“Blackbird” Says
“She Loves Me”
to “The Humans”
by TONY VELLELA
Folks of a certain age can still generate a wistful smile when hearing the song title “Will He Like Me?” Their memory tape recorder involuntarily re-plays the plaintive, achingly emotional voice of a young Barbra Streisand, from her 1964 blockbuster album “People,” its lyrics worrying over the fate of a young woman’s pending, terrifying ‘blind’ date she agreed to. As she often did during the early years of her nascent career, Streisand plucked haunting little gems from current Broadway and off -Broadway shows. [Recall that her rep was launched via musical theatre, by the 1962 Tony Award-nominated supporting character Miss Marmelstein, in the Broadway tuner “I Can Get It For You Wholesale.”] On the “People” album, her fourth, “Will He Like Me? ” was borrowed from Jerry Bock’s music and Sheldon Harnick’s lyrics for their 1964 Broadway hit, “She Loves Me,” starring the effervescent Barbara Cook. And for those who are fortunate enough to visit the Roundabout Theatre Company’s current sparkling revival, that same heart-rending lyric is delivered by Laura Benanti. Attempting comparisons is a bogus exercise – her shop clerk Amalia possesses all the qualities of the original, including a crystalline soprano voice that knows just what to do with that Bock/Harnick gem.
And everything about this revival does sparkle. The story is familiar: two shy, lovelorn young people decide to avail themselves of a lonely-hearts club, writing anonymous letters to each other, hoping to find a soul-mate. Period. No smutty stuff. No double entendres messages. And here, as in other incarnations of this storyline, they both, cluelessly, work at the same place – a 1930s Budapest perfume/cosmetics shop, run by a gruff but heart-of-gold proprietor. [Here’s what you might be trying to recollect about its same basic story: first, a straight play by Miklos Laszlo; then the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy “The Shop Around the Corner,” with Margaret Sullivan, James Stewart and Frank Morgan; followed by the 1949 Hollywood musical valentine directed by Robert Z. Leonard, “In the Good Old Summertime,” starring Judy Garland, Van Johnson, S. Z. ‘Cuddles’ Sakall, and a very young Liza in the picture’s final moments, and later, the 1998 Nora Efron comedy “You’ve Got Mail,” with Meg Ryan owning a neighborhood bookshop, and Tom Hanks, the head of a superstore chain poised to put her out of business.]
“She Loves Me” can finally, courtesy in part due to the unobtrusive direction here by Scott Ellis, move into the first ranks of beloved American musical theatre classics. Its 1964 debut came in a season also blessed with the multi-award winning “Hello, Dolly!” and ironically, “Funny Girl,” which gave Streisand her second nomination, losing out to Mrs. Levi. Benanti’s Amalia possesses that elusive quality that, decades earlier, almost cost Mary Richards her job at that Minneapolis T-V station: spunk.
As the other half of the meet-cute pair, Zachary Levi as Georg [no relation to Dolly], keeps his charm factor just to the left of a little goofy in a kind of endearing manner. He’s a dedicated worker, and no lady-killer sales clerk like Kodaly [Gavin Creel], whose snarkiness has conquered the heart and willpower of Ilona, the only other female of the sales force, a stunning Jane Krakowski. In another role that showcases her virtuosity as well as her appeal, Krakowski never overshadows Benanti’s position, which is a balancing act many women either resist or can’t accomplish. Ever since she blew the roof off the bar in the Grand Hotel, Broadway audiences have been waiting to see her as the central character in a grand musical. Perhaps some adventurous producer can imagine keeping her natural glamorous persona in cheque and reward her with a no-holds-barred revival of “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” or ‘No Strings,” or “The Pajama Game.” Until then, relish her work in “She Loves Me,” including her confessional solo “A Trip to the Library.” [And if it seems familiar, it may be because composer Jerry Bock seems to have lifted, note for note, the opening stanzas of Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero.” But, no harm done.]
Here’s another prime example for the Tony Awards committee to consider a Best Ensemble Cast Award – every role is delivered with the kind of finesse and allure that good musicals require. Byron Jennings tweaks the tenderness out of shop-owner Maraczek; Michael McGrath shines as longtime go-along get-along clerk Sipos, coming through as a secret Cupid; the delivery boy with big dreams, portrayed by a young Nicholas Barasch, possesses even bigger talent, and as the apoplectic head waiter, Peter Bartlett, like Ms. Krakowski, finally deserves his own central character spotlight. Maybe the Bert Lahr vehicle “Foxy?”
