Michael Dale - Page 135

Mark Nadler is one of those cabaret performers who serves up his entertaining antics with healthy portions of art education and history lessons.  In I'm A Stranger Here Myself, now transplanted from its nightclub roots to the York Theatre stage, Nadler gives a frequently fascinating overview of the pre-Hitler period known as the Weimar Republic; Germany's first democracy and a haven for individualists and eroticists who gleefully indulged in a period of artistic freedom.

Quite appropriately, Jekyll and Hyde is one of the most polarizing musicals ever to hit New York.  Despite running well over three and half years in its initial 1997 Broadway run, Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse's pop rock adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic horror tale of a young scientist who uses himself as the guinea pig in an experiment to separate the good and evil in man and then proceeds to murder those who called him mad is regularly mocked as a prime example of Broadway ineptitude.  And yet the show maintains a loyal following of fans that are no doubt thrilled at its return.

At separate moments early on in Sara Cooper (book/lyrics) and Zach Redler's (music) ambitious and noteworthy The Memory Show, each of the musical's two characters refers to herself as being a funny person while acknowledging that funny people are often the sad ones.

For those who would enjoy David Mamet plays if there wasn't so much cursing and misogyny, I offer Lyle Kessler's very funny, testosterone-laced drama, Orphans.

Apparently, not all upper west side Jewish families spend Christmas Day going out for Chinese food and a movie.  Take the extended family of Richard Greenberg's The Assembled Parties, who spend two December 25ths, twenty years apart, in a perfunctory celebration of the holiday while complaining about the inability to find a plumber to come right over fix a leaky pipe (Even when offered a 'Nativity surcharge.') and referring to the season's continual playing of Bing Crosby singing 'White Christmas' as, 'a tiny acoustic rape every time you leave the apartment.'

The only thing that'll keep you from dancing in aisles at The Public Theater's production of the enormously fun and exhilarating new musical, Here Lies Love, is the fact that there are no aisles.  In fact, there are no seats, save for a handful up in the balcony for this strictly standing room only show.

I suppose the problem with being the greatest Broadway comic actor of your generation is that once the label sticks you rarely get the opportunity to prove that you can also turn in great dramatic performances.  (Conversely, not since Garbo laughed has anyone been surprised to see a great dramatic actor excel in a comic part.)  In Douglas Carter Beane's ambitious, provocative and lovely protest drama/romantic comedy, The Nance, Nathan Lane finally gets to originate the kind of role that highlights what makes him a genuine stage star.  He sings, he says funny lines, he plays love scenes… but most of all he perceptively plays a strikingly original character in what will most likely be considered, up to this point, the best stage performance of his career.

It was the best of musicals, it was the worst of musicals.  It was a score of wisdom, it was a book of foolishness.  It was the epoch of belief in the entertainment value of songs like 'Dancing In The Streets' and 'My Girl,' it was the epoch of incredulity in hearing lines like 'Your little Stevie is a wonder' and 'You built a legacy of love.'  We had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

Theatre writers who were lured to that other coast by Hollywood greenbacks have been known to express their disillusionment with the film industry via the Broadway stage.  George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart based their comedy Once In A Lifetime on their maddening movie studio experiences as did Betty Comden and Adolph Green with the musical Fade Out – Fade In.

Ya gotta love those 60s bands with their matching outfits.  The Beatles had their buttoned up suits and ties and Paul Revere and The Raiders wore mod colonial getups, but perhaps the craziest rocker look ever broadcast into American homes was the schoolboy ensemble worn by a band then known as The Young Rascals.

After numerous miscarriages, unsuccessful tries with fertility medications and an arrangement with a pregnant American woman that falls through, white metropolitan couple Annie and Peter (Kerry Butler and Kelly AuCoin) decide to adopt a child from Africa.

In a time when discussions of rape culture and the possibility of the media slanting rape coverage against accusers are controversial subjects in our national conscious, its rather fortunate timing that the highest profile play of the Broadway season involves a New York tabloid reporter whose career was defined by two headline-making rape cases.

'Don't make any judgments. / Let The Players play,' sing the characters of Hands On A Hardbody out to an audience sitting in seats priced at what might be the same amount as the weekly unemployment checks some of them are struggling to survive on.

Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton is set to make her Broadway debut in her solo performance piece, 'The Maybe'.

Even if Richard Greenberg's stage adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast At Tiffany's doesn't completely seduce Broadway, I have a hunch that shortly after the amateur and regional rights eventually become available, this will be one of the most produced plays in the country.  Why?  Because sandwiched between the years where they envision themselves as Cinderella and those where they envision themselves as Blanche DuBois, I'd estimate a large chunk of America's artistically inclined female population loves envisioning themselves as Holly Golightly and they are going to want to do this play.

The shorthand response for why the original production of It's a Bird… It's a Plane… It's Superman only managed to eke out a three and a half month run on Broadway has traditionally been that the show opened during a newspaper strike.

A human ball of silver glitter hanging from a cord is lowered above what looks like a bungalow-sized muffin top.  (It's supposed to represent a turtle shell.)  Before the glitter ball makes its landing the cover is removed to reveal what looks like a tribe of humanish amphibians bouncing on trampolines and twirling on the muffin/turtle's frame.  Shortly after, a sleazy-looking clown in a tropical shirt tosses a condom to a woman in the front row and says, 'Call me!'  Yes, dear readers, Cirque du Soleil is back in town.

Nearly 40 years ago, producer Norman Lear brought a television program about a black family's life in a Chicago housing project into millions of American homes.  And while the show never ignored the dangers and hardships of living in an underserved, crime-ridden community, Good Times focused on the safe haven provided by family and friends that nurtured artistry and activism while providing the expected abundance of sitcom laughter.

On paper, Annie Baker's The Flick is 122 pages long.  For a typical play this would mean a running time somewhere between two hours and fifteen minutes and two and a half hours at the most.  On stage at Playwrights Horizons, the performance I attended of director Sam Gold's production of The Flick ran a bit over three hours and fifteen minutes.

'This is like children's theatre for 40-year-old gay people!'