The Play's the Thing

Okay, okay, the 2017-2018 season is mercifully over and I've scraped together a list of my favorite shows: Angels in America. I mean, must I say more? Perfect. James McArdle and Denise Gough gave two of my favorite performances of the season. Spongebob Squarepants the Musical. Don't be a snob, see this show. It's smart and hilarious and fun fun fun and Tina Landau's work is excellent. Ethan Slater as the titular sponge gives the best performance in a musical this season. My Fair Lady. Bartlett Sher did it, he did it, he said he'd do it and indeed he did! It's a stunning, beautiful production, and Lauren Ambrose and Harry Hadden-Paton are wonderful as Eliza and Higgins. Eliza could've danced all night but I could've sat and watched this show all night. Torch Song. *takes a moment, gathers myself, gets on my soap box* I am not a religious person, I haven't found God, but you know what? After seeing Torch Song (and The Government Ins...

Although these should come as no surprise to anyone who has spoken with me about theater this season, here's a list of my favorite performances of the 2017-2018 season (in no particular order): James McArdle, Angels in America . I've written at length about McArdle's performance but man, did he nail Louis Ironson. He not only nailed the New York Jewishness of the character (most impressive for a man from Scotland) but succeeded in not making Louise a one-dimensional monster that he is typically seen as. What Louis does is reprehensible but McArdle shows that he is not irredeemable. He also knocked the character's long (and long-winded) monologues out of the park. Tell me more about justice, Louis. Ethan Slater, Spongebob Squarepants . This guy is insanely talented. What a Broadway debut! He is Broadway's brand new triple (or quadruple!) threat; he sings, dances, acts, and even nails the physicality of the role beautifully. Slater carries the whole musical and wi...

I think you all need to calm down about the Drama Desk nominations. First of all, I think they're mostly fair (other than a few glaring omissions) and they represent the kind of season 2017-2018 has been; overall it was a weak one but the strongest work has been done off-Broadway. People overreact because they're so Broadway-oriented, and need to realize that the nominating committee sees about 280 shows a season, performed all over the city. Theater does not only exist between 41st and 54th streets in midtown Manhattan. Here are some reactions I had to the nominations: The Outstanding Play category is amazing, and good for the committee for only nominating off-Broadway work but I would've nominated Harry Potter and the Cursed Child over Miles for Mary or Admissions. But finally some love for Mary Jane. Outstanding Musical is kind of ridiculous, and I suspect the snobbery around Spongebob Squarepants will make it an easy victory for Mean Girls , which is the weaker o...

And now, here's what I suspect tomorrow Tony nominations will look like: Best Musical The Band's Visit Frozen Mean Girls  Spongebob Squarepants Best Revival of a Musical Carousel My Fair Lady Once On This Island Best Actor in a Musical  Henry Hadden-Paton, My Fair Lady Joshua Henry, Carousel Tony Shaloub, The Band's Visit Ethan Slater, Spongebob Squarepants Best Actress in a Musical Lauren Ambrose, My Fair Lady Hailey Kilgore, Once On This Island Katrina Lenk, The Band's Visit Taylor Louderman , Mean Girls Jessie Mueller, Carousel Jessie Mueller, Carousel Best Featured Actor in a Musical Norbert Leo Butz, My Fair Lady  Grey Hensen, Mean Girls Gavin Lee, Spongebob Squarepants Alex Newell, Once on This Island * Ari'el Stachel, The Band's Visit  * I know the hive mind has decided he's a lock but the OCC and Drama Desks nominated Tony Yazbeck, and I think he can be a spoiler here. Best Featured Actress in a Musical Ariana De...

Tony nominations will be announced tomorrow! Here's what they'd look like if I had my say: Best Musical The Band's Visit Frozen Mean Girls  Spongebob Squarepants Best Revival of a Musical Carousel My Fair Lady Once On This Island Best Actor in a Musical  Henry Hadden-Paton, My Fair Lady Joshua Henry, Carousel Tony Shaloub, The Band's Visit Ethan Slater, Spongebob Squarepants Best Actress in a Musical Lauren Ambrose, My Fair Lady Katrina Lenk, The Band's Visit Taylor Louderman , Mean Girls Jessie Mueller, Carousel Patti Murin, Frozen Best Featured Actor in a Musical Phillip Boykin, Once on This Island  Grey Hensen, Mean Girls Adam Kantor, The Band's Visit Gavin Lee, Spongebob Squarepants Tony Yazbeck, The Prince of Broadway  Alternate:  Jellani Alladin, Frozen Best Featured Actress in a Musical Merle Dandridge , Once on This Island Lindsay Mendez, Carousel Kenita R. Miller , Once on This Island Ashley Park , Mean Girls Ka...

