Intermission Talk

April 27, 2013

Don Those “Kinky Boots,”

Call “The Nance” and

Wake Up the “Orphans”

by TONY VELLELA

Eye-high kicks [and kickers] are back, and Broadway’s got ‘em!  Not that dancers with the ability to execute effortlessly those spectacular steps where their feet sky-rocket from floor to [almost] ceiling are not present in other musicals, but the dames and faux-dames in “Kinky Boots” seem to do it best.  And how appropriate, in a show that’s all about footwear.

Adapted with real style from the 2005 similarly-titled Brit indie picture, it follows the same story line: Charlie, a seemingly feckless young man [Stark Sands, a sweetie] inherits his dad’s failing shoe factory, and when he learns how the whole town depends on it for their financial survival, he postpones his plan to join his girlfriend in London, to study law, to return the factory to sound footing.

Enter: fate, in the form of Lola, a big-build drag queen with a broken heel [the powerhouse Billy Porter].  Soon, they’ve joined forces to manufacture boots for Lola’s gay club cohorts, and together, they overcome every predictable obstacle that blocks their steps to success.  It’s a by-the-book [by Harvey Fierstein] triumph, showcasing the Broadway debut of pop queen Cyndi Lauper [music and lyrics], directed and choreographed [and choreographed and choreographed] by master dance guru Jerry Mitchell.  Their ’secret’ was to combine the best of each of their worlds, allowing you to relax a few minutes in, and think – I’m in good hands [I'm stepping away from the 'foot' references].  You subconsciously recognize musical chords from Lauper’s hits.  The dance ensemble, with Porter in the lead, meld the Radio City Rockettes, the ‘La Cage’ Cagells and Ike Turner’s hard-driving Ikettes.

And Charlie, though he’s the last person in the Hirschfeld Theatre to do it, finally realizes his heretofore fiancee Nicola [an appropriately uber-proper Celina Carvajal] would do better in London alone, and her place will seamlessly be taken by the industrious shop-floor worker Lauren.  She’s been praying for this to happen, [Annaleigh Ashford, bright as a silver shoe buckle, who possesses all the instinctive qualities that would pay off big-time as Ado Annie].

Didja like ‘Hairspray?’  Didja?  Didja bounce a little in your seat a coupla times during ‘Priscilla, Queen of the Desert?’  Didja?  Huh?  Well, step right up [it fits here] and let these new queens do their stuff, in flash-colored, spangle-soaked, spike-healed boots that promise to lift your spirits eye-high.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, it was an entirely different picture in the lives of gay men in 1937, Depression-era America [in "The Nance," instead of north country industrial Britain, it's in New York].  It’s also the eve* of Fiorello LaGuardia’s mayoral re-election campaign: [The *'s mean it was true.] he means to make it clear to outer borough voters* that he stands for clean living, family-friendly entertainment and the cleansing of burlesque houses.  On the bill of every one of them* would be a cartoonish ‘nance,’ an actor portraying the company’s comic gay male, who gets joked about, poked about and mildly scuffed up, for the crude amusement of the largely male audience, there to see ecdysiasts undo their stuff.  Here,  that flouncing, lisping, weak-wristed queer in skits onstage is portrayed by a middle-aged, garishly-costumed, portly actor named Chauncey Miles, one of the best, at the Irving Place Theatre*,  brought to life by one of our bona fide national theatrical treasures, Nathan Lane.  In this type of  comedy, a few notches above ‘low,’ the ways that silence, and the double take are used can be, in every way,  the determining factor between an audience’s weak smiles and full-throated guffaws.   and Lane has melded the best of Benny, Berle, Pangborn, Blore, Fields and Lahr to greatest effect . . . i.e., Jack, Milton, Franklin, Eric, W.C. and Bert.

Franklin Pangborn                             Bert Lahr

Offstage, Chauncey is every bit the nance, though not ‘out’ about it.  He is guided by his own personal, solidly Republican credo which, in general, supports government staying out of the business of small businesses, who employ so many.  His GOP-based idealism also dictates a taste for anonymous sex with rough trade, found in places* known for turning a blind eye to men, using signals and symbols*, to pick each other up.  Unless the cops are also there.  This time, he’s patronizing a downtown H & H automat.

When Ned, a New York State Red Roman apple-cheeked lad, homeless and hungry, presents himself to Chauncey, that credo turns into a cre-don’t.  Chauncey  surreptitiously slips him half of his sandwich.  Ned, in appreciation, nearly gets them arrested simply by starting to join Chauncey at his table.  Ned agrees to go home with Chauncey, and the next morning, Chauncey learns that the young man is not there for money.  The pair, in short order, turns into a couple, at least to their friends.  [This seemingly unlikely pairing may be an homage to Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy" - "Remember, I'm the pretty one."]  At work, Chauncey learns that New York City License Commissioner [and "confirmed bachelor"*] Paul Moss* has launched a vociferous public crackdown* on all burlesque houses that feature nance skits, which could mean the end of Chauncey’s ability to perform.  Ned [Jonny Orsini, a  natural charmer performing a star-making turn in a star-making role] endures the tough times, the emotional upheavals, the depression and even the attempts by Charlie to kick him out.  And it’s during this section that we see just how masterfully the playwright, Douglas Carter Beane, has woven together all the disparate yellow and green and blue patches of cloth, and the orange and red and purple lengths of yarn, many of which are based on or taken from real-life events and people*, into a rainbow quilt of hellish stress incarnate.  Nothing could prepare Charlie for this development, and many of his throw-away lines underscore this.  Speaking of underscoring, Chauncey even cracks wise about how these developments seem ripe for the musical accompaniment of Warner Bros. musical scorer Max Steiner.   Chauncey now finds himself with a loving, cynicism-free, beautiful young man who proclaims his love, and is willing to make any sacrifice to stay with him.  Charlie is not and has not been programmed for this.

Carter uses parts of the burlesque show’s sketches and songs as illustration, and anyone familiar with the sketches in “Gypsy” knows the references to ‘…meet me ’round the corner in a half an hour.’  The personal story moves forward [maybe a bit like "Follies" or even "Cabaret"] until a make-or-break moment comes, involving a choice that must be made, a critical choice that could split them up.  Charlie allows the split to happen.

Chauncey rather unwillingly reveals the deepest emotional secrets of all the Chaunceys, regardless of their age or occupation or any other external characteristic: their self-loathing demands that they never allow for personal, permanent happiness.  He tells Ned that his sexual hunting and gathering  pattern must always end in separation or rejection.  He tells Ned that “the getting is better than the having.”  The pathos felt by these characters when the separation has happened is as genuine, and earned, as Linda Loman’s at Willie’s graveside.  The comedy ratcheted up for the audience equals the situational hilarity that bounces between Oscar and Felix.  But the deep pain and exhausting sorrow we see in Charlie’s [Nathan's] eyes at the end are not surpassed by anything or anybody in the American theatre canon.

Lyle Kessler’s 1985 play “Orphans,” in revival at the Schoenfeld Theatre, is also built around lost boys, brothers in fact, who occupy ['live in' is a stretch] a house in North Philadelphia that they took over when both parents died.  Treat, [Ben Foster], the older one, ventures forth each morning to ply his trade as a pickpocket and petty thief.  The younger, Philip, [Tom Sturridge], suffers contentedly from a kind of agoraphobia, never having left that one house in a decade or so.  When Treat drags home a sloppily drunk businessman named Harold [Alec Baldwin], expecting to repeat an oft-practiced exercise of getting the drunk as drunk as he can, extracting all his valuables, and then dumping him somewhere else.  But this one’s different, turning the tables on the brothers grim.

This piece of macabre melodrama, which doesn’t match up to others of its era from Harold Pinter or Joe Orton , does provide some scenery-chewing characters  for any enterprising actor to bite into.  As Harold comes-to, he sees two fairly inept, but still reckless young lads who could spell his demise unless he’s careful.  In fairly short order, employing almost invisible personal cunning and conjuring, Harold has successfully transitioned Treat from anti-establishment punk to pro-business twat.  The hyper-kinetic, Philip, however, requires more visceral powers than simply what the lure of creature comforts can offer.  As Harold exhibits more and more sagacious talents, the young orphans accept and then welcome him as a father figure, especially since they imagine him to be the type of  silk-tie gangster they believe they can equal, with proper training and guidance.  And amid all of Harold’s instruction and allure, a bond is formed tying together the older man, the dependant Philip and the controlling [and caring, in many ways] Treat.  The semblance of a family emerges.

Lest you think this is a cautionary tale about the failure of crime to pay off, let me caution you: the potential for devil-deep mayhem and bug-eyed terror never really reaches the level that the presentation of all the familiar parts would imply.  We got yer knife!  We got yer blunt objects!  We got yer gun!   And we got yer assorted hair triggers [events and people] ready to set off all the above, and more!  The missing element?  Having any of them explode to such a degree that any of these brash, deadly premises promises, all confined in the one front room of that  house. The unpredictable Philip, who alights from the wooden windowsill to the inches-wide sofa back to the spindles of the staircase, juts and cuts through the space like the hybrid child of a dragonfly and a rhesus monkey.  In the give-you-the-shivers world of finely-tuned acting, Sturridge shines bright, brighter, brightest.

Foster’s Treat never fully displays the assumed-to-be-necessary true grit needed to keep it all from falling apart.  Baldwin’s Harold never fully settles into a central persona that would lead us to believe he comes from the functioning society outside the door.  Only Sturridge stakes out his emotional and psychological territory and carries it through with physical action [think of Leonardo DiCaprio's disciplined performance in 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape?'].  “Orphans” isn’t by any stretch a great play.  It has its admirers [I'm not especially one of them] and its detractors [not me, either].  It’s a pretty good play, with some eye-popping moments.  This revival does go one better in one way – we get to see this exciting young actor’s Broadway debut.

On Book

Moving on, it’s that time of year when daughters and sons, nieces and nephews, interns and assistants, and the kids who mow the lawn get ready to graduate from high school, college and university.  Instead of a tie or a scarf, for those who have exhibited even the slightest interest or curiosity about theatre, give a gift of books.

Herewith [and later-with], a variety of selections to inform, educate, satisfy and lure the mortar-boarders into the footlights parade, or more correctly, parades, for the list includes selections that cover the stage from every angle.  For more details, Google the title or author, or visit in person or on-line any bookshop of established repute, such as New York City ’s Tony Award-winning institution, the Drama Bookshop.

Consider: “What We Do – Working in the Theatre” Bo Meltzer, Infinity Publishing; “The Season – A Candid Look at Broadway” William Goldman, Limelight; “Backwards & Forwards – A Technical Manual for Reading Plays” David Ball, Southern Illinois Press’ “An Actor Prepares to Work in New York City” Craig Wroe, Limelight; “The Empty Space” Peter Brook, Touchstone; “The Director’s Voice” a two-volume set, edited by [1] Arthur Bartow and [2] Jason Loewith, Theatre Communications Group {TCG]; “On Directing” Harold Clurman, A Fireside Book, Simon & Schuster; “Broadway Musicals – 101 Greatest Shows of All Time” Ken Bloom and Frank Vlastnik, Black Dog & Leventhal Press;  ”How to Write Like Chekhov” Piero Brunello and Lena Lencek, Life Long Books; “A Guide to Producing Plays & Musicals” Frederic B. Vogel & Ben Hodges, editors, Applause Books, and “Acting As a Business – Strategies for Success” Brian O’Neil, Vintage Press.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre “Character Studies.  As a playwright, his “Admissions” was produced three times in New York City, all directed by Austin Pendleton, Best Play winner at the New York International Fringe Festival, and published by Playscripts.  His play “Maisie & Grover Go to the Theatre” is published by ArtAge Publications.  He has also written four other plays and two political musical comedies, all produced.  He wrote the Cable Ace Award-winning documentary “Test of Time” for Lifetime Television.  His articles and reviews have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Christian Science Monitor, Parade, the Robb Report, Rolling Stone and Dramatics.  He has done guest-teaching at several institutions, including Syracuse University, HB Studio, Columbia University Teacher’s College and the New School.  Currently, he conducts very small [six-person] in-depth classes in theatre, and also one-to-one sessions on scene study, play analysis and auditioning.  He is putting together another round of classes. and can be reached for more information at tvellela@nyc.rr.com.

“The Drawer Boy” takes “The Revisionist”

to “Belleville” leaving “The Cat On A Hot

Tin Roof” with “Talley’s Folly”

by TONY VELLELA

Like Tom in Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” Matt in Lanford Wilson’s “Talley’s Folly” is a principal character in the play, and also its narrator.  They both open their plays with an orientation lesson. of sorts, explaining background and relationships.  Tom announces at the top of his story that “This play is memory.”  Matt, unfortunately, makes no such declaration, and that difference is what distinguishes a great classic [the first] from a very, very good play [the second].  Had Wilson fessed up and given us the distance and perspective the realm of memories affords, “Folly” would go down much smoother.

Matt bounces onto the stage, explaining in the present tense that “the battle is turning” in World War II, prophesying that “‘peace and prosperity’ are in the air,” and that the “hope the people had known has been changed into the enemy.”  This sounds scarily like we’ve got ninety-plus minutes ahead of us filled with the rapid-delivery musings [and rantings] of a second-rate miscreant.  He soon makes it clear that something else is in store.

An early forties Invisible Man accountant, Matt has come back to his hometown, Lebanon, Missouri on this July Fourth eve, standing alone now in a rundown old boathouse on the Talley family property.  He is soon joined by Sally, a late thirties attractive but conservative-presenting woman who wants him to leave the property, and abandon the notion that she wants to spend any time with him.

The foundation element of the story concerns a brief non-carnal encounter the two had one year ago, on this spot, when, in each of their retellings, they permitted because of personal problems that rendered them vulnerable.  The difference is that Matt has turned that event into an almost sacred transgression, and he is back to rekindle what he thought was there.  A nurses’ aide at a local hospital, Sally suffers through Matt’s unwelcome appearance at her job.  There is a certain “meet cute” formula going on here, except that we join the pair somewhere in mid-dudgeon, and since they have history, there’s an insider quality to the barbs.  Later, when they segue into banter, is far more enjoyable.

Of course we can guess the ending.  Getting there, in this play, depends entirely on the casting, and director Michael Wilson has scored a one-and-three-quarters coup of sorts.  Danny Burstein, a Tony nominee for his touching performance in last season’s “Follies,” uses a kind of  ’shock and awe’ approach to his Matt, delivering some over-the-top moments that at times make you wish Sally would just walk back up that hill.  You know that inside his puffed-up chest resides a heart of, maybe not gold, but maybe silver.  Gold-plated silver.

