Ben Peltz - Page 28

When Barry Connors' frothy family comedy, The Patsy, enjoyed its seven-month at the Booth during Broadway's 1925-26 season, it was a three-act play utilizing one living room set and seven actors.  Transport Group's new production, directed by Jack Cummings III, reduces the piece to an intermissionless 75 minutes, minimizes the set to a sparsely furnished room and casts each role with five time OBIE Award winning actor/playwright David Greenspan.

As I wrote five years ago, regarding the first edition of Town Hall's Annual Broadway's Rising Stars concert, the traditional middle evening of their Summer Broadway Festival, this is an event where I have absolutely no intention of writing anything the least bit negative about any of the young performers who were hand-picked by Scott and Barbara Siegel to sing an evening of showtunes.  I have no desire to be the critic who drives some 22-year-old to tears with a bit of constructive criticism, inspiring him or her to angrily vow to the heavens, 'Someday I'll show that Michael Dale!'

'That's me up there,' said the gentleman sitting to my right at Tuesday night's performance of Hair when I ask him at intermission if he was having a good time.

They look a little like Blue Man Group, they sound a little like Toxic Audio and they talk a lot like Andy Kaufman and Carol Kane playing Latka and Simka on Taxi, but while Voca People might give the appearance of being a bit too tourist trappy for we jaded New York theatre types, it's the kind of family friendly, good clean fun that's legitimately clever, catchly and often downright adorable.

Former 90s club kids nostalgic for theme nights at Limelight should get a kick out of director David Esbjornson's frequently flashy and enjoyable mounting of Shakespeare's Measure For Measure; a production where, under a simple, but austere cathedral-like setting, the antics straddle the line between the play's original early 1600s Viennese setting and a more contemporary techno-fetish club.

See enough Cirque du Soleil productions and the formula becomes clear very quickly.  It's a given that you'll be treated to a collection of world-class jugglers, balancers, acrobats and daredevils displaying skills that would make all but the most jaded widen their eyes and let out the occasional gasp.  But it's the packaging that always varies, though you can always expect a threadbare plot (more concerned with mood than story), forgettable songs and a troupe of clowns whose antics are, on occasion, genuinely amusing.

From Jerry Herman's Parade to Martin Charnin's No Frills Revue to nights with Betty Comden, Adolph Green and The Revuers, the original song and sketch revue has been a favorite of downtown audiences for nearly a century.  With The Greenwich Village Follies, a new show that takes its name from a legendary production from the 1920s, composer/lyricist Doug Silver and bookwriter/lyricist Andrew Frank not only capture the smart, freestyle irreverence that made downtown revues so popular, but they use the format to offer an eighty-minute lesson on the history of America's first haven for artists, free-thinkers and non-conformists.

While Shakespeare's canon includes many couples whose relationships are of questionable health - Kate and Petruchio, Beatrice and Benedick, Mr. and Mrs. Scottish - few are as discomfortingly mismatched as the lead pair of All's Well That Ends Well.

On a weekend when New Yorkers who favor marriage rights for gay couples are celebrating an important victory, Classic Stage Company's Unnatural Acts is a sobering dramatization of a shameful episode involving a Joseph McCarthy-type gay witch hunt from nearly a century ago that was only recently uncovered.

The funny thing about 70 million dollar musicals is that the paper used to write them costs no more than the paper used to write church basement showcases budgeted on the limit of someone's maxed-out credit card.  And twenty thousand years from now, when intergalactic societies consider our generation's artistic ambitions based on which words and music written on that paper we chose to support with extravagantly-financed productions viewed by over ten thousand purchasers of high-priced tickets every week, let's hope we don't have to sheepishly shield our faces in our afterlife abodes as they flabbergastedly wonder, 'What the hell were they thinking?'

There's much to be admired in director/adaptor Moises Kaufman's staging of Tennessee Williams' unproduced screenplay based on his 1942 short story, One Arm.  If not exactly completely satisfying theatre, it is certainly a nobly-intended and well-executed curiosity.

When Aristophanes premiered the knockabout comedy, Lysistrata, in 411 B.C., his tale of women denying sex to their husbands until they ended the Peloponnesian War was an irreverent protest against then-contemporary politics.  In their giddily fun and sexy musical update, Lysistrata Jones, bookwriter Douglas Carter Beane and composer/lyricist Lewis Flinn ditch the anti-war hoopla in favor of college basketball hoops.  At first it seems a lot sillier - the girlfriends of an apathetic team stop putting out until they win a game - but then evolves into neat little explorations of self-esteem, self-discovery and the importance of non-sexual connections in romantic relationships.  I'm not saying they delve into Sondheimish depths here, but this twist to the story adds a refreshingly original and unexpected angle to an already immensely enjoyable show.

Though playwright Rachel Crothers was regarded as the toast of the town for many a Broadway season - she had 29 plays debut there in the years between 1906 and 1940 - she's scarcely know by 21st Century playgoers.  Fortunately, the Mint Theater Company has been doing its part to return her name to the limelight; first with their mounting of her clever take on religious fads, Susan and God, and now with a sweeter, more uplifting comedy/melodrama - one that was a finalist for the first Pulitzer Prize for Drama - A Little Journey.

Under Artistic Director Cara Reichel, the Prospect Theater Company has earned a reputation for presenting unconventional musicals that explore interesting topics and their newest entry, I Married Wyatt Earp, co-produced with New York Theatre Barn as part of 59E59 Theater's 'Americas Off Broadway' series, is no exception.

Though the current tenants at the Eugene O'Neil claim to be presenting 'God's Favorite Musical,' the new gang moving into Circle In The Square this October may have something to say about that as the first Broadway revival of Godspell gears up for a November 7th opening.

With an uneventful 6pm coming and going on the evening of May 21st, I rested comfortably that night secure in the knowledge that any predictions of the arrival of Judgment Day were, at the very least, miscalculations.  But the next evening, as I sat watching David Burnham, Sally Mayes, Howard McGillin, Billy Stritch, Lillias White and Rachel York perform eight-five minutes of songs composed by Broadway's heppist hepcat, Cy Coleman, you'd have a tough time convincing me I'd not been raptured into Heaven.

Unless the names 'Noel' and 'Coward' are involved, I tend to be a bit wary about musicals with the book, music, lyrics and direction all by the same person, but Willard Beckham makes a very entertaining go of it with his campy, country/western musical comedy, Lucky Guy.

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.