Monday, June 01, 2009

 

2008-2009 Broadway Plays, Part 1


By Josh R
May is not a time of year that holds pleasant associations for anyone who’s ever survived a college education. Cramming for exams, grinding out term papers, fighting off the urge to procrastinate…to say that it can be overwhelming is the height of understatement (I would describe my mood at the tail end of my final semester as falling somewhere between immoderately frazzled and thoroughly deranged). It was never my intention to revisit this dreaded state of emotional dystopia, and yet, with a whole season’s worth of plays to discuss, and the Tony Awards looming on the not-too-distant horizon, I find myself in more or less the same spot as when I had to pull 30-odd pages on Dalton Trumbo and The Blacklist out of thin air in about 48 hours in order to graduate. The best approach — really, the only realistic approach at this point — is address everything as briefly as possible, with apologies to the shows I omit due to considerations of time, space and exhaustion.

The straight play reigned supreme on Broadway this year, with more than 20 revivals and a smattering of new works. Theatres that have traditionally housed musicals played host to tried-and-true favorites by Coward and O’Neill, as producers tried to adjust to a less friendly economy. Musicals cost money; with smaller casts and lower overheads, plays are here to stay — at least for the immediate future.

First up — the early-season entries that premiered in the fall, as well as the current crop of “new” plays (note the use of quotation marks) in contention for Tony Awards.

The most surprising production of the 2009-2010 season may well have been Ian Rickson’s glorious staging of The Seagull, in a production that transferred from London. Chekhov can be a rather dry affair, and The Seagull, while indisputably a classic, can seem pretty parched in the absence of a fresh directorial perspective. This was very much the case with the last Seagull I’d seen — a star-studded debacle in Central Park helmed by Mike Nichols featuring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman and a phalanx of other big-name talents. The fact that Nichols seemed more interested in throwing an A-list party than in interpreting the text was the least of that show’s problems — everyone seemed to be acting in a different play (and frankly, all but a few seemed mismatched with their roles). This was most assuredly not the case in Rickson’s masterful staging, which, while remaining entirely true to the spirit of the piece and the intentions of its author, didn’t treat the play like the kind of lofty classical opus to be treated with kid gloves and kept under glass like a priceless museum artifact. In much the same manner as Louis Malle’s Vanya on 42nd Street, this was The Seagull brought down to earth and demythologized — a naturalistic staging which captured the emotional truth behind the words without getting wrapped up in the profundity of them, or aiming for the formal gloss of a Masterpiece Theatre production. With his complex portrayal of a woman who can be both passionate and aloof, engaging and off-putting, breathtakingly assured and wildly insecure, Chekhov seemed to have imagined the actress Arkadina as a Molotov cocktail blended from equal parts fire and ice — and that’s exactly the way Kristin Scott Thomas played her, embodying the myriad contradictions of the character with wit, verve, and a laser-like emotional acuity. Since the production ended its limited engagement way back in December — and since Tony nominators have notoriously short memories — The Seagull and its star were conspicuously absent from the list of contenders for the big prizes.

Also lost in the shuffle was Thea Sharrock’s hugely successful revival of Peter Shaffer’s Equus — although whether that success owed itself more to the merits of the production than to Daniel Radcliffe’s highly publicized nude scene can remain a subject of debate (or not — something tells me all those teenage girls in attendance the day that I saw it were not hardcore Shaffer mavens). No matter how many times I see it, I’m never quite sure what to think of Equus as a play; while frequently fascinating and unfailingly provocative, it never quite seems to come together in the way that it should. Its central conflict is built around the contention that true liberation can be achieved only through madness — a conceit that the narrative doesn’t really seem to support, given that the lunatic in question seems less a free spirit than a desperately unhappy prisoner of his own warped mind. That notwithstanding, Sharrock’s highly polished staging kept the action moving even though the play’s overly cerebral passages, and Richard Griffiths delivered a performance admirable for its understatement (resisting the urge to mine so many flashy monologues for the stuff of actorly tour-de-force is no small thing). Inevitably, it was Radcliffe — in clothes and out of them — who attracted the lion’s share of the attention, although the performance lacked something in terms of shading and nuance. I’m not averse to an element of theatricality — but portraying a character who functions in a state of angry delirium doesn't necessitate shouting all of one’s lines.