There’s an appealing breakability to Sarah Paulson’s Sally.  She, too, presents an obvious inner softer side.  She is, after all, a woman who helps to nurse the physically wounded back to health.  Paulson doesn’t permit Sally to let out a smile for more than half the play, despite Matt’s clever witticisms.

Why is “Talley’s Folly” like a tea kettle?  Two reasons.  First, it will take its own time to boil, regardless of how studiously you stare at it.  And second, when its boiling point has been reached, the steam spurts out forcefully, rather like a volcano.  While the soft, gentle conclusion here does not have the force of a volcano, it was predictable.  [Warning: Mixed metaphor ahead.]  It erupts.  Tea, anyone?

Isn’t it flat-out annoying when productions of two new plays are compared and contrasted, that have opened within a week or so of each other, when that’s the only thing they seem to have in common?  Did they want us to think there’s some sort of closed-door clearinghouse that governs which themes should be addressed next spring, or whether plays set in the 1930s should be on the boards at the same time?  Spoiler’s Alert:  I am about to try very hard to avoid such a practice.

The plays in question are “Belleville,” by Amy Herzog, [exhibit B], at the New York Theatre Workshop, and “The Revisionist,” by Jesse Eisenberg [exhibit R], at the Cherry Lane Playhouse.  Both are set ‘today,’ single domestic set – B in Paris and R in Szczecin, Poland.  Both have American primary characters – B a late 20s-early 30s married couple, R a young emerging children’s book writer in his 20s.  Both have strained relationships with their hosts – the B couple, who are renting an apartment in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris from a Senegalese couple, and young R with his distant elderly female cousin whom he has no memory of meeting her when he was ten.  The Americans exhibit at times blatant acts of ingratitude, and both men have a pot habit that impairs their judgment and behavior. Exhibit R has three characters, while B has four.  Both plots hinge on a phone call from the U.S.A.  Taken together, they could be subtitled ‘Little Secrets and Great Big Lies.’ R’s delicate balance is poised on a carefully-maintained secret, while unspoken lies bind together, then shatter the B couple.

Other than that, they are entirely different.  Exception: they both can grab your attention fiercely, and not let go.

Exhibit B gives us a strung-out young woman, Abby [Maria Dizzia], whose occupation is yoga instructor, married to Zack [Greg Keller], who works with an international children’s AIDS project.  Abby has a pattern of acting without thought to consequences, or forgetting to complete something she committed herself to doing, always concluding with a practiced “Sorry.”  Zack is tolerance personified.  On the surface, they could be the children of well-to-do hippie parents.  However, Abby’s indifferent or outright callous approach to so many things marks her as damaged goods, the cause not revealed early on.  She assumes Zack will make anything right, and that he will be unjudgmentally [is that a word?] forgiving of all her transgressions.  And her behavior can be as exhausting as what makes parents of autistic children so frayed and in need of their own care-giving source.  Zack, to fulfill that role,  uses pot.

As this pre-Christmas slice-of-ever-volatile life tale unfolds over two days’ time, Abby learns that their funds have long since run out [no clear explanation of where grocery money is coming from].  The Old World genteel building manager [Phillip James Brannon], allowing them to stay on into an unpaid month number four, informs Zack that his uncle, the actual landlord, was for a time willing to take his nephew into his real estate business as a partner.  The uncle’s offer has been withdrawn, after he checked the books and found this glaring deficit.  The building manager, faced with the potential loss of his promising business future, and the unwillingness of his wife [Pascale Armand], who recently bore their first child, to tolerate Zack’s insensitivity to her husband’s situation, gives them two more days to come up with the back rent, and at that point, they still must vacate.

Parts of this tale you recognize from so many other sources: Abby’s mother died, which led her to marry Zack, for security; she goes off her anti-depressant meds, with familiar but painful-to-watch consequences; he goes from fibs, to little white lies, to Lies; the everything-happens-during-two days’-time aspect; the last scene totally up-ending the core of the story.

But many parts you do not recognize.  Herzog salts the familiar with so many other spices, through the power of her engaging details.  When we start getting into the high weeds of a couple’s mutual trust destruction, we’ve learned enough about them to track their missteps, lost opportunities, personal fears and fanciful fantasies.  Imagine someone holding in two hands a delicate clear glass punch bowl, swaying it back and forth for a while, then losing his grip.  It falls slowly [in slo-mo, in fact, in your imagination], and crashes on the hardwood floor.  The story line here is like that crystal bowl.  Shards of glass impale everyone, as they fly up from the floor.  Try as they will, no amount of apologies and rationalizations and appeals and pleas can reverse the progression of this couples’ uncoupling, until the inevitable tragic ending.  Half a century ago, they could have been a failed version of George & Martha – sad, sad, sad.

Jesse Eisenberg [yes, the actor from "The Social Network" and other films] has written a two-and-a-half hander curio taking place in an aging two-and-a-half room apartment in the Polish part city of Szczecin.  Nested there contentedly lives Maria, in her 70s, unmarried, and when we join her, listening to American National Public Radio news reporting.  She proceeds to fuss about the place, obviously in expectation of a special visitor.  And when David [the actor Eisenberg] arrives from America, she cannot contain her joy at seeing this distant cousin, two generations younger.  Maria agreed to David’s visit when he requested it, as a sanctuary to rewrite, at his editor’s condition, his second children’s book, destined to the same limited appeal as his first.  Maria gives David her [the only] bedroom.  Above the bed are pictures of various family members from the past sixty years, whose presence unnerves him.  They get off to a bristly start, with David turning down her specially-prepared, costly dinner, wanting to get to work immediately.  When she relates some of the plans she’s made for his stay, he upbraids her sharply, reminding her that he is there to write, nothing else.  The frost does not soon melt.

A few warm spots happen, when spotty family anecdotes are exchanged, and David shows some courtesy and even gratitude.  He maintains a suspicion that Maria is the subject of government spying, finding repeated phone calls from someone who says she is soliciting charitable contributions.  However, three days in, when wine induces a more serious colloquy, a very very big lie surfaces.  It rips the ribbon that has tenuously come to connect them.  Once out, David must leave, and Maria must try to reconstruct her personal identity with the mere twigs that she had gathered to fashion the foundation of her life.  The premise, though parochial in its scope, much the same as the type of construct Herzog employs is “Belleville,” is attractive for its seeming smallness. It is Eisenberg’s intelligent yet deceptively prosaic dialogue that rivets us.

And, did I note that Maria is being created by Vanessa Redgrave?  Nessa [as her now-deceased sister Lynn, and the Redgrave family, used to call her] seems to possess the ability to expand or contract, to fit the playing space she’s working in.  I first saw her on Broadway twenty-five years ago, as Lady in Tennessee Williams’ literally incendiary “Orpheus Descending,” a role that requires every kind of voluminous delivery.  Here, she resembles a cartoon grey mouse, living quietly behind that black baseboard archway.  And because the Cherry Lane is a compact off-Broadway house, her every carefully-calibrated, even wondrous movement and glance and muttering can be taken in by every audience member.  It’s a living compendium of how to act for the theatre.

And however cleverly Eisenberg has fashioned  this long one-act piece, it is ultimately the Redgrave performance that gives it its singularity.  Eisenberg [playwright and actor] gives us the young, self-important brat that he can consume for lunch.  And the originality of the premise, how it handles its issues of how the need to revise one’s work and one’s life can carve out that person’s perceived identity, enhances the experience of spending a short visit in Szczecin.

From Paris and Poland, next up: the Mississippi Delta, where it looks like not all the cats are hangin’ out on that famous tin roof.  To take it from some of the more quotable critics, Scarlett Johansen as Maggie in that Tennessee Williams classic scorcher gives a stinker of a performance.  But I’m here to testify that the pulchritudinous Ms. J is giving one of the best interpretations of that titular character that I’ve ever seen.  And personally, she is a gorgeous eyeful.

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” poses serious obstacles for any young woman trying to make us forget Elizabeth Taylor in that white silk slip, one of the most iconic images from mid-twentieth century filmdom.  It’s like watching an eager young actor show up for an audition doing the “Stella!” monologue from “Streetcar,” daring us not to compare him to Brando.  Maggie has been lugging around her own personal burlap bag full of lies for years now, lies about the ‘ideal’ marriage she’s in, with the football gilded god, Brick.  It’s Brick’s father’s birthday, and the old man’s nearest and dearest have gathered to pay tribute, especially those who harbor jackpot envy for Big Daddy’s fortune, if and when the suspicions that he has terminal cancer are true.

Big Daddy’s fortune flows from the canny stewardship he’s exercised over ‘the most  fertile scrap of land this side of the river Nile.’  Along with cotton, he has been eager to grow him a pair of proper heirs apparent, a son and a grandson he trusts, to name in his will.

Enter Maggie/Scarlett.  Or should we say re-enter.  Married to Big D’s favorite son, her avaricious desires are hampered by the most obvious of shortcomings in this little melodrama: Maggie and Brick are childless.  And Brick’s solicitous brother Gooper and his strident and ever-pregnant wife Mae are expecting their fifth offspring.

But watch what Johansen does with Maggie’s millstone, Brick.  Instead of over-preening, hip-strutting about the bedroom/stage, she keeps both ‘eyes’ on the bathroom where he’s finishing up a shower.  As Brick, Benjamin Taylor ["Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson"] skillfully navigates the room, holding a drink, using a crutch and wearing only a towel.  Miss Maggie smoothly, carefully navigates the room, delivering one of the most challenging monologues in the Tennessee Williams/American theatre canon.  And she does it catching every nuance and inflexion that was probably in TW’s head as the words got pounded out on his manual typewriter.  It’s easy to overlook what Maggie’s ’stakes’ are in this head-to-head competition between her husband and his brother, the personal stakes – an inheritance, a mind-numbing fortune that would forever keep her from sliding back into the poverty she compares to being as poor as Job’s turkey.  Sure, it’s all that.  But Brick would also inherit all that.  What’s at stake for Maggie the Cat is maybe her last chance to solidify her status as a true beauty, the lust-satisfying all-woman creature.  Because as long as she has not borne Brick’s child, her reason for being is hollow.

And that’s the challenge Miss Johansen tackles eight times a week, prepping herself for more of Big Daddy’s admiring, lingering glances, knowing that it’s her seemingly casual sex-appeal appearance that keeps his hope alive that Brick will father a child.

There was, and may still be, a wry anthem sung by TV’s “South Park” kids, “Blame Canada!”  This time, it’s Canada we have to thank, for the arrival of Michael Healey’s thoroughly engaging, well-crafted “The Drawer Boy.”  Set on a small farm in central Ontario during the summer of 1972,  the entire story unfolds in the kitchen, on the back porch and the back yard of a sustainable farm, run by two friends, Morgan [Brad Fryman] and Angus [William Lacey].  Now middle-aged, they served together in WWII, which left Angus, who is a math savant, stricken with a condition that robs him of some memory, and Morgan has become his caretaker, although they both share the work of running the farm.  Enter callous, young Miles [Alex Fast], a drama student who is part of a group using the summer to produce a new play about farm life, and seeks a kind of trade.  Alex would like to board with Morgan and Angus, and observe how the day-to-day operations take place, in exchange for doing whatever he can when he’s not at rehearsal with his theatre company in the nearby town.

It’s hard to tell what category or genre to expect once Miles arrives, because the elements are there for a fish-out-of-water comedy, an unnerving thriller or a rural drama.  Healey’s skills have given us some of each, in perfect balance.

As the weeks go by, we see a tender friendship grow between Miles and Angus.  Angus continues to search quietly for “something” in the house or on the property, not being able to recall what it is, except that it is significant.  But an undercurrent of unspoken tensions rise to the surface.  Details of how they burst forth, due to innocently-told stories from classic theatre by Miles to Angus, with life-changing consequences, will not be revealed here, because this is one work that deserves the courtesy [to the writer] of being experienced fresh.  What must be said is that all three actors have an unaffected style of work, keeping their presence and interplay well within the scope of the story, and, due to the excellent, serviceable set designed by Rebecca Lord-Surratt, have no need to compromise what they do.

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After-Pieces

If you only consider the pair of titles – “Waiting for Godot” and “No Man’s Land” – you might be inclined to watch old episodes of “Downton Abbey” instead of attending that gloomy-sounding evening in the theatre.  But, wait!  What we have here is Harold Pinter’s “Godot,” and Samuel Beckett’s “Land,” starring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, and they’re bringing their priceless talents to these revered works, in repertory, directed by Sean Mathias.  The Broadway-bound package arrives in Gotham in the fall . . . . . These two great actors are masters of the spoken word, to be sure.  Another form that celebrates the spoken word is the poetry slam, and if you’re one of those folks who scoff at the idea of poetry slams, open your mind and let this new talent in!  I was privileged to see and hear top-level poetry jams produced by Russell Simmons, who told me about his devotion to giving these young performers, who write all their own material, a real platform to shine, and they did.   On April 20th, celebrating National Poetry Month, the 15th Annual Teen Poetry Slam Finals, with contestants from across the country, will fill the Apollo Theatre stage, presented by Urban Word NYC.  For details, visit apollotheater.org, then visit the Apollo . . . . . While we enjoy [and possibly compete for tickets to] Bette Midler in the solo show “I’ll Eat You Last,” a different Divine Miss M vehicle, the beloved 1988 film “Beaches” has been adapted for the musical theatre stage.

The announcement was made by Eric Schaeffer, artistic director of Arlington, Virginia’s Signature Theatre.  It washes up on shore next February . . . . . Now in its 18th season, Rattlestick Theatre Company, in the West Village, is responsible for, among other things, the premiere production of Jesse Eisenberg’s “The Revisionist,” running now at the Cherry Lane.  Up ahead for Rattlestick is a daring expansion – the opening of a Los Angeles production of the new play “Slipping,” by Daniel Talbott, for a five-week run, starting on April 7.  They’re taking with them this season’s “Golden Boy,” the tremendous Seth Numrich.  For details: www.Rattlestick.org/rattlestick-LA.

