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.