The shouting was appropriate in Neil Pepe’s fall revival of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, a marvelously cynical look at Hollywood power players and the ambitious hangers-on who love them (or, at least, want to ride to glory on their coattails). As a play, Speed-the-Plow isn’t quite as rich in scope as some of Mamet’s more celebrated works — nevertheless, it is a smartly calibrated, vastly entertaining example of the playwright’s craft. The action is streamlined and concise, while the dialogue, consisting mainly of sentence fragments, manages to be blunt yet elliptical at the same time. In some of his plays — particularly, it must be said, in the ones where female characters are placed front and center — Mamet’s fragmented style seems to be at odds with characterization. It feels perfectly right in Speed-the-Plow, which centers around the interactions of two jittery, over-caffeinated studio execs whose motors run so fast they can only pause long enough to communicate in sound bites. When I saw the production, these two titans of industry were played by Jeremy Piven and Raul Esparza, while the role of the seemingly demure office temp who gets caught in the crossfire was performed by Elisabeth Moss. Piven left the production mid-run amidst some controversy — something about mercury poisoning after having eaten too much salmon — and was subsequently replaced by Norbert Leo Butz and Mamet stalwart William H. Macy. Better Piven had departed under fishy circumstances than Mr. Esparza, who, I suppose, may be capable of giving a performance that is less than brilliant — I only say “may” because his most recent performances haven’t provided any evidence to that effect. On the heels of his triumphs in Company and The Homecoming, the protean star of plays and musicals delivered yet another galvanizing star turn — one which went for the jugular, and hit its target like a guided missile.

As for new plays, the story remained much as it always has on Broadway — which is to say, ‘twas slim pickins. The season’s best and most interesting new works could be found in non-for-profit off-Broadway houses — venues where the risk factor is considerably less from a financial standpoint, and greater risks can be taken on the artistic front as a result. Female playwrights made a particularly strong showing this year. Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, a modern-day version of Mother Courage set in war-torn Congo, deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, while Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw was a sharply observed comedy of manners with a sleek contemporary twist. Sarah Kane’s Blasted — an audacious compendium of unspeakable behaviors — was perversely fascinating, while Annie Baker’s clever, inquisitive Body Awareness marked a particularly auspicious debut for an emerging playwright. If the women commanded the spotlight, the men were not entirely lacking in action; Lorenzo Pisoni’s Humor Abuse, an autobiographical account of growing up in the circus, and Chris Durang’s absurdist trifle Why Torture is Wrong and The People who Love Them were particular standouts in a off-Broadway season that offered more than its share of high points (the lows were there too…but that’s a discussion for another day).