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On Book

Lanford Wilson was one of America’s greatest playwrights.  To broaden your familiarity with his works, try “Volumes I and II – Lanford Wilson’s Collected Works” from Smith and Kraus. . . . . It’s great to report that Michael Healey’s “The Drawer Boy,” which won 4 Dora Awards, including Outstanding New Play,  is available from Playwrights Canada Press, based in Toronto. . . . . If you enjoy one-acts, one of the best at that form is Murray Schisgal, and his two break-out favorites, “The Typists” and “The Tiger,” ran together in New York in 1963, starring real-life married couple Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre, “Character Studies.”  His play, “Admissions,” which had three New York productions directed by Austin Pendleton, won the Best Play Award at the New York International Fringe Festival.  He has also written several other plays and musicals, and two political musical comedy reviews, all produced.  He wrote the Cable Ace Award-winning “Test of Time” for Lifetime Television.  He has taught at Columbia University Teacher’s College, Syracuse University, HB Studio and other institutions, and continues to teach small seminars and individual coaching sessions from home.  Information is available through tvellela@nyc.rr.com.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Not you, if a visit to the Booth

is on your current To-Do List

by TONY VELLELA

Thanks to Chicago’s ideal Christmas gift to Broadway, you’ve got the perfect New Year’s Eve resolution.  Permit me to explain . . .

At different times, I’ve been told by Julie Harris, Anne Jackson, Maureen

Stapleton, Eli Wallach, Olympia Dukakis and Anne Meara, that the single most influential performance they’d ever seen was Laurette Taylor, as Amanda in “The Glass Menagerie.”  Today, young audience members can experience a similarly powerful performance unfold, as Amy Morton rips into another iconic character, Martha.  Morton will impact these audience members in the powerful, gripping and very truthful production of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’”  Directed with a keen eye by Pam MacKinnon, this event comes courtesy of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre.

In addition to my extensive interviews with Albee’s original Martha, Uta Hagen, I’ve also done similar sessions with other Marthas –  Uta’s matinee stand-in Elaine Stritch, plus Estelle Parsons, Judith Ivey and Kathleen Turner.  I’ve seen Kathleen on stage, on the job, Elaine do line readings for me in her Long Island living room, plus Estelle at my place, and Judy in an empty theatre downtown.  Plus, I’ve seen the other Taylor [Elizabeth, not Laurette] in the film version. I also taped a revealing interview with the playwright.  In addition, I regularly teach this play as one of my four-part workshops on great American plays and characters.  So one could say I have a fairly strong familiarity with this Albee masterwork.

Now that I’ve tossed out all that show-offy credentializing, I want to state that, right now, at the Booth, Morton is creating the kind of sparks-flying, juices-flowing, thunder-deafening, heartbeat-threatening performance than stands with the sterling reports of Laurette’s Amanda.  Despite popular thinking from those who know only the basic facts about the play and the character, and true to Martha’s own voluble pronouncement to her husband, she is not a monster.

Let’s step back a moment.  Who are these people?  Martha, and her husband George, are a middle-aged, intellectually-and-culturally besotted small New England college professor in the history department, and his stay-at-home wife, [she being the only child of the college president]. They live in 1962’s sharply divided class-influenced society.   When we meet them, at about 2 A.M. on a Sunday morning in September, they’re just arriving home – we hear her laughter as they struggle to unlock the front door.  They are returning from one of Martha’s Daddy’s start-of-term faculty mixers, the kind of social event that Martha loves [she gets to be, publicly, the daughter dauphine], and George abhors [he is publicly the daughter dauphine's socially regressed consort].   They launch into a brief, amusing and seemingly familiar squabble and reconciliation.  Then, minutes later, to George’s surprise, and Martha’s delight, a much younger couple, Nick and Honey, show up.  He is a strapping, middle-weight, biology professor, new to the school, and she is his adoring, brandy-imbibing, mousy-type wife.  Madison Dirks (Nick) and Carrie Coon (Honey) deliver pitch-perfect characterizations.

Early events seem to make it clear that this set-up is following a familiar pattern in the their home life, as any new faculty member [young virile male] and his forgettable spouse get invited to the home of the First Daughter, and her marital appendage, George, who is in, but not head of the history department.  The scenario kicks off with Martha changing into something ‘more comfortable,’ i.e. seduction garb.  George [the spot-on Tracy Letts] tolerates this maneuver, even as Martha’s overt footsie-ing seems to be accelerating at a faster-than-usual pace, in part due to Nick’s receptivity and Honey’s brandy-induced oblivion.  Morton is not at all clumsy executing the ’steps’ that loosen up the party, especially one of the younger parties.  And during the next three-plus hours, we witness four people in various stages of meltdown, the truths of their personal and professional lives ground to raw nubs.  George at first refuses to engage the couple in any conventional chit-chat.  Then in a new twist, George launches into a series of mind games meant to embarrass and unnerve the young professor, and to disrupt Martha’s routine.  We see her and her husband adopt a chilling open warfare stance, progressing from stinging verbal assaults to actual physical ones.  Secrets come out; lies are exposed; agendas are questioned; fantasies are shattered.

This real-time play unflinchingly tells all these stories in the book-laden, newspaper-strewn living room, dotted with empty glasses and stale pipes.  Theatre archives bulge with a variety of variation on the father/son confrontation premise.  This current revival of Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” presents a unique father/son drama, because even though we never see Daddy in the room, and even though his only offspring is female, it takes its place as one of the most powerful of that genre ever written.

And the remarkable Amy Morton has managed to find the correct balance between the male and the female sides of offspring Martha.  After her mother died, Martha was the one who graciously served as hostess in her teen years, for her Daddy’s receptions, until she got pushed aside, when he remarried, to a woman with lots of money to plow into the college.  Martha’s the one who enchanted George, leading him down the garden path, straight to the altar, because she at that time saw him as a likely candidate to take the old man’s place heading up the college.  She’s the one who sowed wild oats while away at an exclusive boarding school [with roles reversed - she got pregnant by the gardener, instead of 'the wayward prodigal son' knocking up the town waitress].  Whenever discussing Martha, always keep in mind that the playwright describes her as ‘a large boisterous woman, 52, looking somewhat younger.  Ample, but not fleshy.’

She’s 52, so she was born in 1910!  She was a rebellious youth [teen years] in the reckless 1920s.  She was drafted into the ‘proper hostess’ role, to help Daddy, in the financially lean 1930s, when those receptions led to endowments.  She married the potentially malleable suitor in the 1940s, trying to groom him for ascendancy to the big office.  She remains childless to this day, a complex woman, trapped in the genteel role she rebelled against four decades ago, but with George instead of Daddy as King of the Castle.  Taken together, it’s hardly surprising that she is who she is.  In Uta’s view, Martha was someone that was “…cold.  Nobody ever had any sympathy for her, so she doesn’t have any sympathy for anybody.  She’s quite vulnerable.”  Kathleen Turner pictured her never having been praised, never hearing “…you’re a good girl, Martha.”  To Judith Ivey, her Martha has learned to use the phrase “. . . give me a drink . . . that’s the concrete place she can go to,” adding “. . . she’s vulnerable through the whole play.”  Asked to describe Martha, Elaine Stritch said to me “She’s an alcoholic.  I’ve played a lot of parts that deal with alcohol, women who drink . . . I know a lot about alcohol because I’m an alcoholic . . . she’ll do anything to get what she wants, and the drink makes it easier to get there . . . that  feeling of total control and escape.”  Estelle Parsons’ quick response was “she’s a drunk.”

Now – Amy Morton.  A more comprehensive understanding of how complex Martha is, would require highly-honed creative skills to integrate all these aspects into one performance, playing a character that we only see that one night – and in real time.  I don’t know at all how this actor prepares to create a character.  Certainly, her performance in “August: Osage County” proved her ability to juggle a raft of competing emotions like one of those mind-blowing Ed Sullivan performers who could keep an egg, a book, a football, a dinner plate and a hatchet in the air all at the same time.  Here, she is tackling a person whose biographical and psychological facets are just as diverse, and can be just as threatening.

Watch how she can turn on a dime, and switch gears from faux demure to fierce lioness.  See the woman’s body shifting back and forth, from teen queen at the drive-in take-out concession stand, to weary matron, trying to hold herself together despite the ways time and gravity work against her.  The first ‘reveal,’ when Martha admits to George that she let it slip about the boy, presents a woman genuinely remorseful.  She evolves into the initially-unwilling combatant.  She can be as intellectually savvy as her professor husband – watch how she handles the moment when George attempts to correct her choice of the word ‘abstruse’ to describe Nick: GEORGE: Abstract.  MARTHA: ABSTRUSE!  In the sense of recondite.  Don’t you tell me words.”  Game.  Set. Match.

It’s very revealing how she navigates her tough, yet gentle monologue that slowly and contemplatively opens Act Three.  Three pages later, a different monologue delivered to Nick reveals a painful truth, and she delivers this one as though it’s been waiting to be spoken out loud, for years and years.

Morton uses Albee’s words like a composer uses notes: carefully selecting the right one to precede and follow others.  She uses movements and silences just as judiciously, never giving in to obvious, stereotypical choices some have made.  Uta’s comment on the film version, with Elizabeth Taylor, “You just play for a drunken slut, which is in a way what [Elizabeth] Taylor tried to do.”

So let us thank Steppenwolf for this historic gift, seeing Amy Morton bring to life, fully, this fascinating, fearful yet fearless, nearly desperate, fragile yet steely woman of a certain age, a cougar before the dynamic had a name, and in name only.  And our New Year’s resolution should be to gather together a group of friends, see this gem of a play, and then luxuriate in the chance to exchange viewpoints and comments and opinions and such like that.

Happy New Year!

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre, “Character Studies.”  His award-winning play “Admissions,” which received three New York productions directed by Austin Pendleton, was selected as Best Play at the New York International Fringe Festival, published by Playscripts.  He is also the author of several other plays, musicals and revues.  He wrote the CableAce Award-winning “The Test of  Time,” for Lifetime Television.  He conducts small-class intensive classes from his home, and information can be obtained by inquiring at tvellela@nyc.rr.com.

Intermission Talk

November 28, 2012

by TONY VELLELA

Okay, now it’s the girls’ turn.

We’ve thrilled to their macho-yet-mellifluous singing, their on-point, testosterone-driven dancing and their box-office busting successes.  Who, you ask? Why, that little charmer Billy Elliot, along with those hard-driving Newsies.

Now, twenty-five years after her original appearance on the Broadway boards, that pre-adolescent inheritor of any and all previous female parlayists of escapistism confection, has at last come home.  [breath]   Two-dimensional Annie at first came to life during this country’s strangling Depression era, the 1930’s, as a cartoon character who survives on hope instead of oxygen, drawn by Harold Gray for the Tribune newspaper syndicate.  Enter librettist Thomas Meehan, composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Martin Charnin, who collectively appropriated the elements of blank-eyed Annie’s ‘life,’ and with clever readjustments, applied the basics, to create a different but also successful musical tale of another squadron of homeless children – boys again –  in hard-knock London.  And ‘fathered’ by “Oliver” out of a mother unknown, “Annie” was born!

This creative trio very carefully picked Oliver’s own pockets, which had enough left to give birth to “Newsies.”  It was an easy birth.

This revival of “Annie,” a piece absent from Broadway for decades, but kicking up its defiant little heels in other theatres, big and little, across the globe, has universal appeal.  Knowing basic American history enhances the experience, but not knowing it does not weaken it.

Annie’s an orphan, living in an orphanage, after being pinched by a bobby for living under a bridge with her very new, four-legged friend, the ever-compliant  Sandy [no relation to any weather phenomenon].  War profiteer Warbucks ['bucks' made from 'war' - get it?], is persuaded by his p.r. person, to share Christmas dinner with a representative of poverty, which is Annie: it will humanize the tycoon known for his lack of warmth.  Once there, Annie insinuates herself into the dining room, despite the brazen efforts of the matron what runs the orphanage, eh?  Despite all manner of  ’harrowing’ obstacles concocted by the matron, Miss Hannigan [the brazenly multi-talented Katie Finneran], and two felonious friends, Annie not only gets to eat the dinner, she shares it with the President of the United States [!], and agrees to move in to the Warbucks mansion = she is now the newly-adopted ward of the predictably heart-softened Warbucks.  There’s enough warmth and good cheer pouring off the stage to melt any number of hardened cockles of any number of audience members.

Two men at the helm, and two ladies on the stage, make for all this joy.  Choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and director James Lapine guide Katie’s harridan Hannigan, and Lilla Crawford’s adorable Annie, through the dozens of moments that make for the happiest of endings on Broadway. A great deal of ink has been used to describe the gloriously skilled Ms. Finneran, every bit of it true.  Finneran, a Tony winner for a drink-sodden secretary who would gladly be a toy, was the highlight of the starchy revival of “Promises, Promises”.   She’s got the  rubber-faced abilities that made Carol Burnett a comic star, along with Gwen Verdon’s lithe dexterity, and she is sneaking up on the power of Nancy Walker’s pipes. She is the classic triple threat.

But it is Lilla Crawford who surprises, when she launches into her first number, “Maybe,” and with her sunshine-fueled smiles, there is no maybe about it – Annie’s good will will triumph.  Her voice fills the house with the kind of genuine delivery of a tune that makes composers close their eyes and smile broadly.  If one can imagine a pint-sized Bernadette Peters, red coif and all, bringing down the bad guys [and dames], you’ve got Ms. Crawford.  Only a few young performers have the natural confidence that serves them well, once they step onto those boards. Like Peters, who definitely had it at that age [did you ever see those videos?], Crawford’s got it, too, and in spades.

If it were Fred Ebb describing “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” he might call it “a noisy hall where there’s a nightly brawl.”  But this is not Chicago in the twenties, it’s London’s Music Hall Royale in 1895.  And while you may not place Charles Dickens in the same category as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, fact is, he does, or did.  Problem is, he ran out of time before he was able to prove it.  So your mission, [should you choose to accept it]: solve the unsolved case of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”

With every murder mystery that involves fake people, impossible situations and a finally resolved unresolvable longing by someone for someone else, they all have at least one thing in common: the guy [unless it's one of Basil 'Sherlock Holmes' Rathbone's  sometime nemesis Hillary Brooke] who’s responsible for it all coming together is known as the Brains.  Here, the Brains is Rupert Holmes, who is not a two-dimensional character, and not even three – he may be four-dimensional or even five, given the breadth and depth of his collected works.  Wait a minute . . . Sherlock HOLMES. Rupert HOLMES.  Surely a coincidence.