Overall, “She Loves Me” is a dazzler, without the gaudiness that might imply. Seeing this exquisite set, as they used to say, is worth the price of admission. Is the interior of a Faberge egg gaudy? This is another design masterwork from David Rockwell, and maybe he’ll earn his sixth Tony nomination that will lead to the award.
When Georg musters the courage to visit homebound Amalia, nursing a cold, his get well gift is vanilla ice cream, also the title of one of the show’s lovely numbers. And in those days, ice cream didn’t get pumped out from a metal contraption in a factory somewhere. It was handmade, carefully crafted, so superior to today’s artificial, manufactured products. And that’s the reason you’ll enjoy this production – every detail carefully chosen and put together. Perfection.
One does wonder whether successful playwrights ever spend a few moments to thank the gods of the performing arts for the dedicated work of great actors, who infuse so much focused creative energy into the process of bringing their characters to life – often, eight times a week. There are two acclaimed dramas now on the Broadway boards – “Blackbird” and “The Humans” – that deserve it. Nightly.
If you’ve already tuned in to, or read any of the notices about David Harrower’s “Blackbird,” you’ll already know the bones of his drama, which went down fifteen years ago. Ray [a slightly paunchy fifty-something-year-old office worker, the believably harried Jeff Daniels] and Una [Michelle Williams, as a slim, scarily intense twenty-seven year old], stalk each other in the grimy, fluorescent-lit break room of an anonymous company. Details of their sensational sexual relationship [he was forty; she was twelve] remain unstated only a few minutes in, during this intermission-less scorcher. His rape conviction led to his loss of employment, residence, social standing, even emotional stability. They never saw each other after he clumsily left her alone in a motel room, and she fearfully wandered the strange town looking for him, and instead, found herself taken in by strangers who contacted her family and the police. She testified inside a closed room; they had no contact from then til now.
And when the door to the empty employees’ break room swings open, no one is there to acknowledge Una’s defiant entrance. Moments later, Ray’s reaction when he arrives: anger, fear, defiance, confusion, all at the same time. Una’s reaction to his reaction: unspecific threat.
When two people who are or have been any kind of couple, and the plot is not romantic, the text must carefully relate why they are together again. And in “Blackbird,” she taunts him with her power to again torpedo his newly-reclaimed life, which he says now includes a woman he loves, who loves him. Their shared history, with its almost innocent bits and pieces of their mutual flirtations, that led to the doomed weekend, mount up, and frame a tabloid tale revealing two people, both outsiders, who allowed – rather encouraged the taboo attraction. And now, after believing that his past had been atoned for and his present safely protected, his accuser returns, but does not indicate exactly why.
Harrower has written – no, given birth to – two characters with so much emotional baggage, so many barely-healed scars, so few choices in the matter of renewed association, that our curiosity peaks early, replaced by being maneuvered into the role of audience to a spectator [almost] blood sport. They are George and Martha, going at each other, whether or not we care to let them. She is his Lolita. He is the one who learned her how to drive.
Here’s where the ‘thank you, God’ comes in. All the snarls and choke-holds, the gamut of assaults, the reversals, the inflicted damages of “Blackbird,” – they all leap across the stage and into our laps, because Daniels and Williams know how to do this, how to take well-crafted text, swallow it up, and thrust it out into our laps, slapping us across the face with fire-stoked fierceness, wisely selecting when to pause and when to shout. Make no mistake – this is superior dialogue-writing. But it’s by no means actor-proof. If there’s a reason to see “Blackbird,” it’s not because the story of these two people will surprise or shock or cover new territory. It is because Daniels and Williams know, really know what great actors do – they elevate the writing, and take the audience along for the experience.
The new play “The Humans,” by Stephen Karam, is a chronicle, because, like “Blackbird,” it unfolds in real time, one of the more challenging playwriting formats to conquer. And Karam does that. Five members of an immediate family convene for a Thanksgiving dinner in the newly-rented Chinatown apartment of Brigid, the younger daughter, whose boyfriend Rick shares the space as the sixth member of this cast. And the events that constitute the play are the events that have likely presented themselves in hundreds, thousands of Thanksgiving dinners during the last decade or so . . . lost pensions and related money issues, aggravated medical conditions, broken loving relationships, dementia, the questioning of religious beliefs.
The Blakes are solidly lower middle class. To label them part of ‘the American middle class’ is to pretend that their income levels put up against their rising routine costs of living can still allow them to enjoy what used to be thought of as middle class amenities: a home securely-owned, a rather new car that runs well, college-educated children, a pension-assured job, debt that could be managed, an annual vacation.
