Lawrence Harbison, the Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, DRIVING MISS DAISY, THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS, A LIFE IN THE THEATRE, THE PEE WEE HERMAN SHOW, PENELOPE, IN THE WAKE, THE MEMORANDUM, and PHOTOGRAPH 51.
I never read reviews of a show before I see it. Nobody should. It’s important to go in with an open, receptive mind. Too many people let critics tell them what to think, rather than deciding for themselves. Anyway, since I saw Lincoln Center Theatre Co.’s production of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, at the beautifully refurbished Belasco Theatre, I have been reading the mostly negative reviews with mounting flabbergasted-ness, wondering, “Did these people see the same show I saw?”
I have not seen the Pedro Almodóvar film upon which this new musical is based, so I can’t compare the musical with it. The story (book by Jeffery Lane), which takes place in Madrid, centers around three women, all of whom have man troubles. Pepa, an actress who does TV commercials, finds out via a message left on her answering machine that her lover, Ivan, is leaving her; Lucia, Ivan’s wife from whom he has been separated for twenty years, is finally ready to file for divorce; Candela, a model with what used to be considered a healthy sex life (this takes place in the mid 1980s, before women became terrified that men might not only break their hearts – they might also poison them), has had a one-night stand with a man who might be a terrorist with plans to blow something up.
Bartlett Sher’s brilliant production of this complex work makes it seem almost as if you are watching a film. It’s the most “cinematic” staging of a musical I have ever seen. As for the score by David Yazbek, it is just one great song after another and is the first great musical score of this century. How’s that for hyperbole? I don’t usually engage in it; but I can’t help it here. Yazbek just plain blew me away.
As for the performances: Sherie Rene Scott (Pepa), Laura Benanti (Candela) and Patti Lupone (Lucia) and all fabulous, and Brian Stokes Mitchell (Ivan) is, too. Catherine Zuber’s costumes are spectacularly witty, and the scenic design by Michael Yeargan, which uses a lot of projections and greatly aids and abets Sher’s cinematic vision, is ingenious and wonderful.
Something about this show brought out the inner bitch in the critics. Don’t pay any attention to them. This one’s a don’t-miss.
Alfred Uhry’s Pultizer Prize-winning Driving Miss Daisy has been revived, this time on Broadway at the Golden Theatre, starring Vanessa Redgrave as Daisy and James Earl Jones as Hoke, roles made famous by Dana Ivey (in the original production), Jessica Tandy (in the film) and Morgan Freeman in both.
The play is still a touching story about bridging the great racial divide, as Daisy and Hoke progress from mutual suspicion towards friendship over the course of many years. It’s a little small-scale for Broadway, but director David Esbjornson has done a fine job of expanding it into a Broadway production. Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones are, as you might expect, mighty fine, though neither of them succeeds in topping Ivey, Tandy or, especially. Morgan Freeman. The always-wonderful Boyd Gaines plays Boolie, Daisy’s son.
I wouldn’t call this one a don’t-miss; but I did quite enjoy it. How many more times are we going to have a chance to see Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones?
I didn’t see the Kander and Ebb musical The Scottsboro Boys when it played last season off Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre. Now that I have had a chance to see it on Broadway (at the Lyceum Theatre), I understand what all the fuss was about.
This is the tragic story of nine young black men who were falsely charged with raping two white women in 1931, in Alabama, and were convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. None were executed, but most spent many years in prison, and all of their lives were ruined. Kander and Ebb have chosen to tell this story using the form of the minstrel show, a form of entertainment extremely popular from pre-Civil War right up until the 1930s in which white people dressed up as happy darkies and sang jolly songs about the old folks at home, and so on. This daring concept works brilliantly, particularly in the gifted hands of director/choreographer Susan Strohman, and the cast is terrific.
As we enter a time when a U.S. senator was elected who questions the legality of the Civil Rights Act (Rand Paul), when a lot of the right-wing antipathy to our president is covertly racist, we need a show which reminds us of the hypocrisy of our past, as a sort of cautionary tale. That The Scottsboro Boys manages to do this and still be wonderfully entertaining is no mean achievement.
In contrast to Driving Miss Daisy, nothing can be done to expand David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre (at the Schoenfeld Theatre) into a Great Big Broadway Show. This slight, episodic play might be subtitled, “Hey Diddle-Dee-Dee, an Actor’s Life for Me,” as it’s just a series of scenes between an older actor, Robert, and a young actor, John, which actually could be arranged in pretty much any order. Director Neil Pepe has done his best to give the play some size and heft, but it just sinks It starts out amusing but gradually loses the audience as we realize that there’s no “there” there. It’s a love-letter to the actor’s craft, nothing more. It is to the credit of Patrick Stewart (Robert) and T. R. Knight (John) that it works as well as it does. Stewart and Knight are wonderful; but it’s not enough.
Producer Jeffrey Richards seems intent upon producing the Complete Works of David Mamet on Broadway. What next, The Cryptogram? I certainly hope not.