Last seen on Broadway in 1985, when Holmes set a record by becoming the first person to solely win Tonys for Best Book, Best Music and Best Lyrics, “Drood” unfolds as an acting troupe re-tells the saga of a seemingly guileless young man pulled in several directions [read by several people, friends and family all], with agendas decidedly at odds with the others.

But it’s not details that count here, despite their usual importance in solving a homicide.  What counts here is having a good time.  Since we never have enough definitive evidence to put the finger on someone, it’s left up to the audience to do it.  At the end of each performance, the audience is called on to vote on who’s the guilty party, a zany twist that  more than matches the other twisted zanies that feed the beast – an out-of-control music hall tale, broad enough to [barely] contain the likes of Stephanie J. Block, who is at times a dazzling Edwin; Gregg Edelman, who often portrays the Reverend with an almost religious zeal; Will Chase, divine as a more-than-occasional John Jasper; Jesse Mueller, who as that Landless dame belts with the best of them, and Chita Rivera,

who emerges as the Princess Puffer, exotic-ness intact.  Witnessing the magnificent Kennedy Center Honoree Rivera’s sure-footed allure, carried off with a quick wink and a sly smile/smirk, is reason enough to turn back time and slip sideways into this rollicking den of iniquity.  And as to whodunit . . . do you really care?

What many of you do care about is that ever-popular couple, George and Martha.  Thanks for your inquiries about when I’d be visiting them.  The answer is next week, in a column devoted entirely to the fierce pair.  I’ll also have recommendations of books that would make superb holiday gifts.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre, “Character Studies.”  His play “Admissions,’ published by Playscripts, Inc. won the Best Play Award at the New York International Fringe Festival.  He has also written several other plays and musicals, all produced, as well as “Maisie and Grover Go To The Theatre,” published by ArtAge Publishing.  He also teaches small classes on discovering the inside structure and meanings of contemporary classic plays and musicals, as well as audition monologues and one-to-one mentoring.  He can be reached at tvellela@nyc.rr.com.

September 18, 2012

“Chaplin” to “Tribes” ~

“Bring It On”

by TONY VELLELA

It happens much less often to young men than it does to young women.  By my reckoning, the last few times were 1993 and 2003.  And it’s happened again.

The ‘it?’  A nearly unknown young man dazzles and captivates in an original musical, filling the stage and commanding everyone’s attention for all the right reasons.  In 1993, it was Michael Cerveris, in “Tommy.”  Ten years later, in 2003, John Lloyd Young practically flattened audiences as Frankie Valli in “Jersey Boys.”  And now, Rob McClure conjures up that same special magic, the fantastic performance only a spellbinder can deliver, as the title character in “Chaplin.”

Expecting anyone to ignite the types of talents Charlie Chaplin bestowed on the whole world during the first few decades of the last century would seem like a chore so tough that no one could fill those shoes – and we’re talking about those oversized floppers that were part of Chaplin’s trademark outfit.  Chaplin, dubbed the Little Tramp, literally revolutionized how the motion picture industry operated, how to balance artificial, prank-based comedy with genuine, heart-rending pathos, and to do it all without speaking a single word.

Charles Chaplin, along with his older brother and business manager Sydney, took the collective raw energies from London’s East End streets and alleys, and used them to shape a style of performing that simply – connected.  No words needed.  Young Charlie witnessed basic emotions as they sprang up, on and in the streets, and soon was experiencing them first-hand.  Chief among them happened as he was forced to witness something he would never forget – watching his mother, a saloon singer, fall prey to the bottle.  Charlie forever felt some measure of guilt as he saw her mind descend into a hazy blur, leading to her institutionalization.  His guilt, however undeserved, never left him.

Like a chapter from one of the popular penny paperbacks of the day, Charlie was discovered! He often stepped in to fill one of his mother’s performing dates, and had gained a measure of recognition while still a young teen.  After seeing him on tour in America, Hollywoodland’s Mack Sennett tapped young Charlie to return with him to California, and join his growing ensemble of silent screen actors and actresses.  Sennett saw Chaplin’s skilled talent for inventing business as he went along, the same style Sennett had been using to crank out his nickelodeon shorts. Sydney stayed in London to care for mother Hannah, until Charlie, now one of America’s richest and most popular screen ’stars,’ persuaded Sydney to pack up himself, their mother and anything else of value, and move the whole lot to the sunny shores of the Pacific.

For more than a dozen years, Charlie’s comic antics and hilarious mishaps, which he drew from recollections of his childhood street life, fueled a movie career that catapulted him to the top, leading eventually to a break with Sennett, and the creation of Chaplin Productions.  His films mesmerized audiences everywhere, viewing them in newly-outfitted movie theatres and in cleaned-up storefronts fitted with a white bed sheet.  Three marriages repeated the same track in and out of divorce court, however costly the settlements.  His marriage to film actress Paulette Goddard gave him some pleasure, to be sure, but it was his marriage in 1943, to Oona O’Neill, 18-year old daughter of playwright Eugene, where he finally found a true soul mate, at the age of 53.  They shared left-wing political beliefs, as well as eight children.  It was not until he snubbed the reigning widely-syndicated queen of the gossip columnists of the era, Hedda Hopper, that his misadventures and libertine lifestyle caught up with him.  Hopper launched a crusade to ruin the Little Tramp, charging him with being a Communist – she had a direct line to J. Edgar [think Hunsicker in "Sweet Smell of Success"].  Hopper, whose own one-dimensional acting on screen never brought her more than quirky supporting roles, turned her columns into platforms for this vengeful obsession. Her publishers loved it; his fans did not.  His self-imposed exile to Paris lasted until his status was reversed, and Hollywood honored him with an honorary Oscar in 1971.  He was 88.

This man, Chaplin, led a surprising, colorful, extraordinary life.  This show, “Chaplin,” is quite ordinary, devoid of much color [literally - the show's palette is almost exclusively black and white, to evoke the silents], and rather predictable, all the more because its ills are so starkly self-inflicted.

Presenting this overstuffed life on a stage with no sets, few set pieces and devoid of color imposes a judgment on the content that is so at odds with its reality.  Trying to ‘fill’ the stage instead with a few dancing couples and painted drops only calls attention to how vacant the spaces are.  This rumpled show, saddled with the constantly-shifting time sequences from librettists Christopher Curtis and Thomas Meehan, gets no assistance from Warren Carlyle’s pedestrian direction and choreography.  Jon Driscoll’s video and projection design work deserves special mention for adding sorely-needed movement and eye relief with a deft touch of true artistry.  However, the overall effect remains that of a high-end university production caught short of funds at the end of the semester.  [minor case-in-point: American flags of post 1960]

A word about Jenn Colella [Hedda Hopper].  This woman makes nasty look amusing.  She holds the stage in every one of her scenes [too few, for my taste], especially since HH’s role in Charlie’s reversals was so – uh – paramount?

Craving COLOR?  Moaning for MOVEMENT?  Looking for a little LEG?  Your longings can be satisfied only three blocks south, at the St. James.  “Bring It On: The Musical” delivers all you desire, and lots and lots more.  Inspired by the series of “Bring It On” modest teen features from the 2000’s, this production makes helium look like lead.

The scene: American high schools # 1 and # 2.  Award-winning cheerleading squad from school # 1 [white bread heaven] learns its main attraction, captain Campbell [Taylor Louderman] has been transferred to school # 2 [we're made to think their kids can't even spell 'ghetto'].  Plus – they have NO cheerleading squad.  None. Talk about anti-American.  Joining Campbell in a move to # 2 is Bridget, # 1 squad’s overweight  ‘mascot’ cheerleader.  This unlikely set of allies grabs the bit and decides [without seeking input] that the hip-hop dance crew will morph into a squad.  Predictable resistance [led by the super-strong vocals of knockout Adrienne Warren].  Boyfriend/girlfriend criss-crosses [Jason Gotay is the deserving b.f. of choice].  Plus a few eyebrow-raisers [even "Glee" does not have a transgender student - yet].  And for those of you who were in high school along with Andy Hardy, there’s the porcelain-perfect Elle McElmore, who reincarnates young June Presser, who routinely portrayed the nemesis of every one of Andy’s ‘real’ bobby-soxer babes.

Respect is earned by these cavorters, because the moves they engineer, from handstand pyramids and sweep cradles to the truly perilous double full basket toss, can take your breath away.  And Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography keeps everyone looking lighter than air as they glide through it, sneakers a foot off the ground, to the pumped score from Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tom Kitt.  Jeff Whitty’s book, Andy B’s direction and the lyrics by Lin-Manuel and Amanda Green = B+, although credit is due for how they manage to echo Lady Gaga when the ladies belt out they’re doing “what we were born to do.”

So here’s a thought:  you’re wanting to plan a Broadway foray with your musically-inclined teens.  Send those who prefer pep to “Bring It On.”  Drop off those who find fun on page one to “Newsies.”   You?  You’re on your own.  Just this “Once.”

Cheerleading squads.  Basketball teams.  Studio contract players.    Hip-hop dance crews.  They’re all, in one way or another, what I often call a ‘false group,’ people who share one thing that connects them, but may not share anything else.  Families.  Democrats.  Tribes.

In Nina Raine’s sensitive new play “Tribes,” currently at the Barrow Street Theatre, a family that has defined itself as being societal outsiders uses that aspect of their collective ‘persona’ to define what makes them a tribe.  That, and how they seem to treat the one of their own who is deaf.

Seemingly of above-average intelligence that barely gets used in coherent ways, this clan manages to survive because they’ve evolved a lower standard of living and they all pitch in to maintain it.  They might be the 21st century version of the delightfully eccentric Vanderhofs in Kaufman & Hart’s “You Can’t Take It With You.”  In that supremely charming comedy-with-messages, a suitor turns up to court the sanest of the bunch [partial outsider: she works in a bank], and his attentions [plus a lot of other plot stuff] disrupt the disorderly order of the household.  In “Tribes,” the deaf son [outsider family member] begins courting a young woman whose hearing has started to fade.  And her presence lifts the veil on the realities of how he is treated – which is to say, his deafness is largely ignored.

Raine has already sharpened her skills when it comes to interweaving the motives and agendas and prejudices and foibles and expectations and fears of members of a false group, which is no easy task at all.  No list of how each of this family’s members lays claim to each of these aspects could be complete, short of an open-ended after-play panel discussion with the playwright, the cast, the director [the miracle worker David Cromer] and a team of psychologists, social workers and representatives from all major and minor religions.  And gallons and gallons to drink.  Moderator: Oprah.

What you need to know is this – “Tribes” is a first-rate work of theatrical literature, minor flaws and all.  When people spoke of ‘plays’ two generations ago, this is what they meant.  And if they didn’t get this, they at least expected it.

On Book

Let’s start with a laugh or a million – “You Can’t Take It With You,” a comedy in three acts by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, opened at the Booth on December 14, 1936, with a cast that’s largely been forgotten, expect for Josephine Hull, immortalized on film as the puzzled aunt in “Harvey” and one of the two ladies known for their killer brew in “Arsenic and Old Lace.”  You can read the Kaufman & Hart original playscript, either in the Dramatists Play Service version, or as part of the Library of America’s excellent collection, “Kaufman & Co. – the Broadway Comedies.”

And while we’re on the subject, treat yourself to a substantial, satisfying and all-around first-rate collection of great plays.  You know you’ve always planned to.  If you’re lucky, you might discover on the shelves of your favorite bookshop and mine one of these classic tomes: “Sixteen Famous American Plays,” edited by Bennett Cerf and Van H. Cartmell, originally published in 1941 by Random House, or “Critics’ Choice – New York Drama Critics’ Circle Prize Plays, 1935 – 1955,” edited by Jack Gaver for Hawthorn Books in 1955.  If the bookshelves, the internet or Craig’s List don’t deliver, ask one of those friendly and knowledgeable folks behind the information counter at the bookshop for their recommended titles that provide the same kind of collection.  Every civilized home should have one, or many.

Finally, a title that gives one of our most celebrated actors another opportunity to stand out, this time by his own hand . . .   Frank Langella’s “Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them.”  He presents, cheek by jowl,  sixty odd bold-face names of the last century, from all corners of the world of what every civilized family knows and gossips about – I mean, discusses.  There are people whose names you may hear mentioned virtually every single day [Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana], to those you may never have heard of, but should have [Maureen Stapleton, Stella Adler, Jo Van Fleet].  There’s no index, so you can’t cherry-pick entries about people you’re eager to consume stories about.  What there is, though, is a first-person look back at how a man measures his life – by the people he meets.  Isn’t that what we heard in sixth grade – a man is known by the company he keeps?  At least you can keep a book about a man who lives that type of life.

Afterpieces

‘Next door’ to the subject matter of “Clybourne Park,” the Jonathan Frazen novel “House For Sale” has been adapted for the stage, and will be presented by the always-ambitious Transport Group in October.  And a different kind of adaptation, based on Jean Shepherd’s stories from the 1960s and the popular 1983 film, “A Christmas Story” is said to be waiting in the wings for a theatre to settle into for the holiday season.  If you’ve experienced the heart-wrenching mirth of raconteur Shepherd’s classic tale of nine-year-old Ralphie. his deep desire for a BB gun for Christmas, his mother’s admonition that “you’ll shoot your eye out,” and the antics and adventures surrounding the most eventful week of Ralphie’s life, keep watch!

The Vineyard harkens back to the 1952 Presidential race, when veep GOP candidate, Cong. Richard M. Nixon, [R], CA, was forced to take to the television airwaves, still largely the province of the 1%, to disavow any rumors that he had amassed a secret ’slush fund,’ to use at his own, possibly illegal, discretion.  It opens October 3, and it’s called “Checkers.”  It’s not about a board game.

Angelica Page, daughter of Rip Torn and the late, great Geraldine Page, has chosen to create “Turning Page,” a solo show about her mom, rather than run away from that legacy.  Set to premiere at the Cherry Lane on October 11, this piece is sure to bring back any emotion-layered memories of the time(s) you saw Miss Page perform, in film, on television, and best of all, on the stage.  My best stage memory recalls Ms. Page, eyes flashing, body undulating with the hidden power of a woman smarter than any of the men in the room, when she portrayed Regina in “The Little Foxes,” at the Pocono Playhouse, in Pennsylvania.  I can still see her putting her brothers in their place, oh, so gently.