Well, here we are, folks. The last review of the 2017-2018 season. And what a show to go out on. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is simply an event. The Lyric theater has been renovated for the show, the marquee is bigger than anything we've ever seen in New York (akin to the gorgeous facades we see in London), the merch is plentiful, you can order drinks at your seat through an app, people are walking around in wizard robes. These two plays are unlike anything we've ever seen on Broadway. And in a sense, it seems simply like a cash-grab. We've done the novels, the movies, the theme park, of course there should be a stage show. This is all a part of Harry Potter brand. Quite frankly, it seems very icky when you think about it. Is this what Broadway has come to? And yes, the rumors are true: the script itself isn't the most perfect. It's not that it's not well-written, it just lacks any sense of nuisance that you'd find in strong dramatic writing. Yes, ...

I find it impossible to review a production of Tony Kushner's masterpiece Angels in America . Why? Well, for one, the play is the thing. It's one of the most stunning pieces of writing ever, and definitely the best play of the twentieth century. We always discuss who the "new" Shakespeare is (Sondheim? Eminem? Lin-Manuel Miranda?) but going by Angels in America alone, I argue that it is Kushner. His writing is dense and poetic, political, and absolutely beautiful, and yet accessible and entertaining. Unless some director makes some drastic cuts to the script (and he or she should not!), the text is there, the beauty is there. Another reason is that I am so close to the material. I've mentioned before that it is one of my favorite plays (along with Hamlet and The Pillowman ) but I can't even begin to tell you how much it means to me. I read it for the first time when I was maybe fourteen, right around the time the HBO movie was released. I read it and watch...

We have yet another contender for the least essential production of the season: the current revival of The Iceman Cometh . Now, I'm not naive. I know why this is on Broadway. Scott Rudin put one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and a very strong actor, Denzel Washington, into a role that's been done to death, in a play that has been done to death. This was easy money. But who on earth wanted to see The Iceman Cometh again? This version is heavily edited and it still runs nearly four hours! I've mentioned length a few times on this blog; it doesn't matter how long something is. If it's good, it's good, and it can be as long as it needs to be. But this production, directed by George C. Wolfe, is a slog. The pacing is slow, the group of otherwise very talented actors are out to sea, with performances all over the place (some, like Frank Wood and Dakin Matthews, were intelligible from my orchestra row D seat), and the design of it is just awful (the set ...

When MTC announced they were reviving George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan , I couldn't help but think, "Why? Who wants this?" And Condola Rashad is a very talented actress but is anyone clamoring to see her in this old, creaky play? (I'd argue she's not a draw in any role.) I can say that yet again, MTC completely misses the mark with this production. I hate to be cruel but there are so many missteps that it's irredeemable. Daniel Sullivan must take all of the blame. His Saint Joan is all over the map tone-wise. Some scenes are played broadly, with the comedy heightened. Is this the proper way to do the story of Joan of Arc? You could make the case that the church and the crown are buffoons in this story but you can't have them played like Saturday Night Live characters. Especially when the production shifts to a very serious tone during Joan's trial. Not to mention that embarrassingly bad epilogue; that truly felt like an SNL skit. I would'v...

Eliza Doolittle could've danced all night, and I could've watched Barlett Sher's beautiful production of My Fair Lady all night. I am not the warmest person. I'm a bit cynical and not sentimental in the slightest. I roll my eyes when people talk about how hard they cry over shows that should not bring anyone to tears. But sometimes a production just comes along and is so perfect and stunning, like My Fair Lady , that it is a joy to watch, that prove that underneath that cynical shell, I am at heart a sentimentalist. My Fair Lady isn't a perfect musical. Sure, it can be problematic, and yeah, Higgins is a real jerk, and maybe it is a bit dated for 2018 (I assure you, it is not Carousel ) but Barlett Sher really can work magic to make these familiar, old, even creaky musicals so fresh, and well, magical. Sher's magic begins with his casting. Eliza is played by the splendid Lauren Ambrose. Ambrose's Eliza has great agency, and feels like an equal to Higg...

Word of advice: if you're going to write a musical as god-awful as Summer , make sure there won't be a moment in it when your lead actresses will keep singing "enough is enough." Because seriously, enough is enough. I think that's my sentiment towards Broadway musicals in general. This season we've had a Disney theme park show, a teen movie-turned-musical, a jukebox musical better suited for a cruise ship, and Spongebob Squarepants (albeit the best of them all.) And it's not going to get any better, with another biomusical about Cher coming, as well as Pretty Women , King Kong , Beetlejuice , and Moulin Rouge . Help us, Hadestown , you're our only hope. Summer might just be the worst of the musicals this season. Yes, Escape to Margaritaville is a lazy commercial for the Jimmy Buffet brand but the book to Summer is clearly afraid to make any sort of statement or opinion on its subject. It's afraid to really show Donna Summer in a poor light,...

