Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what\u2019s hot and what\u2019s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about FINIAN\u2019S RAINBOW, RAGTIME, FELA! and IN THE NEXT ROOM; or, THE VIBRATOR PLAY.<\/p>\n
The current production of Finian\u2019s Rainbow<\/strong>, at the St. James Theatre, started life in last season\u2019s Encores series at City Center. The Encores productions are very bare-bones and there the emphasis is always on the score. This is why the reviews for Encores\u2019 production were so outstanding. This is indeed, one heckuva score, with one wonderful song after another by Burton Lane (music) and E.Y. Harburg (lyrics). On Broadway, though, the book comes more into focus. Said book, by Harburg and Fred Saidy, is a fairy tale with an edge. That edge deals with the ever-thorny American problem of racial prejudice. In 1947, the treatment of this issue in the show must have seemed very cutting-edge. In 2009, it just seems dated and silly. In fact, just about everything in this book tries to be cute and whimsical but winds about just being contrived and inane.<\/p>\n MORE<\/p>\n The story concerns a small town in the rural South, in a state called \u201cMissitucky.\u201d Everyone is under the thumb of a venal senator \u2013 the black sharecroppers most of all. Well, an Irishman arrives with his daughter. He\u2019s the eponymous Finian, and he has stolen the leprechauns\u2019 pot of gold, which he plans to bury in the ground. Since we are near Fort Knox, Finian reasons that the gold will grow and make him rich. I mean, really\u2026 A leprechaun named Og comes after the gold. Since its removal from Ireland, he is becoming more and more mortal as, I guess, are all the little fellas back home. It\u2019s a crisis! Meanwhile, the evil senator is scheming to get his hands on all the local land. Finian\u2019s daughter makes a wish \u2013 near the pot o\u2019 gold, that the senator were black and WHOMP! He\u2019s turned into a black guy. Well, the locals are going to burn Finian\u2019s daughter as a witch (in 1940s America???) \u2013 but the day winds up being saved. They don\u2019t burn her, and she gets to marry a handsome local yokel.<\/p>\n Director\/Choreographer Warren Carlyle has staged this in a fashion absolutely true to the way it must have been staged in its original incarnation, except for his clever choice to hire a black actor (here, the always-excellent Chuck Cooper) to portray the transmogrified senator, instead of having the senator quickly blacked-up as it\u2019s usually done. You feel as if you have time-travelled back to the Broadway of 1947, right down to the cheesy set. I think this was the right choice, because I can\u2019t think of any other way to stage this cornball show.<\/p>\n All that said, the performers are quite delightful. Jim Norton makes a sly, foxy grandpa of a Finian, and Kate Baldwin is charming as his daughter, Sharon. My only quibble here is that Norton looks old enough to be Sharon\u2019s grandfather. Ah, well \u2013 this is a typical though somewhat annoying casting convention. Cheyenne Jackson is a sweet-singing, charming hunk as local yokel Woody, and Christopher Fitzgerald is delightfully goofy as Og.<\/p>\n I have to say that the elderly couple seated in front of me loved this show. They had recently seen In the Next Room; or, The Vibrator Play<\/em> and hated it, so this was more their cup of Irish coffee. <\/p>\n It has been reported that the new production of Ragtime<\/strong>, at the Neil Simon Theatre, is dying the death and will probably close in January. This is a terrible shame, because the show, based on E.L. Doctorow\u2019s great novel, is a masterpiece of the American musical theatre; and this production, wonderfully directed and choreographed by Marcia Milgrim Dodge, is a beautiful rendering of this story, based on E.L. Doctorow\u2019s great novel, about America in the early 20th Century. It has a great score by Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics), and a great book by Terrance McNally. It is astounding to me that the show hasn\u2019t caught on. <\/p>\n All the performers are superb, with particular kudos to Quentin Earl Darrington as Coalhouse Walker Jr. and Stephanie Umoh as Sarah. I also enjoyed Christiane Noll as Mother, Bobby Steggert as Mother\u2019s Younger Brother, and Robert Petkoff as Tateh. <\/p>\n So, you don\u2019t have much longer to see this wonderful production of this wonderful show. Alas \u2026<\/p>\n I also enjoyed Fela!<\/strong>, which has transferred from Off Broadway to Broadway\u2019s Eugene O\u2019Neill Theatre. This is the story of Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti, originator of a style of music called \u201cAfro Beat.