Finally, how to entertain your out-of-town relatives, if they’re joining you for the holidays, with something new and probably not on your radar screen.  A unique attraction that’s been a fixture in other major cities in the U.S. and Europe, the Fazzino Ride, designed by 3-D Pop Artist Charles Fazzino, lets you glide through the streets of Manhattan and take in the sights from the comfort of a sideways-built tour bus.  Along with two jolly tour guides who narrate the trip, the riders face a bus-long set of windows that bring both average New Yorkers who think they’re on ‘Candid Camera,’  and charmingly Thurber-like performers almost into your lap.  Especially memorable are the red-haired tap dancer who swings to a jazz beat, right hand swinging him from a lamp post, a happy girl playing the sax, who obliges a passenger by belting out an Adele number, and a pair of star-crossed lovers, a dungarees dude sporting a backpack, and a delicate ballerina whose tutu is studded with mini-lights.  If you missed it this season, jot it down for the spring break crowd when they encamp on your sofa.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre, “Character Studies.”  His play “Admissions,” directed by Austin Pendleton, was awarded Best Play at the International Fringe Festival, and is published by Playscripts.  He has written seven plays and musicals, two political musical comedy revues, and a CableAce Award-winning documentary for Lifetime Television, “The Test of Time.”  He teaches small-group theatre courses from his home, as well as personal sessions in play, scene and character analysis, as well as audition prep.

“Harvey” Reappears

on the Broadway Stage,

plus… Other Venues

Worth Checking Out

by  TONY  VELLELA

These days, seeing and hearing someone walking along the sidewalk having an animated conversation with someone who’s not there usually means they’ve got a small piece of plastic in their ear or around their neck, rattling along during their end of a conversation on a phone we can’t see.  But in Mary Chase’s 1944 Pulitzer Prize winning comedy “Harvey,” it meant that the person you saw and heard was chatting with – well – no one.  To discover that this play centers on an affable young man who lives in a Denver Victorian mansion with his aunt, his sister and her daughter, and has as his closest friend a six-foot-tall white rabbit, doesn’t sound like much of a premise.  And it wouldn’t be, without the deft hand of a playwright who knew how to juggle sincerity, whimsy, chaos and charm.  It belongs to a slim list of successful comedies set primarily in an expansive living room in mid-last century America [see Kaufman and Hart's "The Man Who Came to Dinner" and "You Can't Take It With You," or Joseph Kesserling's "Arsenic and Old Lace"], but manages to take a few of its characters into some sort of cosmic stratosphere, leaving the others behind to scratch their heads and catch their breath.  The ‘Topper’ pictures lived in the same realm, although we, the audience, could ’see’ George and Marian whenever Topper did.

The rabbit-seer is Elwood P. Dowd, comfortably living on an inheritance that permits him to provide generous, worry-free living conditions to his family, and to wander through town commenting to his furry friend, to the dismay of townsfolk, and the consternation of his social-climbing kin.  And giving Dowd just the proper mix of childlike innocence and clear-eyed observations on life is Jim Parsons, who turned in a solid performance in the recent revival of “The Normal Heart,” soon to be reprised in a film version, as well as a two-time Emmy-winning perf as Dr. Sheldon Cooper, in the runaway sitcom hit “The Big Bang Theory.”  That latter role, in fact, shares one critical characteristic with Elwood – a literal mindedness that escapes most others, and causes no end of confusion when he expects a person’s actual words to mean what they connote – a natural truth-teller.  Result: his sister Veda feels the best place for Elwood is a mental institution.  When she visits one to arrange for her brother’s admission, her story of what her brother is and does lands her a room instead of him.

With the aid of a sympathetic judge [the solid Larry Bryggman], Veda is released, leaving the institution’s chief psychiatrist Dr. Chumley, [an exasperated Charles Kimbrough] to attempt to sort out how these oddly-shaped pieces could possibly fit together.  He has managed, to his consternation, to spend time in a local tavern with Elwood [and Harvey].

Like other comedies in this sub-genre, sub-plots abound.  Veda’s daughter wants to marry a rich, well-connected young man, his aunt struggles to ward off those who would harm Elwood, Dr. Chumley’s assistant Dr. Sanderson letches after his attractive, wholly unreceptive nurse, among other deviations.

But it is the absolutely guileless Elwood, and his independently-minded companion, who provide the star power for these tangential plots, such as they are, giving them a solid center around which to orbit.  Under Scott Ellis’ breezy direction for Roundabout, those ‘planets’ reasonably manage to stay in line.

Parsons achieves, or instinctively projects, an ageless quality, a youngish man with a boyish grin and a childish naivete – which, taken together, are just about irresistible.  Given his mastery of this jumble of traits on “Big Bang,” it comes as no surprise that Parsons holds it all together, with nary a fourth-wall wink.  The very pleasant surprise, however, is Jessica Hecht as Veda, a woman governed by an interest in taking over Elwood’s inheritance, and by the town’s rigid social conventions, who suffers an hilarious meltdown trying to extricate the family from Elwood’s benign yet gossip-stained control.  Hecht has built a solid reputation portraying women caught in someone else’s trap ["A View from the Bridge," "Three Sisters," "After the Fall," etc].  Veda has been performed by actresses known for playing women who used to be referred to as dithering – Josephine Hull originated the role and repeated it in the James Stewart picture [and was equally engaging in "Arsenic...Lace"], and among others, the Mel Brooks comedy maven Madelyn Kahn, the estimable British actress Patricia Routledge ['68 Tony winner, "Darling of the Day;" BBC's "Keeping Up Appearances"], and Marion Lorne, Robert Walker’s addled mother in “Strangers on a Train.”  Hecht was previously seen in one of the smaller roles when this play was revived in 1998.  Here, she shows another collection of talents: a real affinity for physical comedy, for delivering lines that can only be funny when spoken honestly, and for knowing how to undergo a complete loss of control without appearing like a refugee from a cable network grade C sitcom.

There’s a curious irony to the fact that the Pulitzer committee chose this work instead of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” for its 1945 prize for drama.  “Harvey” did enjoy a substantial run – 1,775 performances, and was directed by Antoinette Perry [yes, THAT Antoinette, first Board chairman of the American Theatre Wing, and namesake of the Tony Award].  Both pieces do deal with how sensitive, non-confrontational young men deal with the harshness of real life.  In this case, Elwood P. Dowd’s choice manages to reaffirm a belief in the potential for mankind to soar above its crippling conventions with gentility and humor.

If you’re willing to spread your own wings and land in territory that may not be as familiar, try visiting a few of New York’s less prominent, yet culturally rich venues that always offer new or re-imagined work, and featuring emerging talent and vitality.

Case in point: a cleverly-accessible “Uncle Vanya,” concocted by the remarkably resilient Soho Rep, which has now been extended through August 26th.  Also, Romeo Candido and Carmen de Jesus’ “Prison Dancer,” a winning New York Musical Theatre Festival alum, starring Jose Llana and Albert Guerzon, at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, opening on July 20th.  And for that matter, check out the entire line-up of another hotbed of talent, this year’s Midtown International Theatre Festival, running from July 16 through August 5th [www.midtownfestival.org], at both the Dorothy Strelsin Theatre and the June Havoc Theatre, at 312 west 36th street.  And this year’s featured production from Theatreworks USA’s 24th Annual Free Summer Theatre Program is “Skippyjon Jones,” opening July 17 at the Lucille Lortel, 121 Christopher Street. To learn where free tickets can be secured for this musical romp based on the children’s popular picture book series by Judy Schachner, visit www.twusa.org, then treat your pre-teens to masterful stage entertainment.

Off Book

Or in this case, ON book.  Summer / beach / patio / veranda / rolling lawn reading lists abound.  Here, in no particular order, are several to consider, whatever your primary attraction to the boards may be.

Start small.  If you were too busy [really?] to catch “Venus in Fur,” the latest from David Ives, which starred the electrifying Nina Arianda, and directed by Walter Bobbie, pick up the playscript, published by Northwestern University Press.  The skillful Ives touch with dialogue and premise shines through [and for my money, which is about a dollar and a half, it should have been the Best Play winner].

Two really fun big-books that offer first rate browser material, and could proudly reside on the coffee table,  present history and information in really accessible formats.  From Peter Allen to Franco Zeffirelli, “The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance and Musical Theater,” edited by Claude J. Summers for Cleis Press, won’t let you put it down.  It should come with a carrying case.  The other compilation, ranging from Harold Arlen to Vincent Youmans, chronicles the lives and careers that left indelible imprints we’ve all benefitted from. “Geniuses of the American Musical Theatre: The Composers and Lyricists,”  written by Herbert Keyser, with a foreword by Ted Chapin, also features dozens and dozens of photos, from rehearsal room candids and production shots, to personal snaps of the great ones at work.

If you’d rather peer into great lives one at a time, three theatrical giants are ‘exposed’ in sometimes painful, but always compelling detail, like watching a PBS documentary created by a crime reporter, a sob sister, a press agent and someone’s theatre-crazed third cousin.  Legendary acting coach and teacher Robert ‘Bobby’ Lewis impacted the craft and careers of most of the most significant theatrical cast of characters from the 1930s through the following half a century, from playwrights such as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, to other directors including Elia Kazan and Harold Clurman, and actors from the Adler family to Blanche Yurka.  The autobiography is titled “Slings and Arrows: Theater in My Life,” from Applause Books.

Also choosing to pen his own story, Arthur Laurents titled it “Original Story By,” emphasizing the importance of writers in the creative process of making a stage piece, and in his case, some iconic films as well.  He subtitled it “A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood,” and since Laurents was a masterful story-teller and a brilliant wordsmith, the scenes and conflicts, anecdotes, love stories and backstage gossip fly off the page.  With pictures!  When I interviewed him, he was well into his eighties, still as confident, brash and engaging as the central character in this autobiography.

Finally, a not-so-obvious gargantuan influence on the American theatre, in the person of Gerald Schoenfeld, who guided the Shubert Organization for decades, following the demise of Shubert family members, and until his own death in 2008.  Stretching back to the last third of the nineteenth century, Shubert brothers Lee and J.J., and their sons, established the most powerful theatrical empire in American history.  Schoenfeld’s memoir, “Mr. Broadway: The Inside Story of the Shuberts, the Shows and the Stars,” pulls absolutely no punches.  His straightforward, direct writing style is almost a blessing, because you want to get pulled along from one incredible event to the next, starring everyone from the Abbotts [Bud and George], to Mort Zuckerman.  And if you recall the scene in “Gypsy,” when Madame Rose and her two prodigies, Louise and June, find themselves summoned to the imposing inner sanctum of impresario producer Mr. Grantziger, [libretto by Arthur Laurents], then you’ll have an idea of Schoenfeld’s domain.  I visited him there only twice, but it was even more intimidating in real life than in the Hollywood versions, although the man himself by then had developed a pleasant, almost sanguine persona.

New Resources

Two very different, but extremely remarkable developments recently became available to the regular theatre-goer, and the theatre practitioner outside of the Great White Way.

It’s a new iPad app, for starters, that makes the jobs of choreographers, stage managers, directors and production folks, and it’s called Stage Write.  This little wonder allows any of those mentioned above the ability to document movements, dance steps, spacing and traffic patterns for anything that moves during a performance.  “I used to move pennies around the table to represent dancers!  It’s very important to me not to waste the time of the actors.”  That’s multiple Tony Award-winner Susan Stroman, and it was during the creative development process for her “Young Frankenstein” for Mel Brooks that its associate director, Jeff Whiting, gave birth to this revolutionary idea. Describing all the features of this new marvel would take hours, so if you ever have the responsibility of carrying out any of the jobs mentioned, at any level of school, amateur, non-Equity or professional work, visit their comprehensive site: www.stagewritesoftware.com.  Stro’s final comment: “Now, the pennies stay in the jar!”

For those of you who read Intermission Talk and live beyond the island Manhattan, a long-awaited new service has come into being.  It’s called The Broadway Hotline, and at the other end of their toll free number are, as they call themselves, the Broadway Geniuses.  Need to find out about the availability of tickets for a hit show, such as “The Book of  Mormon?”  Wonder where you can park if you’re coming to the Cort Theatre?

Are there reasonably-priced yet high quality eateries within walking distance of your Wednesday matinee at the Music Box?  Created by Broadway producer Ken Davenport, it’s built around the decades-old toll-free phone number process, that you can call from anywhere in the country, and that number is 1-855-SEE-BWAY  [1 - 855-733-2929].  Most commonly referred to now as Broadway’s free concierge service, the hotline makes it very clear that we welcome visitors from everywhere, and answers to those sticky questions like ticket sources and running times are just eleven digits away.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre, “Character Studies.”  He has written several plays and musicals, including the NY Fringe Festival Best Play winner “Admissions,” [published by Playscripts] and “Maisie and Grover Go to the Theatre,” [published by ArtAge].  He has covered the performing arts since 1966, for publications including The Christian Science Monitor, Rolling Stone, Life Magazine, Parade and Dramatics Magazine.  He has taught theatre classes at Columbia University’s Teachers College, Lehman College, HB Studio and other locations around the country, and continues to teach small classes, and to offer private mentoring and coaching sessions from home [tvellela@nyc.rr.com].

Intermission Talk

“Newsies”  Report That

“The Best Man” Causes

“Death of a Salesman”

by Tony Vellela

Arthur Miller once told me that his favorite portrayal of Willy Loman was by Hoffman – not the current Philip Seymour H., but Dustin H., in the Volker Schlondorff-helmed 1985 made-for-TV movie.  I’d bet, were he still alive to see the revival now at the Barrymore, that he’d expand his opinion to include both.  And while the reasons may be different, I agree.

For Arthur, the physical as well as the dramatic came into his assessment – he felt that  Dustin H. resembled his own father Isidore Miller, the strongest model for Willy, making his unimposing stature one of his constant obstacles.  The convention of casting a portly man came from the original Broadway actor, Lee J. Cobb, who was chosen for talent, not girth.  In the 1951 film, Frederic March was less stocky.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Andrew Garfield (rear)

For me, it’s based on the Life of the salesman as much as his Death.  To grasp where he is when we meet him in the late 1940s, struggling with his samples cases as he wearily approaches the humble two-story clapboard house now crowded in by new high-rises, we need to know how he got that way.  It is in the flashback scenes with his wife Linda [a circumspect Linda Emond] and sons Happy [a naturally charismatic Finn Whitlock] and Biff [an angular, compellingly bitter Andrew Garfield] that Willy comes ‘alive.’  In the pivotal Boston hotel scenes, Stephanie Janssen’s impeccably played lascivious department store buyer brings out in Willy his fantasy image of himself as an ever-young man who lives like he’s in control of his destiny.  These back-story vignettes show us how the man’s optimism brims and sparks, igniting an unbridled hopefulness in his sons.  This misplaced confidence in the value of personality over talent, charm over learning, smiles over skills, leads to their eventual downfall, and to his own.  And Philip Seymour H. delivers that all-important contrast.  We see that who he is now is a product of who he was then.

