My Kind of New York - Top Theater Picks 2008-2009

(L-R) Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels and James Gandolfini are the formidable foursome in God of Carnage. Photo: Joan Marcus

Bernard Jacobs Theater
242 W. 45th St.
212-239-6200
Hands down, this is the best new play to reach Broadway this season. Your laugh motor will be running throughout its 90 quicksilver intermission-less minutes. It will rev up from the sober, straight lines at its inception, to its penultimate Punch (& Judy) lines, with a capital “P” and I don’t mean pool. The primrose path of God of Carnage leading to the Jacobs Theater has been unorthodox to say the least, given that it was written in French by Yasmina Reza and opened in Zurich and was also mounted in Bratislava. As for London, it was enthusiastically received, winning the coveted Olivier Award for Best Comedy, with Ralph Fiennes in the pivotal role of Alan. In this production, which should run for eons, Reza’s beautifully realized characters are two sets of parents in a gentrified area of Brooklyn. This shore’s Alan (Jeff Daniels), is a smooth-talking corporate lawyer with an omnipresent cell phone, for which he makes no apologies, to stay au courant on the potential FDA banning of a wonder drug of a pharmaceutical client. His wife Annette, played by Hope Davis, [who received accolades for her appearance on HBO’s In Treatment series] is a “wealth manager.” They visit the apartment of Michael (James Gandolfini), a merchandiser, and his wife Veronica (Marcia Gay Harden), an author in the process of writing a book on Darfur. The quartet has gathered in a civilized fashion to discuss antiseptically how best to deal with Alan and Annette’s son who has hit Michael and Veronica’s son with a stick. Whether unprovoked or provoked - the breaking of two of the young man’s incisors is the end result. Reza once again is well-served by Christopher Hampton’s adroit translation. The clever staging by Matthew Warchus runs from civilized drawing room repartee to physical, baggy pants comedy abetted by rum, segueing to combative couch-wrestling, to unrelenting vomiting by Annette all over Veronica’s prized coffee-table art books. Two earlier plays by Reza, earned accolades: Art with Alan Alda and “Life x 3” with John Turturro and Helen Hunt. In this comedic caper, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden have at it, oh so subtly, building to visceral in-fighting to primordial ass-kicking. The question for the jury is how Gandolfini fares in his post-Tony Soprano persona. And the answer is bada bing! Very well indeed. As Gandolfini points out, Alan Alda was able to seamlessly make the transition from Hawkeye Pierce to a slew of other non-typecast roles.

Trent Kowalik as Billy Elliott takes his first guarded balletic steps under the scrutiny of Mrs. Wilkinson (Haydn Gwynne). Photos: Carol Rosegg

Young Billy and his adult self (Stephen Hanna, late of the New York City Ballet) dance so sublimely to Swan Lake that Terpsichore herself must be smiling down at every performance.

Imperial
249 W. 45th St.
212-239-6200
Billy Elliott is beyond “glorious.” It is a feast for the eyes, ears and soul. I’m getting the chills just thinking about perhaps the most spectacular piece of choreography since Susan Stroman’s rooftop dance in Crazy for You and Jerome Robbins’s “Rumble” in West Side Story. I speak of Solidarity, a choreographic masterpiece by Peter Darling that simultaneously integrates striking coal miners, riot police, a dance class of tutu-clad little girls and of course Billy himself. If you’re not familiar with the plot, I suggest you first rent the wonderful 2000 movie which boasts, not solely Peter Darling as choreographer, but Stephen Daldry as director and Lee Hall as screenwriter, all of whom have the same responsibilities for the musical. Hall goes a step further as lyricist to Elton John’s (surprising to me) spot-on score, patently worthy of knighthood. As I’m sure you’re aware, there are three young teens rotating as Billy (owing to the stamina the role requires, not to mention child-labor considerations). Of the three, only Trent Kowalik whom we had the good fortune of seeing, has played the role before, in London's West End, where he perfected his Newcastle-upon-Tyne "Geordie" dialect that belies his Long Island roots. Kowalik is so winning, so intrinsic to the action, so extraordinarily versatile in song and dance, that I’m hard-pressed to conceive of the other two being as accomplished (which of course they surely must be). So too, must be the two performers who play Michael, Billy’s exuberantly saucy friend who loves to dress up in girls’ clothes. “Our Michael” was played by Frank Dolce, who showed his mettle by not sacrificing a step when he lost his dancing shoe during an ensemble tap number. Special praise for Haydn Gwynne, who created the role of Mrs. Wilkinson, Billy’s ballet instructor, in London, a cross between Roz Russell’s Auntie Mame and Elaine Stritch - and Gregory Jbara as Billy’s uncomprehending coal miner Dad who becomes as supportive of the boy’s efforts as we mesmerized audience members.