To say that no new works to be seen on Broadway quite matched that standard is a bit misleading, since all but a few could be accurately termed “new.” The late Horton Foote’s Dividing the Estate, written and first performed in the late 1980s, made its belated Broadway bow in a limited engagement at The Booth Theatre last fall. A kindler, gentler cousin to August: Osage County, featuring a gaggle of contentious Texan siblings squabbling over their inheritance, it was warmly received by critics — if generating little in the way of excitement beyond that. Foote’s homespun, elegiac style can work to beguiling effect when plied in service of gentle stories about gentle subjects — Trip to Bountiful and Tender Mercies are the two that immediately spring to mind. It doesn’t seem entirely appropriate, though, when the subject is something as thorny as a family feud. As with many of Foote’s later works, Dividing the Estate seemed to consist mainly of rose-tinged anecdotes strung together to create a sort of careworn, dog-eared scrapbook — while the fire-and-brimstone antics of Osage County would have seemed completely out-of-place, the proceedings could have used a bit more in the way of tension and urgency. Still, the play did furnish the occasion for pitch-perfect ensemble work by cast led by Elizabeth Ashley and Gerald McRaney; deserving of special praise (and receiving the show’s lone acting nomination) was Hallie Foote, the playwright’s daughter and frequent collaborator, making a memorable impression as the passive-aggressive sister determined to grab off the biggest piece of the pie. Another “new” play — at least according to Tony eligibility rulings — was Richard Greenberg’s The American Plan, originally performed off-Broadway in the early '90s. The Manhattan Theatre Club revival, directed by David Grindley, featured expert performances by Lily Rabe, Keiran Campion and particularly the acerbic, husky-voiced Mercedes Ruehl as an imposing, fatalistic Teutonic mama who alternately coddles and smothers her hapless offspring. Fine acting aside, you could see The American Plan’s surprise twist coming from a mile away, and the pretensions of the dialogue weighed the proceedings down to a certain degree — it didn’t quite make sense for Jews on vacation in The Catskills to spend quite as much time waxing philosophical.

Something called Impressionism quickly established itself as the biggest belly-flop of the year — not even the marquee value of Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, making their first Broadway appearances since The Real Thing and The Heidi Chronicles respectively, could keep it from closing two months ahead of schedule. Not all the news was bad, however, and other instances of starry casting paid big dividends. There was no reason to assume that Jane Fonda, who hadn’t set foot on a Broadway stage in some 40-odd years, would deliver one of the breakout performances of the season. She did just that in 33 Variations, a strange, diffuse work by I Am My Own Wife scribe Moises Kaufman, rising above the limitations of the script and showing that she’s still got the goods to take on multi-faceted roles of the non-monster-in-law variety. Fonda’s most exciting quality as a performer has always been her bracing, prickly intelligence — the performances that stand as her career high-water marks always examined the manner in which intellect can exist at odds with naked emotionalism. It’s a formula that still retains its potency; as a dying scholar trying to unravel the mysteries of Beethoven’s life and work, she was never less than compelling, even when the play itself seemed unfocused and inconsistent in its ambitions. A cutesy subplot involving a burgeoning romance between Colin Hanks and Samantha Mathis — appealing performers who work a bit too hard to be ingratiating — could have excised altogether without altering the narrative framework considerably.

If 33 Variations was, at least, a work of considerable ambition, the season’s one true non-musical smash was blissfully unencumbered by anything of the kind. I didn’t see Art, Yasmina Reza’s previous Broadway hit, or Life x 3, which did very well abroad but was less kindly received in its 2004 New York debut. Based on everything I’ve gleaned about the prolific French playwright and her oeuvre, God of Carnage doesn’t represent much of a departure for her. It’s simplistic in its aims, which is to say it has about as much depth to it as pan of water; if that statement smacks of reproach, bear in mind that, in certain instances, shallowness can be a virtue. Reza has a remarkably assured grasp of the mechanics of playwriting — one can’t fault her sense of structure, and God of Carnage is, above all things, a shrewdly constructed work of theater. It knows exactly where it’s going and exactly how to get there, moving along smoothly from start to finish without hitting any speed bumps or permitting itself to stall for a fraction of a second. If it is, essentially, a glorified sitcom given the illusion of sophistication by virtue of an upscale milieu and highbrow cultural references (a pigeon dressed up as a peacock), that doesn’t prevent it from qualifying as the most entertaining new work of the season. Two couples meet to discuss an altercation their children have had on the school playground — what begins as an informal meeting for dessert and cocktails, largely characterized by strained civility and forced politeness, quickly degenerates into a drunken, screaming free-for-all, with the type of juvenile antics that might embarrass Albee’s George and Martha (in case you were wondering, it is a comedy). It’s a foolproof recipe for success — everyone loves seeing grown-up people behaving like children, especially when those cell-phone-stealing, flower-throwing, projectile-vomiting heathens in Armani are played by actors as resourceful as the four person cast assembled by director Matthew Warchus. His rollicking, immaculately executed production gives each performer his or her moment to shine in turn — James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels are perfectly matched as wildly contrasting combatants in what turns out to be the silliest of pissing contests, Hope Davis’ drippy passivity mutates into a kind of maniacal glee all the more hysterical for its unexpectedness, while the indispensable Marcia Gay Harden all but steals the show as the kind of self-important, highly strung culture vulture who couldn’t let any imagined slight pass if her life — or her sanity — depended upon it. You can insult her husband, but don’t dare to insult her taste.