And the current production of this acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning play is based on what it was back then, when director Elia Kazan and set designer Jo Mielziner sharpened our perceptions of this tragedy by minimizing its environment.  Director Mike Nichols has recreated that original skeletal Mielziner set, and he’s also sensitively invoked Alex

North’s original music. North also composed underscores for the film version, and for other Miller film transfers “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “The Rose Tattoo,” as well as “The Misfits,” written for the screen.  Nichols seems to have both honored and drawn from Kazan’s directorial approach.  [Despite their long-running split over politics, Kazan told me that the rift did not reduce how much he admired Miller's epic drama.]  What is unfolding eight times a week is a priceless opportunity to soak in not just a re-creation, but a living, talking, clashing, loving and dying epic of a salesman.  And for those who have taken issue with Philip Seymour H.’s age [he's 44 - Arthur makes him sixty in his stage directions], first, the man’s exhaustion exudes from every pore of PSH’s beaten-down frame; second, Cobb was only 38 when the play premiered, and third, it makes oh-so-clear that a dream can die at any age.

The ultimate American dream goes like this: a smart, handsome, clever and personable young man gives up personal goals to serve his country, which rewards him with a desk in the Oval Office.  Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man,” more than even in its last revival in 2000, sings about this iconic myth beautifully, with all its discordant strains and absent harmony.

The time is 1960, the place: a large hotel in Philadelphia, during the final days of  the national convention to choose the Presidential candidate for one of the two major parties [we're not told which, but Vidal hints that it resembles the Democrats].  Fifty-plus years ago, before almost every adult in the country was wired for sound half a dozen ways, the pace was slower, information had to be disseminated through the three television networks and the major newspapers, and any attempt to convey dirt on an opponent meant printing up thousands of copies of the non-encomium and getting them hand-delivered to those with the power to decide.  Second-thoughts were possible.

James Earl Jones

Yet, in its time, “The Best Man” gave us a potential candidate [Senator Joe Cantwell] ruthless beyond quantifying, a master of Mad Men phrase-making, self-assured that his blind ambition entitles him to prevail and despite being virtually devoid of compassion or empathy, basking in the support of a large segment of the masses.  It also gave us his opponent [Secretary of State William Russell], a man wary of gamesmanship as a method of selecting a possible president, learned in world affairs as well as literature and philosophy, a statesman not well-suited to politics, and – a recognized philanderer.

Eric McCormack’s Cantwell oozes disingenuous platitudes effortlessly, one of this actor’s strong suits.  John Larroquette, as Russell, keeps his familiar bravura neatly in cheque, a performance more restrained than expected.  Their polar opposite wives show who they were at the beginning of their public life more than who they’ve become.  Mrs. Mabel Cantwell [a Playboy perfect Kerry Butler] purrs and gurgles, a Southern carnal kitten who seems as dim about the world as most of her husband’s constituency, and as smart as his calculating staff.  It is Candace Bergen, however, as Mrs. Alice Russell, who delivers the break-out performance of the play.

Angela Lansbury (L) and Candace Bergen (R)

More familiar to audiences of a certain age as TV’s “Murphy Brown,” Bergen shows, in the most positive sense, how ‘more is less’ acting gives a character room to breathe.  Mrs. Russell has endured years of neglect and the artifice of a happy political marriage of shared interests, and has still held onto the image, the memory of the man whose idealism and goodness won her heart, and gave her a place for her wry sense of humor.  It is an utterly believable characterization.

Those less enthralled with the machinations of high-stakes presidential king-making will find relief in the two most energized performances, ironically both from actors who’ve grown comfortably into their eighties, Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones.  As a Southern party operative with her dainty hands squarely measuring the pulse of the women’s vote, so pretty in pink, Lansbury pulls focus in the few short scenes she’s in, just the way a polished hostess would, who’s also capable of spiking the tea with hemlock.  As the party’s most recent past president, Jones imparts his street-fighter old pol with that bluster and sputter and growl and grin that he does better than anyone – the best man for it, as it were.  And the wildly incongruous color-blind casting in this role can be forgiven when it results in our getting another chance to revel in the creation of a genuine theatrical aficionado, who, like Lansbury, has chosen to tread the boards nearly every recent season.

Story lines about politics are not common.  They tend to be talky, cryptic or melodramatic, none of which lends themselves to the craft of fashioning three-dimensional characters.  “The Best Man” falls guilty of some of this, and this production benefits from having such consummate pros as James Lescene and Jefferson Mays in supporting roles that approach caricature.  The best depiction of this world in that time period remains the 1958 Spencer Tracy, John Ford-directed picture “The Last Hurrah,” about the final campaign of an old-school Boston mayor.  Still, this production deserves attention, because it makes its central premise so vital.  The pious Russell declares to the opportunistic Cantwell ‘…you have no sense of responsibility toward anybody or anything and that is a tragedy in a man and it is a disaster in a president!’  It’s plain talk that we’d all love to hear again in this campaign season.

Okay, so not every eager, enterprising young lad can become a president.  But in the new Walt Disney musical “Newsies,” helmed by Jeff Calhoun, they are definitely Kings.  Based on the 1992 film musical of the same name, this family-friendly production gets everything right.  [How often have you read that line in this column?]  The story springs from the real-life confrontation between newspaper barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer – yeah, THAT Pulitzer – and the street urchins who sold papers on the street for a few pennies’ profit per.  However, they had to buy their papers first, and if they weren’t sold, the kids had to eat the loss.  This saga unfolded in Lower Manhattan during the summer of 1899, and when about 5,000 lads banded together and went on strike, the city went without news, features, editorials, and to some the most egregious consequence, without the comic strips.  The impact on circulation revenue, advertising dollars lost and scarred prestige was so devastating, it could not be measured

Jeremy Jordan

And the journey this property took from movie flop to limited-run musical created to be a licensing musical for high schools, to its spectacular transfer from New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse to Broadway mimics the real story’s fantastic saga.  When the Disney folks saw the glowing notices the show received, moving it into Manhattan was a no-brainer.   One of the reasons the stage musical tops the film is the reworked book by Harvey Fierstein, who has injected a sweet love-interest for the strikers’ leader, Jack Kelly.  He’s now enamored with Pulitzer’s daughter, who is determined to ’strike out’ on her own, as a hard-news reporter instead of a society page sob sister.  And Kelly has gained another skill besides the charismatic personality and grit that kick-started the rebellion: he draws [remember 'Titanic?'].  The Kelly role has handed young Jeremy Jordan another Cinderella storyline.  He originated the role at the Paper Mill, was then cast as the macho half of the ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ ill-fated tuner earlier this season when negotiations were purring along for the NJ to NYC transfer, and then, “B & C” closed!  He was offered the chance to re-inhabit Jack Kelly, took it, and delivers one of the best young-male musical theatre performances in recent memory.  Look for Jordan, the classic triple threat, to emerge in leading revival roles a decade or so down the line, in maybe “Carousel” or ‘Oklahoma!”  Kara Lindsay pumps up the role of Jack’s reluctant squeeze, since it’s been drawn not entirely as a three-dimensional young woman – maybe half a dimension shy.  And sadly, despite his mega-brain power, she’s been named Katherine, the go-to moniker for every independent girl and woman character for the last seven decades, thanks to its association with la Hepburn.  Sometimes they’re called Kate or Katie.  Can’t these gals ever be named Natalie, or Susie, Daisy or Anna Mae?

The Newsies

Another reason to celebrate this production is Christopher Gattelli’s choreography, which weds acrobatics to ballet, as if these Dead End Kids spent a summer studying in Moscow at the Bolshoi.  Don’t count me among those who have criticized the way Gattelli’s Bowery Boys leap higher and more frequently than a gaggle of gazelles.  There’s a kind of youthful majesty in their flight, symbolizing the risk-taking they’ve undertaken to challenge the ‘gravity’ of defying the country’s unelected king-makers.  And speaking of kings, Alan Menken [music] and Jack Feldman [lyrics] created one of musical theatre’s greatest show-stoppers, the Act Two rousing opening number “King of New York,” a tune that attaches itself to your unconscious with the same tenacity these newsboys had, and sprawls across the stage of the Nederlander with the same audacity, precision and style seen in “The Waiter’s Gallup,” in Dolly Levi’s Harmonia Gardens.

Afterpieces

Superlatives attached themselves to Judy Garland since before she was Judy.  As the pre-teen Frances Ethel Gumm, the littlest of the singing act the Gumm Sisters, she landed in one of the musical shorts Metro cranked out, to run alongside the travelogues, newsreels, B movies, coming attractions and cartoons in the thirties.  What followed was one of entertainment’s greatest explosions of talent, determination, devotion to craft and personal heartbreak.

Tracie Bennett

In Peter Quilter’s “End of the Rainbow,” directed with a hands-off approach by Terry Johnson, Britain’s Tracie Bennett captures a few of the mega-star’s final days and nights, during her bumpy stay in London’s Ritz Hotel, in December, 1968.  It was meant to launch yet another vaunted comeback, to replenish her empty coffers, drained by others’ bad management and her own good intentions, all fueled by high octane alcohol.  The script allows fans and insiders plenty of opportunities to nod in recognition of obscure show biz references.  But this is not a lightweight movie-of-the-week version of someone’s tragic final days.  Real blood and guts are spilled all over the unpaid-for hotel suite’s rugs.  And you’ll feel like some of them are yours.

While any random group of people may have different entries on their lists of superstars that outrank Judy, it’s a good bet that Jesus Christ would make everyone’s roster.  The lists of their choices for this season’s most compelling revivals, however, is not likely to include the current one of Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice’s familiar faux rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar.”  Encased in a moving set of steel bleachers and dominated by a streaming news ticker running across the back wall of the stage, the Des McAnuff-directed attempt at spectacle unspools like a well-worn red carpet – smoothly, but with no interest in where it’s going or how it will end.  We know.

Josh Young

One redeeming element worth mentioning, though, is the performance of Stratford Festival regular Josh Young, who originated the role of Judas when this package premiered there last year, and moved to La Jolla.  It’s his Broadway debut, and maybe nothing else will bring him to Broadway.  If something does, catch him.  We don’t know how Josh’s career will end, but it’s a sure bet it will be an exciting one.

On Book

If you don’t get to see the revival of Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man,” you could do worse than reading his play script, either in various collections, or the Dramatists Play Service version.  The wit and cleverness of the writing comes off the page with great impact.  You can let your mind mimic the voices of the current cast, or anyone else you feel fits the character descriptions.  You will laugh out loud.

And Mike Nichols’ homage to the magnificent director Elia Kazan’s original visions for Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” are worth digging into, if you’re a budding director, playwright, actor or theatre lover.  That project is only one of dozens Kazan wrote about in his invaluable guidebook to his remarkable career, “Kazan on Directing,” from Vintage Books, with a foreword by John Lahr and a preface by Martin Scorsese.

While “End of the Road” catches Judy at the end of her Russian roulette life and times, there was one ‘constant’ that began when she was barely out of her teens – a lifelong romantic, sexual and passionate affair with the master songwriter Johnny Mercer.  He wrote the lyrics for the Garland starrer “The Harvey Girls,” and even though they were both married when it began, and others broke it up shortly after it erupted, they both seemed wedded to the romance and sensitivity of the other’s nature.  Mercer wrote his classic “I Remember You” to and for her.  To take in the full measure of Mercer’s genius, a comprehensive and fascinating compilation from Knopf, “The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer,” gently pulls you through decades of musical memories – how one man’s skill with words can chart the moods and emotions of generations.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS documentary series about theatre, “Character Studies.”  His Best Play Award-winning “Admissions,” at the NYC International Fringe Festival, is published by Playscripts.  He’s written several other plays, musicals and revues, as well as three books, numerous magazine and newspaper articles, and the CableACE Award-winning documentary for Lifetime Television “The Test of Time.”  He also conducts small classes in understanding plays and musicals from the inside, as well as private coaching sessions – info from tvellela@nyc.rr.com.

“Porgy & Bess” needed

“Wit” to travel

“The Road to Mecca”

by TONY VELLELA

Back in 1995, when she was appearing with Jude Law and Kathleen Turner in “Indiscretions” on Broadway, I had a wonderfully candid conversation with Cynthia Nixon.  The topic under discussion was acting styles.  We’d just been sharing our experiences with Uta Hagen.  “I’d always been a very emotional actor,” she confided.  “I would go right into the emotions of the character, rather than the circumstances.  I would ‘pump’ the emotions.  Now I see that it’s kind of a dead-end way to work.”  She had just completed a series of sessions with the HB co-founder, and noted that “Miss Hagen expects you to think on stage as the character . . . to have many circumstances in your head, and so many maps of where you might go, that you can explore any territory the character might lead to.”

The “Indiscretions” cast:  Jude Law, Cynthia Nixon, Roger Rees and Eileen Atkins.

Today, Nixon is starring in the revival, and Broadway premiere of Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Wit,” portraying a cancer victim confronting her mortality.  And were she alive, I believe Miss Hagen would be proud of her former student.  And while some of the specifics of cancer treatment have evolved since the play opened in 1998, off-Broadway, the core of its compelling story involves how any of us faces our impending demise.  Dr.Vivian Bearing, [Nixon], with her PhD. in 19th century metaphysical poetry, would seem to be a good candidate for growing thick armor as her situation becomes more and more compromised.  The brilliance of Edson’s writing becomes apparent as Bearing’s personal, closely-guarded fears bump up against her fierce intelligence and scalding sense of humor.  Previous high-profile Bearings [Kathleen Chalfant off-B'way and Emma Thompson in an HBO film], projected an obvious toughness of spirit, which suggested that, whatever the details of the story’s conclusion, it would be one chosen by the central character.  Nixon’s ‘persona,’ though, reflects a less galvanized spirit, even at times fragile.  Her ‘victimhood’ is apparent from the get-go, not diminished because of her railing against all manner of institutional ineptitude, against the approach often taken by medical professionals who seem impervious to human feelings, or by the comfort she may have expected from the poetry of John Donne she holds so dear, in and out of the classroom.  Like all of us, she cannot dictate or direct the details of our final moments of life.