Aaron Tveit, Alice Ripley and J. Robert Spencer in the revelatory birthday scene of the musical Next to Normal. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Next to Normal
Booth
222 W. 45th St.
212-239-6200
When I saw this show a year ago last February Off-Broadway, I predicted that some day it would transfer to Broadway and that its star Alice Ripley, would earn a Tony Award in the process. I believe that prophesy will reach fruition June 7. It electrifies the audience with its opening number, then commences to send a haymaker to the solar plexus, when it reveals a stupefying family secret at a birthday “celebration.” The woman of the household, Diana, so ostensibly ebullient, endearing and funny, is revealed to us as a pill-popping obsessive, who puts her husband and daughter in a crisis mode. The one misstep in this otherwise extraordinary production, is the dropping from the original of a shopping spree at a COSTCO store, which was at once hilarious and provided an incipient clue and welcome contrast to her melancholia. Ripley as Diana sings, acts and invades the stage like a tornado, fulfilling the promise she showed in the short-lived, but superb 1997 musical, Side Show, in which she was joined at the hip (literally) with Emily Skinner. As the Siamese twin Hilton sisters, Ripley and Skinner were co-nominees for a Tony (shades of the Billy Elliot trio). Others in the show who take your breath away with their performances are 17-year-old Jennifer Damiano as daughter Natalie and the compelling Aaron Tveit as son Gabe. J. Robert Spencer has taken over for Brian d’Arcy James as Diana’s husband Dan. Huzzahs to director Michael Grief and Sergio Trujillo for his musical staging. As for the music itself, composed by Tom Kitt with lyrics by Brian Yorkey (as well as the book) to these untutored rock-resistant ears, the vast majority of the numbers were strikingly effective.

Happiness
Mitzi Newhouse
Lincoln Center Theater
150 W. 65th St.
212-239-6200
Closes, June 7
A second musical about Subways?* Yes, as much as I enjoyed the Comden-Green & Jule Styne homage to the New York underground, this subterranean parable is a keen allegory about passengers on their own River Styx with Stanley the subway motorman as Charon the Boatsman. And yes, the disparate New York riders, inured to the inevitability of stalls and breakdowns, take it in their stride that they are heading to what they hope to be Nirvana instead of Hades - with one exception, which I won’t reveal. The conceit is that if each passenger candidly recounts his or her most perfect memory to Stanley (Hunter Foster), who looks and sounds for all the world like Nobert Leo Butz, each person will spend eternity in that magic moment. With but one misstep, six of the moments are done beautifully. I especially liked Helen, played touchingly by Phyllis Somerville, who recounts her time in a USO canteen as a much younger Helen (Alessa Neeck) struts her stuff with a serviceman in a Lindy Hop number entitled: Flibberty Jibbers and Wobbly Knees. Another terrific number is: Best Seats in the Ballpark, with Fred Applegate as Kevin, looking back to the time when his Dad took his young self (Alexander Scheitinger) to a ballgame. A charming and very funny sequence takes place between hospital interns Cindy ( Pearl Sun) and her husband Neil (Robert Petkoff) who teach each other Chinese and Yiddish in a scene called Family Flash Cards. (The Mandarin I couldn’t understand, but mikvah and chutzpah were no problem for me). Others who excel are Joanna Gleason in her best role in years as Arlene (Road to Nirvana) and Ken Page (Old Deuteronomy from the original Cats) as Maurice (Perfect Memories). A bow to Susan Stroman for her impeccable staging and choreography, to set designer Thomas Lynch for his adroit simulation of a cutaway subway car, and certainly to Scott Frankel and Michael Korie for their inspired score and lyrics. I was delighted to see that the promise they showed in the first act of the musical Grey Gardens with its Cole Porteresque touches has been fully realized. *Subways are for Sleeping.