\u201d We are in a club in Lagos called The Shrine, which Fela built and where he performs regularly, at the last performance there before it closes. Fela announces from the start that he is leaving Nigeria, as the political situation there is hopeless. He then relates the story of his life \u2013 how he developed his musical style, how he became radicalized in America, and how he tried to change things in Nigeria, inspired by his mother, a feminist and political activist there. This is in fact an inspiring show, though way too much is narrated rather than dramatized, and Fela, a complex individual, is here canonized as a modern saint –move over, Mother Theresa –where a warts-and-all portrait would have been far more interesting.<\/p>\n There is also far too much wheel-spinning for my taste. A 2.5-hour evening could easily have been cut by 30 minutes. But quibbles aside, Bill T. Jones\u2019 choreography is incredible, and Sahr Ngaujah\u2019s performance in the title role is astounding. Also terrific is Broadway veteran Lillias White as Fela\u2019s martyred mother. The show makes use of Fela\u2019s music, so it is, in effect, an example of that much-maligned genre, the so-called \u201cJukebox Musical.\u201d Nobody seems to have noted this. I wonder why? The music is infectious, but rather repetitive; but it is wonderfully played by an onstage band, joined often by Mr. Ngaujah on saxophone and trumpet.<\/p>\n Overall, I would say that Fela is definitely worth a go; but if you can only go to one, I\u2019d choose Ragtime.<\/p>\n Finally, I want to trumpet Sarah Ruhl\u2019s brilliant IN THE NEXT ROOM; or, THE VIBRATOR PLAY<\/strong>, produced by Lincoln Center Theatre at Broadway\u2019s Lyceum Theatre. In my opinion this is the best new play of the season so far \u2013 and to my mind this has been a pretty impressive season for plays, if you count Beyond Broadway, as I do. <\/p>\n All of Ms. Ruhl\u2019s other plays I have read or seen are theatrically-inventive examples of that genre so ubiquitous in the not-for-profit theatre \u2013 Anything But Realism. This new one, though, is surprisingly realistic in style. It concerns a doctor in the late 19th Century who has developed a method for treating women with \u201chysteria\u201d \u2013 a general catch-all for female crazy behavior \u2013 using a miracle of modern technology, an electric device which stimulates his patients \u201cdown there.\u201d After just a few minutes of his treatment, during which he induces in them a \u201cparoxysm,\u201d they leave with a smile on their face, on the road to recovery. The play works on one level as a satire of the way sex was viewed in the Victorian Age, but it is also an impassioned plea for what eventually became known as \u201cWomen\u2019s Liberation.\u201d <\/p>\n Les Waters\u2019 production is just beautiful, and his cast is superb. Michael Cerveris is wonderful as the doctor, playing him as a sincere, earnest man who truly believes he is in the vanguard of medical science, and Laura Benanti is charming as his rather ditzy, repressed wife. In fact, all the cast is terrific. I particularly enjoyed Chandler Williams, as a male patient whom the doctor diagnoses as suffering from \u201cmale hysteria\u201d \u2013 which is extremely rare, he tells him. His treatment for this condition is hilarious. Maria Dizzia is excellent, too, as a patient whom we watch being treated. Her paroxysms are as convincing as was Meg Ryan\u2019s in \u201cWhen Harry Met Sally,\u201d if you know what I mean. Lord, I love a Moaner! In my opinion, they can\u2019t be portrayed too often.<\/p>\n My guess is that Lincoln Center will run this play as long as there\u2019s an audience. The question is, are most Broadway theatre-goers as prudish and conservative at that couple I met at Finian\u2019s Rainbow, or are they up for a brilliantly staged and acted play which seeks to challenge its audience rather than soothe it?<\/p>\n FINIAN\u2019S RAINBOW. St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St. “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.”<\/p>\n —– George F. Will<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what\u2019s hot and what\u2019s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about FINIAN\u2019S RAINBOW, RAGTIME, FELA! and IN THE NEXT ROOM; or, THE VIBRATOR PLAY. The current production of Finian\u2019s Rainbow, at the St. James Theatre, started life in last season\u2019s Encores series […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\tTickets: www.telecharge.com 212-2390-6200.
\nRAGTIME. Neil Simon Theatre, 250 W. 52nd St.
\n\tTickets: www.ticketmaster.com 2877-250-2929
\nFELA! Eugene O\u2019Neill Theatre, 230 W. 49th St.
\n\tTickets: www.telecharge.com 212-2390-6200.
\nIN THE NEXT ROOM; or, THE VIBRATOR PLAY. Lyceum
\n Theatre, 140 W. 45th St.
\n\tTickets: www.telecharge.com. 212-2390-6200.<\/p>\n