At rise, with her bald head, she resembles an alien refugee from “Close Encounters…”.  She first-person narrates the story, employing the sharp wit her IQ and usually rarified company would suggest.  But here, in the world of diagnoses and observations and X-rays and meds and hospital dressing ‘gowns,’ her IQ doesn’t come into it at all.  And                     whenever she does locate an opportunity to roll out a smart-as-a-whip caustic comment, it does not find a place to land.  This professor, so comfortable in her role as celebrated teacher, must now try to do her own learning – which is, learning to suffer.  Because director Lynn Meadow surrounds Nixon with a first-rate ensemble [including the always spot-on Michael Countryman, the happily understated Carra Paterson, and Suzanne Berish so effective in the pivotal role of Bearing's early-career mentor], the sense of ‘reality,’ such as it may be in a narrated play, registers as strongly as a death sentence.

The current revival of “Porgy & Bess,” [not comfortable, despite how many others are, with calling it 'The Gershwins' ...] features scenic design by Riccardo Hernandez.  Having seen some of his other work, it should not have been a surprise that this time out, he would also forge an overpowering abstract element in which the musical takes place.  As in “The People in the Picture,” [a mile-high picture frame] and “Parade,” [a mile-high dead tree], to name a few, this effort also puts experimental concept above the needs of the story.  Catfish Row, Charleston, South Carolina, in the late 1930s, an enclosed courtyard of ramshackle tenements, clotheslines, cobblestones and a well, here has been transformed into a vertical lumberyard.  For comparison, take Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge,” which also requires a feel for the Italian-immigrant neighborhood where the apartment hours is located, in Brooklyn.   When we first meet Eddie, he strides home through small knots of friends, a member of a community.  So, too, when his betrayal is revealed, do we see how that same community shuns him.  Catfish Row should also be seen as that kind of enclave, heads popping out of windows, doorways open, broken stairways leading to broken lives.  But Hernandez’s  barren design robs us of that vital component, the interrelationships among the hard-scrapple folk who collectively suffer indignities large and small.  Other faults have been found with this production, including the weakening of the score and the tinkering with the book, which also deserve mentioning.  Another example of this re-imagining has turned the almost mournful solo “Summertime” into a kind of young-couple romantic duet, draining it of its ability, at the very top of the show, from depicting the enervated quality of life now, and the wrenching aspirations a young mother has for her child.  The set design places this at once delicate and brutal story inside a wooden diorama, robbing it of a critical element in creating the vitality and spark it is capable of.

Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis as Bess and Porgy.

And then there’s Audra.  Ms. McDonald again demonstrates that her greatest gift is the ability to generate, in almost any situation, a breathtaking fearlessness.  Notice that quality in her duet with Porgy [the solid Norm Lewis], “Bess, You Is My Woman Now.”  It mirrors her eye-popping outcry as Ruth in “A Raisin in the Sun,” when she decries her boundless joy at the prospect of leaving behind “these Goddamned cracking walls – and these marching roaches! . . . Hallelujah! and good-bye misery.”  When Sportin’ Life [David Allan Grier, whose sly cunning is balanced with his powerful vocals] teases his way into her latent weakness for ‘happy dust,’ we can see past and present Bess doing battle, the expressions of doubt and commitment and fear and hope crossing her face like lines on a map.  Her wrenching calls for help as Crown reclaims her go unheeded, but they are undercut by the lack of a true, real-looking ‘place’ where the action goes down.

Opera?  Musical theatre work?  A definitions distinction I’m not qualified to parse.   If you don’t expect to have an opportunity to hear this score and experience this tale live, it’s a rich, rewarding event.  Like so much of what comes back labeled as revival, this one also suffers from the commercial expectations a more manageable production might lead to, as well as the ever-growing mania for imprinting a classic work with the distortions visited upon it by willful directors, book re-writers or designers.  Must that be the case?  Ain’t necessarily so.

Bucking this pernicious trend, the respectful revival of Athol Fugard’s 1985 chamber-piece drama “The Road to Mecca” gives us what one could imagine the playwright had in mind.  In this instance, he brings us to a remote hut along a back road in the small Karoo village of New Bethesda, South Africa, circa 1974.  A spirited widow, Miss Helen descends from the original Dutch settlers, and embodies their flinty independence.  Her pastor, Marius, is also an Afrikaner.  The third character, a schoolteacher named Elsa, from English stock, came into Helen’s life when her car broke down a few years back.

Last things first.  Thanks to the sensitive, careful and caring set design by Michael Yeargan, Helen’s circumscribed world within that hut tells us so much about its inhabitant, a sculptor, lover of literature and of nature, and a woman of great resourcefulness.  Notice the books that have replaced one of the legs on her well-worn chaise.  Miss Helen has painted her walls the colors of a blazing sunset.  Artwork, found pieces, carvings, masks and other items of interest bedeck her walls.  And the absence of electric lights accounts for more than two dozen candles of varying sizes and thicknesses that reside on almost every flat surface.

As Miss Helen, Rosemary Harris knows her way around a feisty persona, but tempers her with the self-doubt that has frozen her in place and time.  When Marius and his congregants threaten to take her home and her land, she writes to Elsa to come to her aid.  After her eight-hour drive, Elsa finds Helen’s reticence to spilling out the facts nearly exasperating.  As Marius, who was portrayed in the original New York production by the playwright, Jim Dale creates a folksy charm about him that seems to hint at some underlying deception.  And Carla Gugino’s Elsa provides another opportunity for this insightful and perceptive young woman to shine.  Twists are twisted and turns are turned.  A seemingly little, personal tale of crisis becomes a solid foundation to examine what independence means, what responsibility to ourselves and others entails, how age does not always bestow total wisdom and when to negotiate, as Prof. Bearing does in “Wit,” the consequences of coming to the end of one’s journey.

In  The  Wings

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts continues its Solo Sessions series with a presentation of Steve Solomon’s “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish, I’m in Therapy!”  If you missed its two-year off-Broadway run, you can book tickets for this April 1 at BrooklynCenterOnline.org.

The Judy Garland world of tributes and recreations continues, this time via a property titled “End of the Rainbow.”  Hopping the Atlantic from an acclaimed London run, it will star Tracie Bennett, recreating her role as Judy, as the show traces the singer’s last two years, from the iconic Palace Theatre concert to her death in 1969.

Another entertainment giant, Charlie Chaplin, has inspired a new musical about the silent film star’s life and career.  “Becoming Chaplin” may look more viable now that a motion picture, “The Artist,” has successfully recreated and celebrated the mute world of those early pictures.  Originating at the La Jolla Playhouse in California, the musical is expected to have its voices heard next season.

The 1991 indie fave “Dogfight,” which starred Lili Taylor and River Phoenix, has spawned an eponymous musical set to heat up Second Stage this summer.  The ’60s-era story follows a young, and shy waitress and a Marine on the verge of being shipped out to Vietnam.   The romantic tale features music & lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, a book by Peter Duchan, and the show was awarded the 2011 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre.  Joe Mantello directs.

Finally, for readers from out-of-town, here are two resources to seek out which will help you navigate your Broadway getaway:  [1] Created by veteran Broadway producer, The Broadway Hotline was launched the first of this month, as a one-stop phone service to answer all questions to make it easier [and possibly cheaper!] to make tracks to the Theatre District.  This toll-free hotline = 1-855-SEE-BWAY = operates seven days a week, from 10 AM until showtime, and offers advice and answers about ticket prices and bargains, parking, geography of the streets and avenues, the consequences of there’s a snowfall closing streets and businesses, and more.  It’s like having a hotel concierge you can summon at the touch of your phone pad.  For more info: www.The BroadwayHotline.com.  And [2], when you check in, ask the desk clerk for a copy of the Winter 2012 edition of Playbill that features information on current shows, including discount coupons for many of them.  For more info: www.playbill.com.

On   Book

To enrich your understanding of the context of two of the shows reviewed above, here are three books that do just that.  The discussions about the origins and original intentions of the creators of “Porgy and Bess,” check out “Geniuses of the American Musical Theatre,” by Herbert Keyser.  This handsome overview includes a substantive, well-written chapter on George Gershwin, and others on the creators who shaped the world the Gershwins flourished in.  For the libretto, pick up Stanley Richards’ “Ten Great Musicals of the American Theatre.”  You can see for yourself what the original book and lyrics were, and compare them to the revisal now on display.

Athol Fugard has become of the more heralded playwrights of the last century.  After you take in “The Road to Mecca,” and also “The Blood Knot,” now at the stunning new Signature Theatre center, familiarize yourself with some of his other works.  Four of his plays are collected in an Oxford University Press, but any other collection will do.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the theatre series ‘Character Studies’ for PBS.  His award-winning play “Admissions” is published by Playscripts, and “Maisie and Grover Go to the Theatre” by Art Age Publications.    His feature stories about the performing arts have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Dramatics Magazine, Theatre Week, Parade, Rolling Stone and dozens of other publications.  He is currently teaching very small, private sessions on plays, musicals, characters in them and for actors, directors, designers and dramaturgs, an examination of the creators’ intentions when preparing to work on a production, along with one-to-one coaching.  He can be reached at tvellela@nyc.rr.com.

Looking Back: How the Fall

Season Fared, Good & Bad

by Tony Vellela

“It’s a wrap!” — not the tissue paper and ribbon Christmas bundles coverings still piled in the corner, or fake fur shoulders-coverings, or updated, raunch-spiced songs covering old standards.  This wrap is what they shout when a camera work project has shot its last frame.  This is theatre.  Shows wrap eight times a week.  And at the dawn of the new year, it’s time to see how the previous several months fared, now that the fall season has wrapped.

Instead of tossing titles onto an all-or-nothing ‘best’ or ‘worst’ list, this column prefers to look at individual aspects, starting with the ‘bests.’  And the first category always seems to be ACTING!!

No surprise to anyone who’s been sitting in audiences for the last few years, watching her performances get better and better,  that my pick for the most enriched performance came from Lily Rabe, in Theresa Rebeck’s “Seminar.”  In my view, this remarkable young woman has taken inherited gifts from her parents, playwright David Rabe and actor Jill Clayburgh, and enhanced them with her own nuanced choices, reminiscent of the quiet subtleties that made Julie Harris create such memorable roles.  Close behind is Nina Arianda’s vexing vixen in David Ives’ “Venus in Fur,” who makes her hair-trigger unpredictability a veritable virtue.  Entirely different in content and style, the underappreciated Marcia Jean Kurtz bristled with comic timing gold in Charles Busch’s “Olive and the Bitter Herbs.” 

And in a pairing as organic as Kander & Ebb, Frank Langella’s unctuous, amoral financier in Terrence Rattigan’s “Man and Boy” gave new meaning to ‘wolf in sheep’s Armani.’  Talking of Kander & Ebb, the musical performance stand-outs belong to five relative newcomers to Broadway ears.  When Jessie Mueller belts and croons in Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner’s “On a Clear Day…” she resurrects the joys of listening to old recordings of Anita O’Day, Jo Stafford and Helen Forrest.  [If you don't know their sounds, treat yourself.]

In the revival of Stephen Schwartz’s “Godspell,” Lindsay Mendez delivers “Oh, Bless the Lord My Soul” with the kind of fearlessness that its original interpreter, the great Lynne Thigpen, would have admired.  And then there’s the peerless Jayne Houdyshell, whose “Broadway Baby” in Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” knocks you out!  The revival sparkles with great singing from established stars, but it’s Houdyshell who delivers the jolt, bringing fresh colors to this anthem to grit and greasepaint.

Representing the guys, Jeremy Jordan’s Clyde in the wearisome “Bonnie & Clyde” is destined to join the [very thin] ranks of musical theatre leading men who can charm as well as they can menace – he’s a great new discovery.  And Drew Gehling, portraying the underwritten plot device Warren in “On A Clear Day…” shows great promise, and deserves to move into larger and better-imagined roles.

Actors can only be as good as the material they have to work from, and in the category of outstanding writing, Ives’ comedy/drama “Venus in Fur,” is joined by David Henry Hwang’s “Chinglish,” a delightful premise of miscommunication, culture clash and hidden agendas, fleshed out with heart and humor.  It was a real pleasure finally to find a new, clever WORD comedy.   Jordan Harrison’s spot-on “Maple & Vine,” where Ozzie and Harriet meet 1984, showed how a remarkable playwright can start with almost conventional humorous moments, pepper them with real-life trauma [the loss of a child], then segue smoothly into scathing satire.    All three plays demonstrate that it takes a heightened sense of imagination to create a fresh premise, and then have it come to life when it goes transfers page to stage.  In terms of sheer ambition and audacity, “Lysistrata Jones,” from Lewis Finn and Douglas Carter Beane, applied a high-voltage taser gun to the musical theatre world.

Greatly overlooked and undervalued is the contribution of the set designer to the success or failure of any production.  At opposite ends of the spectrum, in terms of designer choices, were two whose designs exploded into the audience’s consciousness, to the benefit of the plays they housed.

Lydia R. Diamond owes a good deal to David Gallo, scenic designer for her new play “Stick Fly.”

Her Martha’s Vineyard setting, which requires three distinct areas to unfold, did so in a meticulously-appointed naturalistic interior/exterior complex that hasn’t been seen since Todd Rosenthal’s masterpiece set for Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage County.”   Evoking the hectic, frantic dynamic of today’s career-driven Manhattan and the tranquil, superficial ethos of Middle America in 1955, designer Alexander Dodge proved to be a wizard, cleverly employing modular units and a color palette that spoke the language of both eras.

And pulling all the elements together is the director, whose contribution succeeds only in relation to how invisible it is.  In that regard, both Walter Bobbie ["Venus in Fur"] and Anne Kaufman ["Maple & Vine"] demonstrated how powerful the invisible hand can be.

