Michael Dale - Page 29

The opening fanfare of one of the most exhilarating overtures ever to hit Broadway signals the joyous return of New York City Opera. After financial woes threatened to pull down the curtain for good in 2013, the company that was christened in 1943 as 'the people's opera' by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia has returned with a new home and an old friend, director Harold Prince's rollicking production of Leonard Bernstein, Richard Wilbur, Stephen Sondheim, John La Touche and Hugh Wheeler's CANDIDE.

Those introspective, philosophical, womanizing man-children who inhabit the oeuvre of Anton Chekhov tend to be annoying bores, so even though the unpublished manuscript discovered after the playwright's death has been posthumously named after, its leading man, Platonov, it's no surprise that it's the leading lady who gets all the juicy material.

As the history books and Stephen Sondheim tell us, in 1853 Matthew C. Perry, Commodore of the United States Navy, sailed to Japan on a mission to forcibly end the island empire's policy of national seclusion and establish trade with America.

While the McKittrick Hotel's ongoing attraction SLEEP NO MORE requires audience members to seek out its immersive entertainment as they venture from floor to floor and room to room, the venue's new co-tenant, the National Theatre of Scotland's delightful production of David Greig's cleverly done THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART, confines the action to The Heath, a cozy pub where patrons can take advantage of a cash bar while the actors handle the trailblazing.

While David Yazbek's moxie-driven melodies and clever, character-creating lyrics are best known from his fast and funny Broadway hits THE FULL MONTY and DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS, his captivating and charming new Off-Broadway musical of cultural and romantic exchanges, THE BAND'S VISIT, begins with self-effacing modesty.

Since its first publication in 1843, Charles Dickens' holiday classic, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, has been adapted countless times for various stages, screens and pages, but undoubtedly the most authentic presentations of the story of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghosts who assist in his transformation into a kind and generous soul were the numerous live readings the author gave during the last 18 years of his life.

When the a cappella musical In Transit played Off-Broadway in 2010, most musical theatre fans would identify 'Let It Go' as composer/lyricist David Yazbek's finale song for musical version of THE FULL MONTY.

Sometimes when somebody offers you a job you have no time for that's a lot of work for no pay and no credit you just have to reply, 'Yeah, I'm in.'

Dan LeFranc's RANCHO VIEJO, now receiving its world premiere in a handsome Playwrights Horizons production featuring a terrific cast, is one of those three-hour long plays that may find you tempted to flip through your program at any time for a clue as to what the heck is going on.

As audience members enter the Minetta Lane Theatre's auditorium for producer/director Luke Comer's abstract multi-media theatre piece THE PORTAL, they're greeted by a projected slide summarizing the 90 minute long production's plot, followed by the advisory, 'The show is less literal and more allegorical and dreamy.'

The Long Island Rail Road doesn't have a station in Levittown, so the central character of Richard Greenberg's clever, sentimental and occasionally steamy drama travels the play's namesake, THE BABYLON LINE, to nearby Wantagh, in order to arrive at his weekly gig teaching creative writing to adults, most of whom are only there because their preferred classes were full.

The Twentieth Century was only in its teens when playing Times Square's Palace Theatre was established as the pinnacle of success for vaudeville artists, so it's very appropriate that the latest Broadway offering from THE ILLUSIONISTS, titled TURN OF THE CENTURY, is playing the Palace.

While FUN HOME and HAMILTON have certainly not been the only high-quality new musicals to hit Broadway in the past two seasons, they've both displayed the kind of originality and relevance in subject matter, expertise in writing and imagination in execution that works wonders in elevating public awareness of the dramatic potential of the art form and smashing the lingering bias that says singing and dancing diffuses the impact of serious theatre.

When the new musical based on Chazz Palminteri's autobiographical solo play, A BRONX TALE had its world premiere at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse earlier this year, it boasted a solid first act, a terrific star performance by Nick Cordero, an Alan Menken/Glenn Slater song that every Sinatra-styled saloon singer will want to grab. It also featured some of those traditional second act problems that often plague new musicals looking for a Broadway home.

For a musical about the accidental death of six teenagers and a contest to select just one of them to return to life, Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond's Ride the Cyclone, mounted by MCC after development in Canadian cabarets and a successful Chicago run, is curiously lacking in any kind of emotion or tension.

While Debra Barsha and Hollye Levin's A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME isn't the first musical to contrast the accepted female gender roles of the 1950s with the liberated revolution of the 1960s (Off-Broadway's second visit from THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES is still running at the Kirk.) the York's fun and frothy new entry features a dynamite cast and enough tuneful cleverness for a brightly entertaining evening.

As with their Vineyard Theatre success of five years ago, THE LYONS, in THIS DAY FORWARD, the team of playwright Nicky Silver and director Mark Brokaw display an impressive talent for packaging complex family drama as hip, off-beat comedy before getting to the guts of the long-term effects of dysfunctionality.

Ever since it opened in 1966 as the Broadway production that made the Palace Theatre go legit, the final scene of Neil Simon (book), Dorothy Fields (lyrics) and Cy Coleman's (music) hyper-swinging Sweet Charity has been a trouble spot.

While the work of director John Doyle has been a frequent presence at Classic Stage Company for the past few years, his tenure as the company's artistic director gets off to an impressive start this season with a crisp and engaging world premiere production of Tom Schulman's DEAD POETS SOCIETY.

To say that The Q Brothers put a new spin on OTHELLO might be too obvious a pun, but their fun and lively hip-hop retelling of Shakespeare's tragedy of racism and revenge, Othello: The Remix not only sets the Elizabeth characters to rap rhythms, but switches the whole story around to the present-day music industry.