To steal from a different Rogers and Hammerstein musical, how do you solve a problem like Carousel ? As I asked in my review of Bedlam's Pygmalion revival , does a piece of work that is so inherently problematic and misogynist deserve a stage in 2018? I don't know. I don't have the answer to this. But I do know that had Carousel not been written by arguably the greatest musical writing team in history, it would have been lost to time. I know much has been written about the show lately and I don't think it's unwarranted. When you strip away the beautiful score and the wonderful singing and dancing of Jack O'Brien's latest revival, what you have is the story of an abusive brute and criminal who'd rather die and abandon his family than face his responsibilities. But oh wait! He gets to redeem himself for some reason so he can spend all over eternity in Heaven. If you ask me, Billy Bigelow does not deserve redemption. He does nothing through the course o...

Other than the 2012 revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , Edward Albee's work has never been for me. He's a bit too dry and angry for me. And there's only so much I can take of watching affluent people sit around, drink, and be caustic towards one another. I passed on At Home at the Zoo at the Signature earlier this season because I just knew I would not enjoy it. But then the Broadway revival of Three Tall Women opened and although I am not an Albee fan, I am a huge, huge fan of Laurie Metcalf. I will see her do almost anything (but I couldn't sit through Misery ) and her performance in A Doll's House, Part 2 last season is one of my favorites of all time. If she is on stage, I am there. And this time she shares the stage with Glenda Jackson. Would this production change the way I felt about Edward Albee's work? Nope. There many terrific elements in Joe Mantello's revival of the play. His direction is seamless with expert pacing. I would ...

I love the movie Mean Girls . It's a perfect funny and smart movie with an amazing that transcends the "teen movie" label. And now it's a musical. I can see why screenwriter Tina Fey thought it was a good idea to turn it into a musical. In addition to Mean Girls being a very strong property, it has captured the zeitgeist and fourteen years later people still say things like "Four for you, Glen Coco" and "fetch" and "is butter a carb?" Yours truly even has one of those phrases on a t-shirt. The love for this movie alone would turn the musical into a big, fat hit. But something is missing. I'm at loathe to say that lightning doesn't strike twice because that's not quite the problem here. No, I think there are two major problems with Mean Girls . The first being the score by Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin isn't strong enough to a make case to turn this movie into a musical. No song is particularly strong or memorable...

I saw the Disney movie Frozen after all of the hype and mania, after it was announced there was a theatrical adaptation in the works. I certainly enjoyed it, although I did find it slight. I do remember wondering how it was all going to work on stage. So much of it is visual animation gags. How would any director figure out a way to make ice and snow shoot from his or her protagonist's hands? Of course, if anyone was going to manage it, it would be Disney. And it was clear by how quickly this musical was green-lit that it didn't matter. They'd figure it out somehow. So now we have Frozen at the St. James Theater. And well, it's presented at face value. And it is a very enjoyable 2:20. The effects are exciting enough, the set and costumes are elaborate, the songs are still there. It's a crowd-pleaser, and if you are there to see Frozen , you're going to leave happy. But I couldn't help but think, "something is missing." As I already mentione...

As you have read, lately I've been grappling with why plays are revived and when. So going into Lobby Hero , the Kenneth Lonergan play receiving a revival at the brand new Helen Hayes Theater (now owned and operated by Second Stage), I couldn't help but ask, "why?" Why revive this now, seventeen years after it ran at Playwrights Horizons? Why did Second Stage make it its maiden voyage on Broadway? Why did it attract stars like Michael Cera and Chris Evans? I'm still not really sure of the answers to those questions. Theater is a living, breathing organism. And the beauty of it is that plays and musicals can be revived over and over again, hopefully with new insight. No two productions will (or should) be alike. So I guess judging by that there's always a reason to revive a play, right? I honestly could've lived forever without seeing Lobby Hero on Broadway, or stage, ever again. It's a fine play that doesn't quite succeed as either a slice of l...

Full disclosure: jukebox musicals aren't my thing. I loved Rock of Ages and All Shook Up and had fun at Beautiful and On Your Feet but ultimately I think they're just a cheap attempt at a cash grab. And this has never been more apparent than at the new Jimmy Buffett jukebox show, Escape to Margaritaville . The creative team behind Margaritaville understand the product they have. They're not trying to make the greatest musical of all time. They are just trying to appeal to the Parrotheads, the people who go to the theater to have a good time. And look, there's nothing wrong with having fun. My favorite show of the season (so far) is Spongebob Squarepants . It's fun and funny and adorable but also smart and well-done. It's clear the creators of the show wanted to create the best show possible. With Margaritaville , this is not the case at all. The whole thing feels cheap and insulting. It's like a theme park show, something you'd see on a cruise ship...