancing.  Cheek to Cheek runs through Jan. 2.