Fans of Pee Wee Herman have been presented with a delightful early holiday gift with The Pee Wee Herman Show, in the newly-rechristened Stephen Sondheim Theatre. This is basically ninety minutes of Pee Wee’s Playhouse on Broadway, with all Pee Wee’s Puppetland pals in attendance: Chairy, Ptery, Cowboy Curtis, Miss Yvonne, Mailman Mike, Jamba et al, and is great fun not only for Pee Wee fans but for the as-yet-uninitiated.
Pee Wee is, of course, Paul Reubens, who ran afoul of the law down in Florida several years back when he was caught choking his chicken in a porno movie theatre. That seemed to be the end of Pee Wee; but no! Here he comes again. Reubens actually makes a couple of oblique reference to his arrest, as when he reads a postcard from a guy from prison, who misses him. These references of course fly over the heads of the kids in the audience but elicit great guffaws from adults. .
If you’re in the mood for something Completely Silly, you couldn’t do better than The Pee Wee Herman Show.
St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn recently presented Ireland’s Druid Theatre in the production of Enda Walsh’s Penelope, the third Walsh play they have done. This was a play about the suitors of Mrs. Odysseus. There are four of them left. They sit around a drained swimming pool talking about this and that. Finally, each gets a chance to make his pitch to Penelope, who is silent throughout.
I can say only that this was the least boring of the Walsh plays I have seen, which is not to say that it was any good. Much of it is insufferable, particularly towards the end when the last suitor dresses up in various costumes, one after the other in quick succession. I guess I just don’t get Enda Walsh. His plays are all talk and little action. The language is colorful and poetic – but where’s the beef?
I have been seeing some shows of late which question what it means to be a “liberal,” which I find quite odd given the theatre’s usual knee-jerk liberal bent. One of these is Lisa Kron’s In the Wake, at the Public Theater, which is about a passionately liberal young woman who thinks bloviating about the world’s injustices is enough. She is finally taken on by an older woman (I think it’s her aunt), who has actually talked the talk and walked the walk, who has just returned from Africa and who has become cynical about the possibility of doing anything to make the world a better place.
Like her central character, Ms. Kron tends to go on and on, which makes this over-long play seem somewhat overstuffed, but Leigh Silverman’s production is pitch-perfect, her actors all terrific – particularly Marin Ireland and Deirdre O’Connell, two brilliant actresses you never want to miss.
The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) has revised Vaclav Havel’s The Memorandum, at the Beckett Theatre, to mostly excellent results. The play is set in the offices of a large company. Mysterious forces are plotting to have all company communication written and spoken in an inscrutable language. When the director of the company receives a memorandum in this new language and learns that the only people who know it are now running the company, a series of mordantly funny events is set in motion.
Today, the play comes across as a satire of inane office politics; whereas I am sure when he wrote it Havel intended it to serve as a metaphor for the ridiculous modern so-called “Communist” state. Either way, it’s great fun, although Simon Jones is sorely missed in the role of the much put-upon Director. He was set to play it but then he was hit by a car and had to drop out. TACT found someone else to do the role, but he is merely adequate; whereas Jones would I am sure have been great.
When this play was first staged, Havel was in prison in Czechoslovakia for his outspoken dissent against the government of this puppet state of the Soviet Union. It’s difficult to see how this play and others would have landed him in jail; but maybe that’s just an indication of how far the world has come since then.
I have often said that one of the most important marks of a really good play is that it tells a story which needed to be told. Such a play is Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51, at Ensemble Studio Theatre, which reveals the untold truth behind one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the 20th Century – the discovery of how DNA works, the famous Double Helix. I remember reading about this in school, all about the genius of Watson and Crick, the British scientists who made this discovery. Ziegler tells the true story of the real genius behind the discovery of the Double Helix – a female scientist (Yikes!) named Rosalind Franklin, who took the photograph which enabled Watson and Crick to assemble the first model of a Double Helix. They got credit for the discovery while Dr. Franklin died young, and in obscurity.
Who would have thought that a play about science could be so gripping? Linsay Firman’s direction is excellent, and all the actors are great – particularly, Kristen Bush, who plays Rosalind Franklin as if her life depended on it.
This one’s a don’t-miss.
WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. Belasco Theatre, 111 W. 44th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com of 212-239-6200
DRIVING MISS DAISY. Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com of 212-239-6200
THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS. Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com of 212-239-6200
A LIFE IN THE THEATRE. Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W. 45th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com of 212-239-6200
THE PEE WEE HERMAN SHOW. Sondheim Theatre, 124 W. 43rd St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com of 212-239-6200
PENELOPE. St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn. Closed.
IN THE WAKE. Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St.
TICKETS: 212-967-7555
THE MEMORANDUM. Beckett Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com of 212-239-6200
PHOTOGRAPH 51. Ensemble Studio Theatre, 549 W. 52nd St.
TICKETS: 212-352-3101
“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”
—– George F. Will