If God of Carnage was the best production of a new work to be seen on a Broadway in 2009, honors for the best new play can be conferred upon Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty, currently playing at The Belasco Theatre. That may sound like a ringing endorsement, but honestly, when you look at the season’s new plays as plays — meaning what’s on the page, as opposed to what shows up on the stage — 2009 didn’t produce any classics. There were some good, solid efforts, but very little in the way of risk. Reasons to be pretty is about the gap in communication and between men and women, and specifically how that lack of understanding is fueled by male competition and insensitivity (a friend of mine remarked that all LaBute’s plays and screenplays revolve around the notion that men are pigs - she may be on to something there.) It’s a worthy effort, with sharply drawn characterization and a dramatic intensity most of the year’s other new entries lacked — and yet, it feels a bit like the writer is spinning his wheels. If you’ve seen LaBute’s other works — in addition to being a prolific playwright, he’s had success as an independent filmmaker (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors) — you know that he’s traversed this terrain before, and isn’t breaking any new ground at this point. There’s a sense of déjà vu that comes with seeing so many different variations on a single theme; LaBute is too talented a writer to get stuck in place, striking the same notes over and over again in slightly different arrangements. While his latest effort a lot to recommend it, it can’t avoid seeming remedial.

To avoid seeming remedial myself, I’m going to leave things there for now….the portion of our program where Josh is generally underwhelmed by everything and impossible to please has reached its conclusion. Next up, I’ll tackle the flurry of revivals that arrived in the spring — which is when the wow factor really kicked in, with some marvelous productions I fully expect to bore everyone to tears going gaga over. Stay tuned…


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Friday, January 18, 2008

 

The Best on Broadway in 2007

By Josh R
Compiling a list of the Top 10 achievements in Theater for 2007 presented me with a bit of a challenge. Theatergoing is not a poor man’s pursuit, so the number of things I’ve been able to see has been limited, to say the least — sadly, I wasn’t able to come up with the cash to pay for a full price ticket to the critically lauded production of Cyrano de Bergerac with Kevin Kline that just wrapped up its limited run on Broadway (the news that it was taped by PBS for a Great Performances airing sometime later this year provides some consolation). The fact that many of the productions which received Tony Awards and nominations this past June technically premiered in 2006 further winnowed down the field. Well there were many shows I liked, it was difficult coming up with ten that I genuinely loved.

Since two of the fall season’s most well-reviewed productions, Tom Stoppard’s Rock 'N' Roll and Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, while not without merit, didn’t impress me to the extent they did others — and I have yet to see the revival of The Homecoming that everyone is raving about — I’ve decided instead to focus on the performances that made 2007 such a memorable year on the Broadway stage. Paring down that field necessitated some difficult cuts.

With apologies to the egregiously overlooked — including the legend at whose altar I worship, Ms. Angela Lansbury (it hurts me more than it does you, babe) - here are the 10 Best Broadway Performances of 2007, listed in ascending order:

10. ROSIE PEREZ (The Ritz)

Ms. Perez’s gut-busting, go-for-broke turn as a tone-deaf diva constituted the only compelling reason to make a trip to Roundabout Theater Company’s somewhat mildewed revival of the 1975 Terence McNally farce set in a gay bathhouse. In the midst of so many half-naked men, it was a woman — albeit one frequently mistaken for a transvestite — who stood out.

