Kristin Salaky - Page 6

'Sometimes life just is preposterous, you know,' screams a frustrated character trying to get another to believe his corner of the jigsaw puzzle of interlocking plots in Craig Lucas' eclectically styled comedy/drama, The Singing Forest; a play that takes us from 21st Century New York to 1930s Vienna to 1940s London via urban romantic comedy, Holocaust drama, dysfunctional family angst, mistaken identity farce and a dash of that Lucas theatrical fantasy. Far funnier and more happily enjoyable than you'd expect, especially considering the horrifying imagine the play's title represents, The Singing Forest manages to examine issues of self-deceit and the limits of both forgiveness and accepting blame for one's actions.

As is frequently noted by lovers of strong book musicals, part of the brilliance of Sherman Edwards (score) and Peter Stone's (book) 1776, their 1969 Broadway tuner about the efforts of John Adams to convince the continental congress to vote for independency from Great Britain, is that the audience walks into the theatre knowing full well how it's going to end, and yet the authors (and history) keep you on The Edge of your seat wondering how the devil it's going to happen. With a unanimous vote necessary ('So that no colony be torn from its mother country without its own consent.') and Pennsylvania's John Dickinson leading the arguments for property-owners whose personal economy is protected by loyalty to the crown and South Carolina's Edward Rutledge keeping the deep south unified in favor of individual states rights that protect their practice of slavery, June of '76 concludes with half the congress against independence.

There's a moment in Show Boat where a woman sings that her true love, 'just plain Bill,' is 'an ordinary man' who 'isn't half as handsome as dozens of men' and is, on the whole, kinda stupid. This is considered by many to be one of the most romantic love songs of the 20th Century. In Neil LaBute's somewhat revised (like this review) Off-Broadway to Broadway transfer of reasons to be pretty, the main character, reacting to his buddy's ravings about how hot another woman is, says that his girlfriend of four years may be 'regular' looking, but he wouldn't trade her for a million bucks. This will not be considered one of the most romantic sentiments of the 21st Century.

'Acting is reacting,' says many a teacher of the craft, and if they're right then Christopher Durang has handed his leading lady, Laura Benanti, a career's worth of reasons to react in his surreal cavalcade, Why Torture Is Wrong And The People Who Love Them. A meta-theatrical farce disguised as a satire of America's war on terrorism (with a brief lesson about taking control of your life and a somewhat romantic conclusion for those who require such things) Why... is top-shelf Durang lunacy and Benanti, making a rare non-musical appearance, proves herself a wonderful everywoman foil.

I'm assuming that whatever Tina Howe is trying to get across in Chasing Manet, her disappointing new play receiving a well-acted mounting by Primary Stages, is contained in a lengthy speech Jane Alexander delivers early in the first act.

You know you're in for a good one when there's a huge laugh before the first person on stage can even let out the third syllable of the show. But by the time the actors start growling to customers, 'There's no intermission!' and 'The show's eight hours long!' The Toxic Avenger has firmly established itself as one of the funniest musicals in town.

While it would be just loverly to have Melissa Errico's crystalline soprano back on Broadway, the Tony-nominee for Amour has been keeping busy doing remarkable work as the founder of Bowery Babes. Check out this terrific New York Observer feature on her hand-on support group for mommies.

Legendary playwright Robert Patrick shares some thoughts and remembrances of the late Jack Wrangler...

While the new musical by James Hindman (book) and Ellen Weiss (score) appears to be a promising work in progress, Transport Group's premiere production of Being Audrey, helmed by the company's Artistic Director Jack Cummings III, is loaded with bright, shiny charms that display their material in a dazzling little jewel box.

No dear playgoers, it has not come to pass that some smart producer put up a quickie, low-budget revival of Spamalot in the Barrymore Theatre and tried cutting costs by removing all the songs. But there's definitely a Pythonic style in the look and text of Ionesco's Exit The King as co-adapted by Geoffrey Rush (who also stars) and Neil Armfield (who also directs). You can sense it in the way Brian Hutchison, as a faithfully detail-oriented armored guard, dutifully announces each royal occurrence as it happens, correcting himself, when necessary, with bellowing authority ('The King is dead.'... 'The King's alive.'... 'Long live the king.'). It's there when AndRea Martin, as a sullen, much-abused servant, makes a comic production out of trying to keep the monarchs' royal robes draped straight, and it's abundantly present when Rush, as the 400-year-old King Berenger, who is down to his last 90 minutes of life ('When the play is over you'll be dead.'), kicks up what's left of his heels in a silly little dance.

