The Play's the Thing

"What the fuck?" isn't just a lyric that's repeated over and over again in Jerry Springer the Opera but it pretty much sums up my exact feelings about the musical. Now I admit the humor of the show is not the type I typically find funny. I am not one for vulgarity or gross-out humor. But I've seen my fair share of Jerry Springer over the years, so I wasn't surprised at how vulgar the musical was. The surprising thing is that The New Group decided to even produce this show in 2018, fourteen years after it won Best Musical at the Oliviers, when Jerry Springer (and talk shows) have become culturally irrelevant. With social media and the internet and the ease in which someone or something can go "viral," we don't need syndicated talk shows to gain our fifteen minutes of fame. The piece doesn't even play well as a period piece; it is simply dated. Quite frankly, the material in Jerry Springer the Opera isn't even shocking, it's just in...

Much like Hamlet , Chess and I have a long and storied history too. But you know what? Maybe stories like ours do have happy endings. Chess has one of my favorite scores of all time but I had never been fortunate enough to see a production of the show. I knew the reputation it has; the score is great but the book is awful. It'll never work commercially. But as soon as I heard The Kennedy Center was staging a concert version, I bought tickets. I didn't care, I needed to see this show. The terrific cast that was eventually announced only made it better. And yes, it was an amazing night. Those voice (Raul Esparza and Ramin Karimloo in particularly) singing those songs! It was a dream come true. Except for that book. A new book was written for this concert, and I guess, for any other productions going forward. But look, it still doesn't work. And given that a) I saw a concert version and b) I didn't go expecting a fully-realized production, the book really didn...

I have a long, storied history with Shakespeare's Hamlet . It is one of my three favorite plays of all time (along with Tony Kushner's Angels in America and Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman ), and I remember being so completely absorbed by it the first time I read it in college. I even wrote my graduate thesis on Ophelia. I've studied and explicated line after line, I've read tons of criticism about it, and I am incredibly protective of the material. It's the play I've seen the most productions of, and I have a lot of opinions on how I want my Hamlet.  I traveled down to Washington DC to see Michael Kahn's production at the Shakespeare Theatre Company this past weekend. I needed to see Michael Urie in the role. Urie and I, well, we also have a long and storied history. Bottom line is, I've come to realize he is one of the most talented actors working today, and just the idea of him as the prince of Denmark made me so so excited. For the most par...

Sigh. Sigh. Lots and lots of sigh. I really don't know what Second Stage was thinking with Cardinal. Okay, okay, that sounds a little too harsh but honestly, this play is all over the place thematically, has no tension or rising action, and is so dramatically inert. Second Stage is billing this as a world premiere, and quite frankly, it's clear this needed a few more workshops and readings before it was fit for public consumption. The plot is one that we've seen variations of dozens of times: a small town's (somewhere in upstate New York; Pierce never names it) economies is struggling so the mayor, Jeffrey, must come up with an idea to drum up revenue. His female advisor, Lydia, (at least I think that's what she's meant to be; again, Pierce never clarifies) who also grew up in the town decides it would be a great idea to literally paint the town red to attract tourists. (Why she has so much power to persuade and convince not only the mayor but the rest...

There are two words that never fail to excite me when it comes to theater (and nowadays, film): Martin McDonagh. The Pillowman was the first play I ever saw on stage, and to this day remains the best production I've ever seen. It was perfect. And it led me to devour the rest of McDonagh's body of work, and ultimately, he became one of my biggest influences as a playwright. He truly is a genius. His work over the last seven or eight years, however, has had diminishing returns. And yet, still admirable. McDonagh is writing out of his comfort zone, getting more creative, no longer writing what he knows. Granted, something like The Beauty Queen of Leenane is brilliant but McDonagh could not write plays about small town Irish life forever. And I love that he himself acknowledged this and is branching out. Quite frankly, if you ask me, between his plays and his movies, no two works are alike (even the plays that are connected.) So when his Olivier-winning play Hangmen was announ...