Chad L. Coleman as Herald (left) and Roger Robinson as Bynum in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Photo: Charles Erickson.

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Lincoln Center Theater Belasco
111 W. 44th St.
212-239-6200
Closes June 14
Of August Wilson’s monumental 10-play cycle covering a like number of decades devoted to the African-American experience in the 20th century, I have seen all but one, with Joe Turner’s Come and Gone ranking a close second in my estimation to the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Piano Lesson. I first saw the play in 1988. Set in 1911, it takes place in a boardinghouse in the Pittsburgh neighborhood called the Hill, the venue for most of Wilson’s plays. It has towering performances by an ensemble of remarkable actors led by Roger Robinson as the mystical Bynum Walker houngan, or voodoo priest. Bynum performs weird rituals with pigeons, serves as faith healer and seer, but most of all, he has (or so he suggests) a disarming facility for binding people together, so that they can find each other if they are separated. Seth (Ernie Hudson) and Bertha Holly (Latanya Richardson Jackson), compassionately minister to their boardinghouse's variety of visitors, mostly blacks coming North in search of jobs and prosperity. The lives of the boarders are roiled by the arrival of Herald Loomis (Chad L. Coleman, in a magnificent Broadway debut) and his daughter Zonia (Amari Rose Leigh). This is a play that militates against any pat narrative synopsis. Its fascination lies in the music of the crafty, Wilsonian dialogue. One of the thrilling, show-stopping moments in theater, is the ‘’juba” sequence, in which everyone except Herald are seated around the dinner table. Seth taps out an African cadence, and he is joined by the others with complementary rhythms and dance movements, culminating with Bertha’s irrepressible “juba” solo. The masterly direction is by Lincoln Center’s Bartlett Sher who also staged the revival of South Pacific.

(L-R) Condola Rashad and Quincy Tyler Bernstine in Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Ruined. Photo: Joan Marcus

Ruined
Manhattan Theater Club
New York City Center Stage
131 W. 55th St.
212-581-1212
Extended through August 2nd
Author Lynn Nottage earned a Pulitzer Prize for her investigative reporting and her documentary-like narrative about the mutilations and indignities visited on Congolese women, many of whom she interviewed for unimpeachably real life accounts of their travails. The focus of the play takes place in a brothel set in the rain forest. You’ve heard of prostitutes with hearts of gold? Well, Ruined’s governing presence is Mama Nadi, a madam with a 24-carat pump. She is portrayed with authority, dignity and humor by Saidah Arrika Ekulona. Just as impressive is Russell G. Jones, as Christian, a poetry-spouting peddler who has stocked Mama’s bar for years with goodies. His latest merchandise are two frightened teens, Sophie and Salima. Sophie as played by Condola Rashad (daughter of Phylicia) was raped with a bayonet and left for dead. Highly intelligent, she is “ruined” - rendered useless for sex – but an asset for her singing ability and congeniality towards patrons, most of whom are miners, government and rebel soldiers.