Finally, a catch-all collection of memorable misfires.  In Katori Hall’s “The Mountaintop,” Angela Bassett embodies the opposite of that old dictum ‘less is more,’ and in her case, much less would have been very welcome.  The season’s most unnecessary revival was the blowsy production of “Private Lives,” Noel Coward’s wry little gem, with “Stick Fly” and “Seminar” sharing the negative honors for most predictable story lines.  “Stick Fly,” in particular, recycled at its core yet another Bad Dad premise.  Lighting designer Beverly Emmons recycled the fade-to-black-but-leave-a-spot device that became a fave film choice half a century ago [see director Morton daCosta's "Auntie Mame" and the Roz Russell "Gypsy" directed by Mervyn LeRoy].    And here’s one of the great unanswered questions: how could a design team, in this case those responsible for the “Clear Day” set design and costuming, come up with such hideous choices?  Actors were trapped in front of an Escher-like series of blocks and circles and checkerboard patterns, and also trapped in the worst interpretations of how young adults dressed themselves in the early seventies – Hollywood’s mock hippie styles in clashing, bold colors, with one unfortunate young woman got up like a refugee from Sherwood Forest.  One of the casualties of these irritating designs seems to have been Harry Connick, Jr.’s energy level.  And we thought the “Promises, Promises” revival missed its mark.

Wrapping it up, here’s my shout-out to the ReGroup Theatre, which I’ve personally championed since their inception two years ago.  To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the launching of the legendary Group Theatre, this ambitious and respectful company presented an evening of excerpts from all 23 plays presented by the Group Theatre, a monumental undertaking which was truly remarkable.  Along with “Follies,” their 80th Anniversary Tribute to the Group Theatre deserves renewed kudos for attempting to present something with scope and substance, and succeeding.

On Book

You say there are few new offerings during January?  Why not enrich your knowledge of historical and cultural facts and relish a potpourri of delicious anecdotes, by putting on a cast album of your choice, on a low volume, and snuggle into a few of these fantastic tomes.  Then your intermission talk next season will be all the more scintillating.

To track various periods and patterns, these selections will keep you entertained, and surprise you in the bargain.  Start with the biographical journeys of two of the theatre’s most esteemed critics, George Jean Nathan and H.L.Mencken.  In his book “The Smart Set,” named in tribute to the magazine that chronicled the trials, triumphs and trickery of the late teens through the Depression years, Thomas Quinn Curtiss brings us into the intersecting worlds of the Algonquin Hotel, the Hipppdrome, Greenwich Village and the Trial of the Century.  ReGroup’s first publishing outing, “The ‘Lost’ Group Theatre Plays, Vol. 1″ [soon to be followed by #2], rediscovers works by Claire & Paul Sifton and John Howard Lawson.  Estelle Parsons penned the introduction.  Ethan Mordden’s “All That Glittered” dissects the golden age of drama on Broadway, 1919-1959.  “Black Theatre USA,” the revised and expanded edition, edited by James V. Hatch and Ted Shine, reaches back to 1935, and pulls you through the outstanding output from African-American playwrights.  An impressive collection of contemporary gay & lesbian plays have been compiled by Don Shewey in his “Out Front.”  And a grand sweep covering 200 years of plays, players and productions fills Mary C. Henderson’s imposing, well-illustrated “Theater in America.”

Looking for something that will let you hum along?  Pick up Stanley Richards’ two-volume set, “Ten Great Musicals of the American Theatre,” and the follow-up, “Great Musicals of the American Theatre.”  Match them up with the “Rodgers & Hammerstein Illustrated Songbook,” with a foreword by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and you’ll sing yourself to sleep.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre, “Character Studies.”  A playwright, he has written more than a dozen plays and musical works, including two that have been published, “Admissions” and “Maizie and Grover Go to the Theatre.”  He has served as a theatre feature reporter and critic for several publications, including The Christian Science Monitor, Dramatics, Parade, Crawdaddy and Theatre Week.  He conducts small-group theatre studies classes on characters, plays and musicals, as well as private coaching sessions.  To learn about them, contact him at tvellela@nyc.rr.com.

“Follies,” “Man and Boy,” &

An icon on “The Mountaintop”

Usher in the Theatre Season

by  Tony  Vellela

Two big men, in two little plays.  One younger man, with a unique personal story.  And lotsa big-talented gals in one capacious musical.

Since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King must have been familiar with the saying “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” he surely would have recognized how applicable it is at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.  Katori Hall’s earnest but un-reconciled “The Mountaintop” seems set up to create a humanizing myth about the civil rights icon, setting the wisely intermission-less tale in Room 306 of Memphis’ Lorraine Motel.  [Side note: Did the pre-show projection say 'hotel' instead of . . .?]  David Gallo’s meticulous set design also teases us into anticipating a realistic fictionalization of King’s last night, before his tragic assassination the next morning.

Hall’s writing is far less meticulous.  She relies on an overheard [by the maid and by us] phone conversation to sketch in a picture of King’s home life and current state-of-mind.  For the first half or so of the 85 minutes, King finds himself entertaining, charming and indulging a sassy black motel maid, who delivers his coffee, shares her Pall Malls and trades jocular observations about life, society and the state of civil rights.  A nakedly obvious suggestion that this encounter will shift from casual to carnal, [it does not], plays like an early Fox sitcom.  A few serious, even sobering commentaries tantalize with false hope that this story is going somewhere insightful.

Then, the game changes.  The maid can finish so many of King’s sentences because she was a maid, when she was alive, but she very recently passed over, her current status is angel, and her first assignment is to escort King to paradise.  In an impressive bit of stagecraft reminiscent of 1994’s “An Inspector Calls,” the set disassembles, leaving MLK and then the heavenly-garbed angel on the cusp of the celestial plane, delivering the best lines of the play, calling future generations to “pick up the baton” and carry on the struggle for complete equality for all humankind.

So – sitcom, melodrama, fictionalized mini theatrical biopic, sermon?  How, you may be asking, did this jumbled text make it to the boards?  Like the last moments of the play, the answer is in the stars – movie stars, that is.  As MLK, the imposing, and quite convincing Samuel L. Jackson holds his own against the always daunting task of portraying a real person, and in this case, one known to be larger than life.  On the distaff side, God’s messenger in maid’s clothing stars Angela Bassett, whose performances frequently suffer from a marked practice of emoting rather than connoting.  Hall’s script is a playfield for Bassett’s weakness.

You may also be asking how this second-rate play was recipient of London’s Olivier Award, in a year when it was in competition with Jez Butterworth’s remarkable, stunning Tony-winning “Jerusalem.”  For that answer, you will have to consult your own stars.

Another big star talent can also be seen, in a revival of Terence Rattigan’s 1963 anti-capitalist stage screed, “Man and Boy.”   Frank Langella, who is almost peerless as any character with a confident volubility, a very high disdain quotient and a permanently arched eyebrow, here becomes international financier Gregor Antonescu, two small steps ahead of being indicted in a monumental scandal in Depression-era 1934.  Gregor’s got nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide . . . except his estranged son’s Greenwich Village basement apartment, possibly the future home of Ruth and her sister Eileen.

A production would never have been considered for revival without the assurance of a blazing icy-hot performance at its center, and with Langella on board, the play gets probably the best presentation it will ever receive.  The masterful Derek McLane again creates a rich, textured environment for the story to unfold.  Maria Aiken directs with a hand nuanced enough to keep down the claptrap possibilities, and the supporting cast, especially Adam Driver as Gregor’s conflicted son Basil.

My companion at this performance, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s, assured me during intermission that the ‘facts’ in the case against Gregor seem to have been drawn by Rattigan with great care, and could easily translate into some of the fast-shuffle paper-only assets-juggling that created the epidemic of housing defaults that led to our current Great Recession.  Gregor’s personal story line falters and wobbles all over the place, including one snarky set-up where he appears to be pimping his son to one of his biggest male accusers, the source of the title’s sexual innuendo double meaning.  But this unpolished sequence of events suggesting the imminent destruction of the man and the world financial condition he has insinuated himself into the center of, mostly holds together.  It’s about twenty minutes too long [a decision maybe, to honor the entire original text, since it hasn't been seen since its premiere in 1963].  However, it’s still great acting in a pretty good play.

Younger talent emerges regularly, and in one instance, it came from a secret, dangerous personal saga.  When teen-aged Carlo Alban was cast as Carlo on the PBS children’s series “Sesame Street,’ he was an All-American, amiable, smiling sweetheart of a teen, who could sing and act beautifully with the kids.  Other roles, on television and at the Public, followed, including regular, recurring or guest spots on ‘Law & Order,” “Oz,” ‘Touched by an Angel,” and “House of Buggin’”.  [full disclosure: I cast Carlo as one of the leads in my musical "Mister" in 2001.]  What we did not know – my production team for that musical, the producers at PBS, the staff at the Public, or anyone else – was that he was an illegal immigrant, functioning with all manner of false and forged paperwork documenting a fictional life that he and his family invented after receiving temporary visitors’ visas.

Now that he is legal, Alban can share all these trials, challenges, lies and deceptions, in a solo show he has written, titled “Intringulis,” [hidden motive, a mystery, a complex web].  And what he’s done so well, with craft and a lack of a harsh, doctrinaire tone, is to stitch together the patches of all these elements, professional, familial and personal, into a true quilt of experiences that provides entertaining musical segments, humorous recollections and re-creations, and serious, even intensely thought-provoking questions as relevant today as when they took place.

The project began as a workshop at the LAByrinth Theatre Company, which Carlo helped launch.  This off-Broadway production is a presentation of INTAR at its space at 500 west 52nd street [www.intartheatre.org].  This one is definitely worth your time, because it will only be there another two weeks.

The double meaning in the title of this fall’s hot ticket revival – the Stephen Sondheim /  James Goldman musical saga “Follies” – has never been shown clearer.

Yes, it’s about a faux Ziegfeld Follies beauties and beaus reunion, and symbolizes the passing of a lavish, opulent, glamorous and entirely shallow entertainment.  But the women and men who come together to commemorate their once-glorious, now long-gone hey-day have each lived, then as now, in a world of fantasy, and yes, folly [which means conduct or belief that is not grounded in logic].

Lavish revues, generically called ‘follies,’ staged with grand over-the-top costuming, and parades of skin-baring young beauties, ruled the Broadway stage during the post Great War period.  Ziegfeld and George White, and later Billy Rose, were household names, impresarios who spared no expense in giving audiences plentiful glitz, faux glamour, music and fantasy.  In this 1971 story about the reunion of performers in the fictional Weismann Follies, the personal lives of several of the troupers, some going back to the earliest days of the twentieth century, the life choices of many are revealed to be perfectly defined as folly [i.e. a foolish action, a pointless but expensive undertaking].

The score has always been considered one of Sondheim’s best, with song after song ["Broadway Baby," "In Buddy's Eyes," "Too Many Mornings," "Who's That Woman," "Could I Leave You," "Losing My Mind," and most notably "I'm Still Here"] each a chronicle of misspent moments and confrontations with regret.  The assembled cast also features performer after performer [Bernadette Peters, Jan Maxwell, Danny Burstein, Jayne Houdyshell,  Rosalind Elias and Elaine Paige, among others] who can inhabit a role so totally that you forget who they really are. Like the revue format the show pays homage to, “Follies” takes its shape as a collection of almost free-standing tales, which are loosely intertwined, often with heartbreaking consequences.  What fails the premise is its fairly weak book, which keeps the proceedings from moving at its rightful, spirited pace.  However, director Eric Schaeffer’s decisiveness and the entire design team’s stunning creations support and combine to create the best production this classic will ever get, thanks to its origins as part of a Kennedy Center season.

Stand-outs?  Burstein’s energetic song-n-dance turn matches the depth he brings to the dramatic side of Buddy, whose original good luck in landing Sally [Peters] for his wife has turned to an object of pathos.  Peters reflects the other side of their weary union, with her heartfelt “In Buddy’s Eyes.”  Houdyshell’s career accomplishments continue to tote up, her “Broadway Baby” pulling out all the proverbial stops.  Maxwell dazzles with both her numbers, using her supreme confidence to stir together just enough acid and smirkiness.  The inner child of Elaine Paige’s fading Hollywood star Carlotta enriches the usually one-note defiance of “I’m Still Here.”  And keep an eye out in future for Kiira Schmidt, whose work pops in smaller, ensemble parts – she’s got the vitality of Ann Miller, and the quirkiness of Virginia O’Brien – can’t beat that!

On   Book

Swept away as you will be by the dazzle of “Follies,” it would benefit your enjoyment if you familiarize yourself with the lyrics prior to attending.  Sondheim’s legendary, deserved reputation as one of the English language’s best-ever practitioners should prompt you to pick up either the TCG publication of the playscript, or Knopf’s “Stephen Sondheim: Finishing the Hat,” as comprehensive as possible a compilation, of the man, his work, and his commentary on his work   You will get repeated enjoyment savoring lyrics such as this verse from “I’m Still Here:”  I’ve been through Ghandi,/Windsor and Wally’s affair,/And I’m here./Amos ‘n’ Andy,/Mah-jongg and platinum hair,/And I’m here./I got through Abie’s/Irish Rose,/Five Dionne babies,/Major Bowes,/Had heebie-jeebies/For Beebe’s/Bathysphere./I lived through Shirley Temple/And I’m here.  Or from “Broadway Baby:” I’m just a Broadway baby,/Slaving at the five-and-ten,/Dreaming of the great day when/I’ll be in a show./Broadway baby,/Making rounds all afternoon,/Eating at a greasy spoon/To save on my dough.

While “Man and Boy” is a lesser-known Terence Rattigan play, others with more recognizable titles will demonstrate why this writer keeps showing up, decade after decade, such as “Separate Tables” and “The Winslow Boy.”  Get acquainted with them in “The Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan, and don’t overlook some of his screenplays, such as “The Yellow Rolls-Royce,” “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” and “The Prince and the Showgirl,” – yup! – the one with Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe.

Any list of perennially riveting and relevant plays about the Depression and its consequences always begins with those by Clifford Odets.  Start off with “Six Plays of Clifford Odets” from Grove Press.  Then, keep going.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre “Character Studies.”  His play “Admissions” won Best Play Award at the N.Y. International Fringe Festival, and is published by Playscripts.  His play “Maisie and Grover Go to the Theatre” is published by ArtAge Publications.  His writings have appeared in dozens of publications, including Dramatics, The Christian Science Monitor, Parade, Rolling Stone and Reader’s Digest.  He has taught theatre-themed classes at Columbia University-Teacher’s College, HB Studio, Lehman College and several other educational and cultural institutionsaround the country, and currently teaches private and small group sessions for actors, playwrights, directors and dramaturgs – information available at tvellela@nyc.rr.com.