9. MARTHA PLIMPTON (The Coast of Utopia: Salvage)

While the luminous Jennifer Ehle gets MVP honors for her sterling work over the entire 8½ span of Tom Stoppard’s ambitious three-play cycle, Salvage was the only one to premiere in 2007. The standout performance in the trilogy’s concluding installment was giving by Ms. Plimpton who, as the emotionally volatile Natasha, confirmed her status as a stage actress of remarkable presence and charisma.

8. NORBERT LEO BUTZ (Is He Dead?)

In Mark Twain’s cross-dressing farce, the Tony-winning Mr. Butz once again proves himself to be a clown par excellence, with a talent for slapstick that transforms run-of-the-mill sight gags into bravura feats of comic ingenuity. If his scenes as a man don’t give him quite as much opportunity to really let loose, once he straps on the hoopskirts, he’s pretty much unstoppable.

7. SINEAD CUSACK (Rock 'N' Roll)

The sublime Ms. Cusack performs double duty in Tom Stoppard’s intriguing examination of rise and fall of communism in his native Czechoslovakia. As the scholar Eleanor, who refuses to loosen her grip on life even as her body is failing her, she provides the play with its emotional touchstone; as Eleanor’s daughter Esme, she offers an equally poignant consideration of a former flower child struggling to find her place in the modern world.

6. VANESSA REDGRAVE (The Year of Magical Thinking)

Ms. Redgrave breathed life into Joan Didion’s dramatization of her prize-winning book, investing it’s chilly prose with such resonance that she seemed to alter the very space around her. The words may have communicated steely intellectual control, the principle of mind of matter, but the actress was working from a place of pure feeling. The thinking was unmistakably Didion’s — but the magic was all Redgrave’s.

5. BOYD GAINES (Journey’s End)

Mr. Gaines’ quietly shattering turn as the battle-weathered embodiment of stiff-upper-lip decency beautifully anchored Michael Grandage’s heartbreaking revival R.C. Sheriff’s decades-old play, an astonishingly clear-eyed view of the insanity of warfare and its unbearable cost. The actor was the best thing among many great things in a Tony-winning production that deserved a much longer life than it ultimately enjoyed.

4. FRANK LANGELLA (Frost/Nixon)

In Peter Morgan’s somewhat slick recapitulation of the saga of David Frost’s legendary interviews with the disgraced former President, Mr. Langella delivered a ferocious performance which went much further toward unraveling the mysteries of Nixon than any amount of academic postulation could. Beyond giving a mere impersonation, the actor skillfully revealed harrowing psychological wreckage of a vanquished warrior who could neither comprehend nor accept his fall from grace.

3. AUDRA McDONALD (110 in the Shade)

If anyone thought the four-time Tony winner was in danger of coasting on her reputation for the remainder of her career, the glorious working of talent and emotion being unleashed nightly in Roundabout’s revival of this 1964 musical unequivocally and permanently put the matter to rest. Since she burst onto the Broadway scene some 13 years ago, Ms. McDonald’s talent has matured and her command of the stage has become more absolute — while her burnished soprano remains as coruscating as ever.

2. LIEV SCHREIBER (Talk Radio)

In Robert Falls’ searing revival of Eric Bogosian’s 1988 play, Mr. Schreiber was truly remarkable in a performance that made brilliant use of the aloof, mercurial qualities that have distinguished many of the actor’s screen appearances, yet revealed terrifying depths of pain and self-loathing as the character’s descent into hell was made physically and verbally explicit. As tormented as he is tormenting, his radio shock-jock was rendered with a searing clarity that ripped right through the fourth wall and grabbed the audience by the throat.

