Ben Peltz - Page 12

Those who miss the patter of little urbanites that made Thursday night sitcoms so popular in the 1990s should welcome the arrival of Jonathan Marc Sherman's angsty new comedy, Knickerbocker; a play generously populated by an assortment of smart, funny and hip New Yorkers whose charm lies in their ability to over-think.

You know the old saying, usually reserved for Oscar-nominated films whose directors are not likewise honored:  'Did this film direct itself?'

While older plays can often be interpreted to suit modern tastes and standards, films serve as permanent records of the public attitudes of their times; particularly when considering the ways ethnic minorities were portrayed.  Many a fine film from long ago can contain moments that strike the modern eye as racist, even in cases where the intention was to be racially sensitive.  In the case of black actors from early Hollywood, we can admire the talent of the likes of Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson, Butterfly McQueen and Stepin Fetchit and say they opened door for others, but many have argued that their success came from demeaning their race as a whole by taking the types of roles that were within the white viewers' comfort zones.

There's a song in the backstage musical murder mystery, Curtains, that is unlike any other in the history of Broadway; a song guaranteed to make any musical theatre lover in the know choke up at least a little.

Another bed.  Another woman.  More curtains.  Another bathroom.  Another kitchen.  Other eyes.  Other hair.  Other feet and toes.  Everybody's looking.  The eternal search.  You stay in bed, she gets dressed for work and you wonder what happened to the last one and the one before that.

If there's one thing this town can't resist it's a gal who can reinvent herself, and in director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall's smashing new revival of the Cole Porter classic, Anything Goes, Sutton Foster foregoes the spunky wholesomeness that made her a Broadway star for a sleek, sophisticated and sexy turn as nightclub singer turned evangelist, Reno Sweeney.

When the 1920s crooner heartthrob Rudy Vallee made his return to Broadway in the 1961 original production of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, he wasn't exactly known as an actor, and certainly not known as a comedian who might excel in a scalding satire of the ups and downs of the corporate ladder.  So when director Abe Burrows guided him through the role of J.B. Biggley, the feared and revered President of World-Wide Wickets, he gave him specific instructs... don't be funny.  Since the brilliant comic scribe Burrows was also writing the book for How To Succeed... (starting from Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert's straight play draft) he knew exactly how to surround the star with daffy characters and plant him into silly situations while keeping him obliviously normal.  By not really giving a performance, but by being Rudy Vallee saying lines and singing songs, the used-to-be has-been had audiences rolling with laughter.

'This is kind of a weird play. I'll show you what I mean,' offers Bernard (Brian Hutchison), the character who opens David Greenspan's Go Back To Where You Are with a nostalgic monologue about childhood summers at a family Long Island beach house that sets a tone somewhat akin to that of a Tennessee Williams memory play.

'One man's facts are another man's fabrications,' notes Ghassan (Ted Sod) as he and several other characters in Mona Mansour's Urge For Going try to explain to the audience the circumstances that brought this family of Palestinian Arabs to live in a South Lebanese refugee camp that has been serving as a temporary settlement for nearly 60 years.

With the opening of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a stroll through New York's theatre district now offers a fascinating history of the evolution of that musical theatre genre we call 'the jukebox musical.'

'Let me tell you something.  I find my husband so Goddamned irritating that I'm planning to leave him.'

A Columbia literary scholar with a passion for the punctuation used in Keats' poetry starts dating a personal trainer who has moved to New York from Ireland.  Sounds like the beginning of a romantic comedy about a seemingly mismatched pair trying to get their conflicting worlds to mesh.

There aren't many concerts around where you can hear a full house go berserk at the promise of hearing Jill Eikenberry sing a number from Onward, Victoria.  Or where the mention of the name Bruce Yeko draws spontaneous applause and the audience enjoys a running gag about Lenny Wolpe.

Advanced chemistry lessons are now being held eight times a week at the Longacre Theatre, where newly-added stars Harvey Fierstein and Christopher Sieber not only score individual triumphs as drag entertainer Albin and his dapper committed partner Georges in the Terry Johnson-directed revival of La Cage aux Folles, but combine to make the kind of irresistibly fun couple you want to invite to every dinner party, go in on a summer share with and, in a more perfect world, watch on television hosting the Tony Awards.

If Bill Clinton really was, as Toni Morrison put it, America's first black president, then perhaps it's about time we crowned David Lindsay-Abaire as America's leading female playwright.  Since first gaining major attention in 1999 with Fuddy Meers, and including major productions such as Kimberly Akimbo, Wonder of the World and the Pulitzer-winning Rabbit Hole, Lindsay-Abaire (whose surname is a hyphenated combination of his and his wife's last names) has been continually filling stages with unique and interesting women as his leading characters.

For nearly 300 years, theatre scholars have doubtEd Lewis Theobald's claim that his Double Falsehood was an adaptation of Cardenio, a lost collaboration by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher.  But the recent acceptance of highly-regarded publisher Arden Shakespeare has, in the eyes of many, provided a new entry for the Bard's canon.  But while Brian Kulick's well-acted production for Classic Stage Company is a worthy mounting, the mystery of the play's origin stirs up more interest than anything left on the written page.

No, dear playgoers, the fact that you've ventured into an unmarked building on a dark SoHo street, walked down a long hallway draped in red and are now in an open loft sitting mere inches away from a young couple enthusiastically going at it in a standing position up against one of the building's pillars does not mean that you've accidentally wandered into a sex club that somehow survived the ax of Giuliani.  You've just found yourself at Transport Group's marvelously mounted staging of Michael John LaChiusa's tensely erotic musical drama, Hello Again.

With a solidly funny book by Larry Gelbart and Bert Shevelove and a clever, under-appreciated score by Stephen Sondheim (It remains Broadway's only Best Musical Tony-winner with eligible music and lyrics that were not even nominated for Best Score.), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is one of the more dependable titles of musical theatre's standard repertoire.

Although I'll admit to not being completely familiar with Cole Porter's See America First and George M. Cohan's The Governor's Son, it's quite possible that Frank Loesser's score for Where's Charley? could be considered the finest Broadway debut for a composer/lyricist who would eventually occupy a place on musical theatre's top tier.