West Side Story
Palace
1564 B’way & 47th St.
212-239-6200
The exhilarating rumble between the Jets and the Sharks in the original West Side Story in 1957, will remain in my mind and heart as the most exciting opening number in my more than 70 years of theater-going. I have seen the show several times in various incarnations, as well as the stunningly choreographed 1961 movie version. My wife and kids visited the Hollywood set as Director Robert Wise was overseeing the gymnasium sequence. Oh, and I should add New York City Ballet’s West Side Story Suite, choreographed of course by Jerome Robbins. Maybe it’s the old saw about familiarity, or just too much of a good thing, but in spite of the nonagenarian Arthur Laurent’s being at the helm, this production didn’t register in the kishkes, as so many others have done. No, it had nothing to do with having a boy soprano singing the Leonard Bernstein’s haunting Somewhere, or doing I Feel Pretty as Siento Hermosa and other Lin Manuel-Miranda's translations of the Stephen Sondheim lyrics. On the plus side, Matt Cavenaugh as Tony, and Josefina Scaglione as Maria, lived up to the original beguiling Star-crossed lovers, Larry Kert and Carole Lawrence. However, two key players, George Akram and Cody Green were exceedingly less fiery as Bernardo and Riff. Of all the the Bernardos, none will top the cinematic George Chakiris - and this may surprise you – the dashing Dane Nicolaj Hübbe as Riff (recently retired from the New York City Ballet) who danced and sang and did dialogue in West Side Story Suite. Of late I’ve had the hard luck of missing a principal at a performance. The night I saw it, Karen Olivo, who received rapturous reviews for the pivotal role of Anita, was out and replaced by standby Alena Watters, who did a commendable job. Chita Rivera was marvelous in the original, but I recall with fondness the leggy NYCB Helene Alexopoulos’ combustible performance. If you have never seen a staged production of West Side Story, or have seen it just once, don’t wait another decade to do so. And bring your Grandkids.

Outstanding Actor in a Play:
Tie: Raúl Esparza, Speed-The-Plow &
Roger Robinson, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

Harriet Walter is Elizabeth I, Janet McTeer is Mary, Queen of Scots in the exciting revival of Mary Stuart. Photo: Jon Marcus.

Mary Stuart
Broadhurst
235 W. 44th St.
212-239-6200
The crackling verbal sword-play of Janet McTeer as the tempestuous Roman Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots and Harriet Walter as the ice-in-her-veins Elizabeth I, took me back in time to the movie Old Acquaintance (1943) with those gifted twin terrors Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins having at each other with barbed tongue, bone-rattling and shoulder-shaking. Peter Oswald’s adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 German text is the warp and woof of a beautifully paced production. Designed by Anthony Ward, it punctuates the disparity between an historically male-dominated royalty now declaring obeisance to two queens. Each man is clad in anachronistic business attire, while the women cast members are in period Elizabethan costume. History suggests that the two never met. Schiller intelligently mandated otherwise. The two marvelous actresses do so improbably in the climactic scene at the prison at Fotheringhay Castle, where Mary Stuart furtively awaits the executioner.

Outstanding Actor in a Musical:
Tie: Trent Kowalik, Billy Elliot &
Aaron Tveit, Next to Normal &
Craig Bierko, Guys & Dolls

Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play:
Tie: Jeff Daniels & James Gandolfini, God of Carnage

Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play:
Tie: Marcia Gay Harden & Hope Davis, God of Carnage

Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical:
Gregory Jbara, Billy Elliot, The Musical

Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical:
Hayden Gwynne, Billy Elliot, The Musical

Outstanding Director of a Play:
Tie: Matthew Warchus, God of Carnage & Terry Kinney, reasons to be pretty

Hair
“The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical”
Al Hirschfeld Theater
302 West 45th St .
212-239-6200
You saw Rent. You saw Spring Awakening. You saw Passing Strange. Now it’s time to see the “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” that started it all, Hair. The counter-culture musical, with book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot, debuted off-Broadway at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater in 1967, two years before Duncan Sheik was born and when Jonathan Larson was just turning seven. Over the past 40 years, the music from Hair has become part of the canon, not just of musical theater, but of all contemporary music: Aquarius; Hair; Easy to Be Hard; Good Morning Starshine; Let the Sun Shine In. In 1969, The Fifth Dimension released a medley of Aquarius and Let the Sunshine In, which won Record of the Year and topped the charts for six weeks. The Cowsills's recording of the title song climbed to #2 on the Billboard charts and Good Morning Starshine was sung on a Sesame Street sequence in 1969. In 1970, ASCAP announced that Aquarius was played more frequently on U. S. radio and television than any other song that year. In 1979, the Miloš Forman film adaptation renewed interest in Hair and its music. This production delivers a number of strong performers among the “tribe” of players who populate the stage. Will Swenson’s Berger is charismatic and approachable. Caissie Levy’s Sheila proves both strong and tender, hurt when Berger rejects her token of affection – a flourescent yellow thrift-shop shirt – but strong-willed enough to take on any member of the tribe. Gavin Creel’s Claude is a soulful romantic. The remaining 30-some members of the cast, plus a 10-member band, energize the production – whether they are on stage, dancing in the aisles, or sitting on the laps of unsuspecting theater patrons. orty-two years ago, I saw Hair, when its anti-war message resonated within the serried ranks of the young and the restless and its frontal nudity was almost - but not quite – regarded as a scandal. My main gripe at the time was I couldn’t understand much of the dialogue or almost any of the lyrics (they weren’t miked at the time), It was not until I viewed the excellent movie version with Treat Williams as the leading man Berger, that I responded to its message and exuberant music. Reviewed by Robert Feinberg and Hal Drucker