'Men like women with character,' is the sisterly advice a muddied, snarling, grief-stricken and murderously-crazed Elektra gives to pretty little Chrysothemis in Ann Carson's wildly clever adaptation of the ancient Greek story of bloody family doings titled An Oresteia. Growled in all seriousness by the fabulously bitter Annika Boras, the line got a huge laugh the afternoon I caught Classic Stage Company's crackling good premiere production; the swiftest five hours of theatre I've enjoyed in a long, long time.

There's a fine, fine line... No, let me rephrase that. There's a wide gaping canyon between clever social commentary and unmotivated slapstick. And while I'm not suggesting that Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage had me longing for the subtle nuances of Messrs. Moe, Larry and Curly I will admit to being reminded of the famous Tallulah Bankhead quip, 'There's less to this than meets the eye.'

'If musical theatre doesn't address important issues, who will?,' read a t-shirt I spotted at the Broadway Flea Market several years ago. And while America's theater history is rich with important issue addressing musical dramas like Show Boat and Ragtime, when Finian's Rainbow hit Broadway in 1947 it was pretty much unheard of for a musical comedy to have its main plot centered on attacking institutionalized racism.

Though probably best known to theatre folk as author of the long-running Broadway comedy, Luv, Murray Schisgal first hit it big with the Off-Broadway double bill of one-acts, The Typists and The Tiger, and the short play form continues to be a steady part of the 81-year-old humorist's repertoire.

If you're going to open your play with the two main characters discussing their preference of either muffins or coffee cake with their morning brew, your dialogue had better be sparkling. It's not. In fact the biggest problem with Michael Jacobs' Impressionism is that its main characters can't seem to express themselves as cleverly as the author seems to believe they are. Pseudo-sophisticated urban shorthand abounds in this ninety minute pounding into the brain of the notion that, like an impressionist painting, life is so much clearer when observed from a distance.

While there are laws restricting the tattooing of minors, the unseen infant title character in Christina Anderson's Inked Baby has the unfortunate honor to be indelibly marked even before birth. The play's premiere production at Playwrights Horizons' Peter Jay Sharp Theater is honored with a fine cast and some truly captivating moments provided by both the playwright and director Kate Whoriskey. But once the very human story is firmly established, the plot takes a twist that - while certainly based on realistic situations - abruptly changes the mood of the piece into something akin to sci-fi mystery. The awkward clashing of the two worlds of the play reduces what is no doubt meant to be a pivotal scene into the kind of silliness that, at least on the night I attended, draws loud giggles from a good part of the audience.

One of the many delights of director Michael Blakemore's revival of Noel Coward's giddily funny 1941 froth, Blithe Spirit, is that this 2009 production looks like it could have been seen in the play's premiere year. No doubt contemporary Broadway theatre can provide more spectacular ways for an actress playing a ghost to enter a room than to just have her walk through the French windows. And certainly if an invisible spirit chooses to destroy her husband's drawing room, modern technology can whip up a few tricks more gasp-inducing than simply having a picture frame fall and a bookshelf topple over. But when you have one of the English language's great comedies played by a company that excels in the verbal dexterity of the playwright's wit, there's no need for such distractions.

If the gang at Madison Avenue were looking for the perfect spokesmodel to help win support for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, they couldn't have done better than Rosa Parks, a sweet-looking, modestly dressed woman who spoke with quiet dignity. Or Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil and Franklin McCain, the conservatively dressed, well groomed college freshmen who started the Woolworth lunch counter sit-in. White people who feared the consequences of desegregating America could have their views softened with a look at these clean-cut 'credits to their race' (as the old saying went) who were everyday people just like them. And if that sounds like a crass way of referring to the brave souls who put themselves on the front lines in the fight for equality, well that's a major point playwright Tracy Scott Wilson makes with her new drama, The Good Negro.

The opposites attracting plot is probably as old as romantic comedy itself, but even if Rooms: a rock romance follows familiar paths, the Paul Scott Goodman (book/music/lyrics) and Miriam Gordon (book) two-person musical is such a buoyant, funny and upbeat affair that the clichés of the story are conquered by the cleverness and exuberance with which the story is told. Under Scott Schwartz's swift and breezy direction, the 90-minute one-act scoots the audience along on an immensely enjoyable ride.

Barbara Walsh may not be a world famous performing artist but she's damn convincing at playing one in Paper Mill's sparkling new production of Terrance McNally's Master Class. With only four weeks of preparation after scheduling conflicts forced announced star Kate Mulgrew to withdraw, Walsh's well-balanced mixture of poise, regality, insecurity, wit, intelligence and compassion bring a captivating portrayal to this intriguing and comical character study of an acclaimed artist no longer is possession of the tool through which her artistry earned its acclaim.