That’s not the Blakes. Older daughter Aimee [a seriously well-drawn Cassie Beck] has lost her law-firm job, and she believes it’s because she is undergoing escalating medical problems, and her long-term relationship with her girlfriend just ended; Deirdre, the mother [another mesmerizing performance from the matchless Jayne Houdyshell] barely hides her resentment at being made accountable to two new bosses half her age and who draw salaries many times higher than hers; Erik, the father [a deceptively natural performance from Reed Birney] whose maintenance job at a private school is a new source of problems] and Lauren Klein’s ‘Momo,’ Erik’s mother, whose dementia complicates her physical disabilities that confine her most of the time to a wheelchair.
Every character, including Brigid, whose foundering career as a composer that means her means of support is bar-tending, has immediate, sometimes devastating difficulties. And as facile as it might be to describe them as functions of lack of money, they go much, much deeper. Rick, whose family has made sure he inherits a tidy trust fund when he reaches forty, in two years’ time, still wrestles with questions of career choice and relationship commitment.
“The Humans” is titled from a comic book that Rick grew to like, wherein aliens [I think this is right] who have taken up residence on Earth, unbeknownst to the native population, find amusement in the troubles and trials of the life forms that populate this blue-ish planet. Karam, too, reaches for humor from time to time in relating the aliens’ discoveries about us homo sapiens. To them, the details of the lives of the Blakes and almost son-in-law Rick could certainly register as the stuff of reality T-V that get revealed, bit by bit, over time, except here, the revelations are paced to be revealed during one Thanksgiving dinner. And at play’s end, no neat-‘n’-tidy solutions have emerged.
And here, too, despite how un-alike their circumstances are, it’s possible to note that one element that links “The Humans” and “Blackbird:” both plays register as strongly as they have in recent weeks because they have been blessed with stunning performances. “The Humans” features enough over-lapping dialogue to present the appearance of real life. “Blackbird” features enough abridged conversational phrasing to present the appearance of personal riffing with an adversary. They both bristle with enough proper nouns [town names, for instance, or local places] to present the sounds of real people talking about real places and times.
When “August: Osage County” emerged a few seasons back to its very deservedly highly acclaimed status, it was its naturalness that gripped its audiences. What each character was doing, had done or planned to do provided more than enough substance to keep us engaged, to challenge our imaginations and traditional thinking, our sense of morality and civility and decency. Those theatrical conventions exist here as there, except that in this case – and in a way this makes it even more accessible – this family is smaller, these problems are more common and the level of expectation for resolutions is not as high. When an audience in a theatre, watching outstanding, live actors re-create well-drawn characters in compelling circumstances, the result is the same. We appreciate it. But remove the ‘outstanding’ adjective from ‘live actors’ and you’ve got melodrama. If that’s what we want, we can watch political coverage on the news.
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AfterPlay
A different view of politics can seen and enjoyed at “Votes,” by Jacqueline S. Salit and Fred Newman, with a score by Annie Roboff, that depicts what happens when a former First Lady and Secretary of State, on Election Eve, has the evening interrupted by an unexpected [and unwelcome] guest. Details are at www.jsnyc.com/season/votes.htm. It’s running from April 1 to May 8 at the Castillo Theatre, 543 West 42nd Street . . . Will Eno’s “The Realistic Joneses” kicks off the Voice theatre’s new spring reading series, on March 31, followed by Amy Herzog’s “4000 Miles,” on April 7 – check it out at www.facebook.com/voicetheatre . . . and you say you want more theatre listening? Can’t beat listening to Emma Thompson and Richard Armitage tell the tale of Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw.” It’s from Audible, an amazon company. Can you hear me now?
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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series on theatre, “Character Studies.” His Best Play winner at the New York International Fringe Festival is published by Playscripts. His play “Maisie and Grover Go to the Theatre” is published by ArtAge Press. He has written several other plays and musicals, countless magazine and newspaper articles about the performing arts for Parade, Rolling Stone, Dramatics magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, Reader’s Digest, Theatre Week and several other publications and news services. He has taught theatre classes at Columbia University Teacher’s College, HB Studio, Lehman College and other institutions and arts organizations across the country. His next session at the 92nd St. Y, titled “The Darker Side of ‘Our Town'” will take place on Monday, June 20 and Tuesday, June 21 – contact www.92Y.org for details. His new play “Labor Days” is in pre-production.
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