The Norman Conquests
Circle in the Square
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
212-239-6200
Through July 24
When Alan Ayckbourn’s comic trilogy surfaced on Broadway 24 years ago, it had an all-American cast that included Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss. This time around the six-person cast is comprised entirely of Brits. Artistic Director of the Old Vic Kevin Spacey, must have made a convincing case with Actor’s Equity for bringing over the entire cast and production. I’m glad he did, having seen and thoroughly enjoyed two of the three plays, Table Manners and Living Together (the third being, Round and Round the Garden). My colleagues who have seen all three, advise that it matters not which one you see first, second or third. On Saturdays you can see all three in a theatrical marathon. As you might expect, the ensemble playing of the three couples, timing of lines, takes and double-takes is impeccable. The primary business centers around – you guessed it – Norman (played by Steve Mangan), cuckolding and coupling.

I got the horse right here! (L-R) Spencer Moses as Rusty Charlie, Titus Burgess as Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Steven Rosen as Benny Southstreet, sing Fugue for Tinhorns. Photos: Carol Rosegg

“So please forgive this helpless haze I’m in. I’ve really never been in love before,” sing Craig Bierko as Sky Masterson and Kate Jennings Grant as Sarah Brown.

“Or the devil will drag you under by the sharp lapel of your checkered coat,” sings Nicely–Nicely at the Salvation Army meeting hall.

Let me begin by saying that Craig Bierko is the best Sky Masterson I’ve ever seen or heard. And I have seen (in chronological order) Robert Alda who defined the role back in 1950. Though Alda could not sing a lick he was tough as nails, yet charismatic, funny and tender. Alda’s rendition of My Time of Day is a haunting, triumphant anthem of the city we all love, New York, with its lyrics pure poetry,

My time of day is the dark time
A couple of deals before dawn
When the street belongs to the cop
And the janitor with the mop
And the grocery clerks are all gone.

When the smell of the rain-washed pavement
Comes up clean, and fresh, and cold

After Alda, I saw such other Skys as, would you believe, Alan Jones of Donkey Serenade fame and Peter Gallagher of the 1992 revival who was damned good. As for Brando in the movie version, fuhgettabout it. Sinatra should have been Sky, not Nathan Detroit. It’s unthinkable that Sam Goldwyn and his sycophants eliminated these songs from the movie version, the self-same My Time of Day, the gorgeous love duet I've Never Been In Love Before, the affectionate lullaby-like More I Cannot Wish You and the comic songs A Bushel and a Peck and Marry the Man Today. In 1950 or thereabouts I watched a TV show with my parents, on their black and white 10” RCA Victor that was devoted to soliciting very modest investments (as little as 50 cents a share) in prospective Broadway shows from the “angels” in the viewing audience. One evening we watched a group of performers on the small screen doing an eminently forgettable number from a fledgling musical. I look back with the kind of regret that I have for selling Volume One Number One of the Superman DC comic book for a nickel. The show of course was Guys and Dolls, which in my view is the greatest of all comedy-musicals, thanks to the genius of composer/lyricist Loesser, to writer Abe Burrows and his muse Damon Runyon, to Sam Levene and Vivian Blaine as Nathan Detroit and Adelaide, to Isabel Bigley and Alda as Miss Sarah and Masterson, to Stubby Kaye as Nicely-Nicely, Tom Pedi as Harry the Horse, Johnny Silver as Benny Southstreet and the nightclub comic B.S. Pully with the gravelly voice as Big Jule who made Lenny Bruce seem like Emily Post. And finally the Hot Box Girls, the chorus line who backed up Miss Adelaide in A Bushel and a Peck and Take Back that Mink. The last of the Hot Box girls, is my sister’s high school friend Marcia Maier. Without researching I would venture to say, that Marcia is the last of the cast. If anyone reading this disagrees, write me. As to the present cast, everyone nails his or her part. The two leading ladies, Kate Jennings Grant as Sarah and Lauren Graham as Adelaide are terrific, and Tituss Burgess as Nicely-Nicely Johnson brings down the house with Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat which until now only Stubby Kaye “owned.” Glenn Fleshler is a sanitized, pasteurized Big Jule without the industrial strength coarseness of Pulley. No one could ever hope to approach the Sue Me of Sammy. I speak of Sam Levene as Nathan Detroit, who when he says to Adelaide:

Sam Levene invaded the stage with his chuzpah and a voice that sounded like he gargled with chicken fat. Oliver Pratt, technically an accomplished actor, phumphers his way through it. The only other misstep is opening the show by injecting an actor who is ostensibly Damon Runyon pecking his way on a Remington with the show’s title on a big screen. It’s followed by an innocuous dance number and then – finally – with the Morning Line in their hot little hands, Fugue for Tinhorns:

Angela Lansbury (center) as Madame Arcati initiates a spiritual journey with her all-too- willing participants, (clockwise) Deborah Rush as Mrs. Bradman, Rupert Everett as Charles, Jayne Atkinson as Ruth and Simon Jones as Dr. Bradman. Photo: Robert J. Saferstein

Noël Coward directed his first production of Blithe Spirit at the Savoy Theatre in London during the Blitz. Among the main cast members was the great Margaret Rutherford as the ditzy medium Madame Arcati. I remember her most fondly as the personification of Mrs. Malaprop which co-starred Sir Ralph Richardson in a London Production I saw in the early ‘60s of The Rivals at the Haymarket Theater. It was clear to me she was off her game, blowing a line here and there. In short order she had to leave the show with the onset of Alzheimer’s. Until this revival I had never seen a stage version of Blithe Spirit, but I did see an undistiguished musical version called High Spirits in 1964, notable only for the great Bea Lillie as Madame Arcati and Tammy Grimes as Elvira in 1964. Lillie of course did her well-documented centifugal-defying, oversized pearl necklace routine which she twirled around her neck with a bob of the head. Lillie, at age 94, also died of Alzheimer’s. Angela Lansbury as Madame Arcati is more than inspired casting. It would be unthinkable for any one in theaterdom other than Lansbury to play her. With a raised eyebrow here, a drooping mouth there, you are convinced that this irrepressible, martini-swilling, Irving Berlin-adoring minx has occult powers. To insinuate that she is a mere party-game trickster as the stiff-upper-lip Cowardian novelist Charles Condomine – played impeccably by Rupert Everett - does, goes beyond the pale. A post-prandial séance that Charles arranges as research for a murder mystery he’s developing, includes his second wife Ruth and their invited guests the Bradmans (Simon Jones and Deborah Rush). Charles is stupefied by Arcati’s miscalculated conjuring of his dead first wife Elvira who materializes in a ghostly white ensemble. She is seen and heard only by Charles and we in the audience. Though under the guiding hand of Tony-winning Michael Blakemore, she is played by Christine Ebersole without a scintilla of nuance, in stark contrast to the diverting performance of Jayne Atkinson as Ruth who in looks and class, conjures up intimations of of Kitty Carlisle Hart.

Famed director Robert Falls of the Goodman Theater in Chicago scored a bull’s eye a couple of seasons back with a revival of O’Neill’s most distinguished play, Long Days Journey Into Night, which starred Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Dennehey. Desire Under the Elms, by contrast, is a melodrama of Next Week, East Lynne proportions. I find the plot, purportedly based on Euripides’ Hippolytus, more redolent of Sidney Howard’s They Knew What They Wanted, an almost laughable drama that became the basis of a great musical, Most Happy Fella. Once again, Dennehey shows how robust and imposing a stage presence he can be, whether it be Shakespeare, Shaw or O’Neill.