Ben Peltz - Page 4

When it comes to television, the 37th President of the United States is best remembered for an unfortunate debate against John F. Kennedy and later for those infamous words, “I am not a crook.”  But it was a younger, more idealistic Richard Milhous Nixon who used television to warm American hearts and save his political skin by telling the story of a little cocker spaniel namEd Checkers and bringing new respectability to the words “Republican cloth coat.”

Playwright Richard Nelson first introduced audiences to the family of Apple siblings with That Hopey Changey Thing, which took place on election night 2010 and, by design, opened on that same night.  He pulled the same trick last year with Sweet and Sad, which opened and was set on the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

You know those people who can eat whatever they want and never gain a pound?  Charlie, the central character of Samuel D. Hunter's touching drama The Whale, isn't one of them.  Charlie's dietary habits declined in a sharp downward spiral after losing his lover under tragic circumstances.  He lives a reclusive existence in his Idaho home, teaching how to write basic essays from his laptop while spread across his couch, with his students able to hear his voice, but never see his face.  When he last used a scale, Charlie weighed in at 550 pounds.  He suspects to be close to 600 now.

I daresay that playwright Jon Kern probably found a previously untried twist in the old staple of “meeting cute” in a romantic comedy by having the central couple of his play be a suicide bomber on a mission to sacrifice himself, and take as many lives as possible with him, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, and a fellow terrorist helping to achieve his goal as revenge against an American drone attack that killed her husband on her wedding day when the celebration was mistaken for a Taliban gathering.

The first 11 o'clock number of the evening came at around 8:05, when Marc Kudisch opened Town Hall's The Best of Broadway By The Year concert by caressing Lerner and Loewe's “If Ever I Would Leave You” with his rich, dramatic baritone and superlative musical acting skills.  It was a very appropriate opening since Kudisch, a regular participant throughout the concert series' twelve-season history, very much represents what these evenings have evolved into; a look at what Broadway could be in a commercially different environment.

The program for Transport Group's premiere production of director Daniel Fish's stage adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's essay, House For Sale, tells us that every performance is different, because each actor has apparently memorized the entire ninety minute piece and the sections of the text they perform each night are determined on the spot when the on-stage rows of lights display the color they've been assigned.  Unfortunately, audience members don't get programs until after the play is done, so if you're not aware that the original piece was written in one voice you have no idea that each ensemble member represents the same person and may wind up spending too much time trying to figure out what the blinking lights are supposed to mean.

Don't tell God, but for some people pop culture not even a century old can provide the same kind of spiritual inspiration and comfort as the ancient texts and traditions of organized religion.  Just ask Adelaide, the central character of Colman Domingo's wonderfully joyous, sweet and funny adventure, Wild With Happy.  No, wait, you can't.  Because she's dead when the play starts.

“We should not do a show more often,” quipped Ryan Silverman as he an Jill Paice took in the appreciative applause of the Town Hall audience before even singing a note of the Broadway musical they were expected to star in this season, Rebecca.  Host Scott Siegel had just recapped the story of the show's numerous delays, fake investors, missing funds and the fact that an estimated 150 theatre professions had either turned down work or stopped seeking immediate employment because of their expectation to be working on Broadway by Christmas.

The only trouble with these 90-minute musicals that start at 7pm is that I really can't get all that enthused over the big 8:15 number.

I suppose there's nothing unusual about a little kid waking up one morning to see a group of her parents' friends socializing around the family piano.  It's just that when you're young Loni Ackerman, those friends include Mayor John Lindsay, Ted Kennedy, Ralph Nader, several members of the Black Panthers and, playing the piano, football star Rosie Greer.

When 18-year-old Josh pulls the string hanging from a box propped up on a shelf in his family's living room, he gets showered with dozens of soft white feathers.  The mile-wide smile and limitlessly joyful expression on his face, and the happy tingle you can imagine must be tickling his body all over, tells you that playing with this homemade toy is something he does frequently to bring him comfort and momentary, completely innocent happiness.

Stephen Sondheim's “Uptown, Downtown,” that axed-from-Follies number about a woman who splits her personality between Schlitz and The Ritz, might well apply to the most recent plays of A.R. Gurney.

I'll spare you any idioms regarding the distance between apples and trees while examining the newest work of Daisy Foote, the playwright who carries on the lineage of one of America's treasured dramatist, the late Horton Foote.  But comparison is inevitable as the daughter's most recent work has a similar voice to that of her father; just differently accented.

Twenty-five years after passing on, Michael Bennett still gets entrance applause in A Chorus Line.

It was a very clever idea playwright Jeffrey Hatcher had, to write a Chekhovian style comedy about American theatre's royal couple, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, set in their country home as they prepare to go into rehearsal for a production of The Seagull.  And Ten Chimneys, named after the Wisconsin estate that provides the play's setting, frequently lives up to that cleverness; though its wit could be somewhat sharper and its character study could go a bit deeper in order to match the potential of the idea.

In musical theatre, it's not enough to write a good song.  You have to write the right song.  Character, plot, placement and various intangibles all go into making music, lyrics and performance all effectively fit into a moment and contribute to the piece as a whole.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Adam Rapp's Through The Yellow Hour is that the playwright/director has intentionally written a piece that will never be performed with a completely age-appropriate cast – at least not legally in this country – since it includes a fully nude, sexually suggestive scene between a thirty-year-old character and another who is fourteen.  But because the person playing the youth is obviously of age, the scene is likely to leave audience members thinking of the older character as someone who has learned to trust and be caring again, rather than as someone committing statutory rape.

Before the comedy boom of the 1980s began dotting New York and every other major American city with clubs devoted exclusively to showcasing stand-ups, comedians worked primarily between sets at music venues or at random comedy nights at bars and restaurants.  And while the emergence of burlesque as a form of female-empowered entertainment where men and women both cheerfully whoop it up for their favorite ecdysiasts is still only an occasional feature of variously appointed venues, I do think we're heading in a direction where before the end of this decade we'll be seeing the emergence of burlesque clubs – much like today's Comedy Clubs and jazz clubs – providing nightly opportunities for good, clean, non-judgmentally positive body image fun.

Sophie's choice was a casual coin flip compared with decision forced upon a young mother in Alexander Dinelaris' drama recalling the Ottoman Empire's Armenian genocide, Red Dog Howls.  As a 91-year-old grandmother enduring life with the memory of a horrific confrontation with three sadistic Turks, Kathleen Chalfant gives an extraordinarily convincing performance balancing pain and dark humor, climaxing with an agonizing scene where she reveals a sickening secret.  But Chalfant's performance, certainly worth remembering when award season comes along, is all the production has to recommend.

While nobody ever said musical theatre was easy – at least, nobody with any real knowledge of the art – you would think that in writing a musical about the first worldwide beloved figure of the 20th Century there wouldn't be too much trouble establishing empathy.  But the surprisingly dry and emotionless Chaplin, presented in a respectably strong Broadway production, tries to cram so many facts into its two acts that there's Little Room left for feeling.