Ben Peltz - Page 6

So now that Patrick Page will be ending his stint as The Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark and begin rehearsals for a piece just a tad worthier of his talents, Cyrano De Bergerac, his replacement Robert Cuccioli, a sensitive lyric interpreter with a beautifully masculine voice, will be taking on the honor of singing “A Freak Like Me Needs Company” eight times a week.

When the houselights went up for intermission at Gina Gionfriddo's  provocative comedy of gender issues, Rapture, Blister, Burn, my immediate impulse was to ask my guest – a 1980s Columbia University Women's Studies graduate who, like myself, remembers the days when an Upper West Side liberal's coffee table was considered incomplete if not graced by a heavily earmarked volume of Susan Faludi's latest and simply saying the name “Phyllis Schlafly” at certain cocktail parties would trigger the same venomous reaction the name “Haman” would receive from the most Manischewitz-soused participants at a Lower East Side Purim spiel – if it all seemed realistic to her.

Though the team of Richard Maltby, Jr. (lyrics) and David Shire (music) hasn't had much luck when it comes to book musicals (Baby and Big, despite their admirers, struggled through disappointing Broadway runs.) when it comes to Off-Broadway musical revues, the boys are two-time champs.  Their 1970s hit, Starting Here, Starting Now, was topped in 1989 by a 300+ performance run of Closer Than Ever, which is now getting a sparkling revival at the York.

Backwoods 1800s America proves an unlikely, but ideal setting for Shakespeare's As You Like It in director Daniel Sullivan's enormously entertaining Delacorte production that mixes dexterous wordplay with rowdy comedy.

By the third act of Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles' 1946 romantic comedy, Love Goes To Press, one of the play's leading characters, a female war correspondent considered tops in her field, begins discussing marriage with the handsome soldier who has captured her heart.  When the stuffy British Major speaks romantically of how his love will, naturally, give up her career and go to Yorkshire to stay with his mother until they get married, the 2012 audience members around me, naturally, smirked and guffawed at the absurdity of his antiquated assumptions.

The words, “Once upon a time…,” were followed by that familiar Sondheim vamp, and Danielle Ferland skipped onto the stage just as she had 25 years ago as the original Little Red Riding Hood in Into The Woods.  Sure enough, there was a wolf there to greet her, but instead of encountering Granny, The Baker's Wife and The Witch, Little Red found herself in a forest inhabited by a young French revolutionary, an elderly Holocaust survivor, a roller-skating duo and a former President of The United States.

Fadwa Faranesh, a bright, engaging Palestinian woman living in Bethlehem, hosts a cooking program from her home kitchen, where she prepares delectable dishes like tabouli and baba ghanoush in the traditional manner the women of her culture have been preparing them for centuries.  To her, food is an important connection between the past and the present.

When I first heard the title Potted Potter – The Unauthorized Harry Experience – A Parody by Dan and Jeff, my American mind immediately thought of the slang term we use for inebriated and figured Jefferson Turner and Daniel Clarkson's two-person, 70-minute presentation would be some kind of irreverent adult spoof of J.K. Rowling's septet of Harry Potter novels.  But no, “potted,” to our Brit friends, merely means abridged, and the show, which actually doesn't involve much parody, is really more of a wholesome family entertainment; not that there's anything wrong with that, as we say on the Upper West Side.

“Mensch” is not a word you might immediately think of to describe Frank Sinatra, but the label seems to fit Cary Hoffman quite snugly.  And though his solo musical, My Sinatra, has the nice Jewish guy from Long Island singing fifteen Sinatra hits (“One For My Baby,” “”Summer Wind,” “Luck Be A Lady,” “The Lady Is A Tramp”… you know the rest.), it is not a celebrity impersonation show.  It's actually a very warm, enjoyable presentation of his lifelong obsession with the man who many would consider to be definitive male interpreter of American popular music.

Snooty Manhattanites such as I generally have a short list of offerings that would lure us all the way out to Brooklyn.  For some it's a steak at Peter Lugar.  For others, it's the Rodins at the Brooklyn Museum.  But the quickest way to get me aboard a Gowanus-bound F train is to say that director/choreographer Austin McCormick has got a new theatre/dance piece for his Company XIV.

Carson McCullers, Erika Mann and Gypsy Rose Lee are sharing a house in Brooklyn.  No, it's not the theme for a costume ball at Sarah Lawrence.  It's a taste of February House, the heady new chamber musical at The Public (by way of Long Wharf) that may still be in need of some sharpening and editing to match its lofty ambitions, but still offers some refreshingly high-minded moments of musical theatre.

The admirable mission of Gigi Naglak and MeghAnn Williams, writer/performers of Chlamydia Dell'Arte: A Sex Ed Burlesque, is to remove some of the awkwardness in open discussions about human sexuality by treating intimate issues with humor.  Their modestly produced show, which just completed a week-long run at Los Kabayitos, is obviously built to travel, coming to Gotham via stints in Philly and DC, and the amiable pair pulls off their mission with endearing enthusiasm.

Match.com ain't got nuthin' on New York's cabaret scene, where composers, lyricists and performers are constantly on the lookout for perfect mates; whether for a lifetime commitment or just a brief, but mutually satisfying, fling.

Broadway audiences can be forgiven if they don't quite recall being introduced to James Corden six years ago as one of The History Boys' ensemble of Oxbridge hopefuls, but in Richard Bean's One Man, Two Guvnors, the loveable harlequin makes an unforgettable sophomore appearance, taking center stage in an uproarious evening of slapstick, music and comical hijinks.

The lunatics, lovers and poets merrily charge onto the stage in full force in Classic Stage Company's raucous and witty, sexy and sensual mounting of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Director Tony Speciale's playfully romantic staging of Shakespeare's tale of earthbound lovers fleeing to the woods to escape an arranged marriage, only to find themselves mixed up in the petty squabbles between a royal faerie couple, features a completely winning ensemble and entrancing visuals.

It took two years, a Pulitzer Prize and an Olivier Award-winning London production before happening, but Bruce Norris' searing satire, Clybourne Park, has finally made the six-block transfer from Off-Broadway's Playwright's Horizon to Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre.  The original ensemble of director Pam MacKinnon's excellent 2010 production has been reunited for the playwright's scathing telling of the racial integration of a Chicago neighborhood, as seen through the history of one very significant home.

In every previous Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, a white Blanche DuBois has complained that her sister Stella's white husband Stanley has “something downright bestial about him.”  She refers to him as “sub-human” and “ape-like.”  And depending on her co-star's performance, audience members might have agreed with her to some extent.

Remember when political conventions were fun?  When the delegates gathered into town, not to perfunctorily declare a pre-determined winner, but to debate through multiple votes, late night deals and maybe a few protest rallies to come up with a nominee?

Last season's debate over whether the Best Play Tony should be awarded for the quality of the written text or for the production as a whole – set off by the nomination and subsequent victory of War Horse – is likely to be brought up again if the raucously funny and surprisingly tender Peter And The Starcatcher is included among this year's nominees.