1. THE ENSEMBLE CAST of August: Osage County

Some will accuse me of cheating by citing the entire cast of Tracy Letts’ brilliant, biting family drama/mystery/black comedy currently baring its fangs (and tickling the funny bone) in a sensational staging at The Imperial Theater — but singling out any one member of its 15-member cast, which functions on such a miraculous level that it makes the nonexistence of an Best Ensemble Tony Award seem criminally negligent, just wouldn’t be fair. I’ve decided I can’t do any justice to this singularly inspired piece of work — or its spectacular gallery of performances — until I’ve seen it again, so my full review will be pending. Brace yourself for an onslaught of superlatives.


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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

 

Guess what's coming to dinner


By Edward Copeland
OK, The Last King of Scotland doesn't include the much-told tale of Idi Amin serving up the head of an opponent during a dinner while he ruled Uganda, but I couldn't resist using that as the title of the review anyway. In the major critics' awards so far, Forest Whitaker has managed a nearly clean sweep of best actor prizes for his work as Amin and seeing the film, it's easy to see why.

If you are old enough to have seen footage of the real Idi Amin, Whitaker perfectly captures the bluster and charisma of this brutal tyrant who longs for good P.R. while dispatching his enemies in the most vicious fashion possible.

As a general rule, I find the vast number of movies about real-life African or African-American characters that are told through the eyes of some white guy (Think Kevin Kline in the Steven Biko story Cry Freedom) a bit disconcerting. However, here, where Amin is seen through the eyes of a Scottish doctor (James McAvoy), it seems necessary. You almost need an outsider to tell Amin's story because it would be difficult to focus a tale exclusively on him. As great as Whitaker is, a little Idi goes a long way, even if McAvoy's protagonist is a bit of a bland one.

Co-written by Peter Morgan, the same screenwriter who produced this year's gem The Queen, The Last King of Scotland is far from a perfect movie and director Kevin MacDonald lets it drag on a bit too much at times, but it's another case of something that seems to be more and more common: Films that are worth seeing for performances alone and Whitaker certainly provides one of those here.

Sure, some of the machinations of the plot are a bit much — it says it's based on real events but it's also based on a novel so who knows if the doctor really knocked up Amin's wife (Kerry Washington)? Still, Whitaker's turn provides such a powerful punch that it's easy to overlook The Last King of Scotland's flaws.


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Tuesday, November 21, 2006

 

Robert Altman (1925-2006)



This is an appreciation that I hoped I would never have to write but one that I knew would come eventually. I’m grateful that the Academy gave him his due, albeit honorary, last year before it was too late because film lovers are unlikely to know a true original like Robert Altman ever again. His revelation about his heart transplant also made for one of the most touching moments on one of the Oscar telecasts in years.

I was fortunate enough to interview the great man in 1994 for a press junket for Ready to Wear, one of his least successful efforts but one which he repeated a line he often said about many of his films:
"I think it's a lot better film than anyone will discover until about a month after it's opened and played. I find that all of these films are like your children and you tend to love your least successful children the most, but they're finished and the cord's cut and it's out there and it ... doesn't belong to me anymore."

Now, Altman himself belongs to the ages as well.

When I wrote about A Prairie Home Companion earlier this year, I said how the film, though light in tone, seemed like a career summation of sorts for Altman. The Associated Press even reported that at the Minnesota premiere of the film earlier this year, Altman said, "This film is about death." Even though he had made plans for a fictional version of the documentary Hands on a Hard Body, I guess this has proved to be the case.

I’ve written so often on this site about Altman and many of his films, that I feel as if I’d be repeating myself if I went much into specifics here when you can readily access my thoughts in my indexes. I do think it’s worth remembering his contribution as the director of Tanner ’88, which really was the first great HBO series when he collaborated with Garry Trudeau on a fictional Democratic presidential candidate and got many real-life politicos to play along. It even earned him an Emmy. Sadly, its sequel, Tanner on Tanner, didn’t reach the same heights. I’ve never talked about some of his other works such as The Long Goodbye, Secret Honor and California Split.

I think in many ways Altman stands alone among our greatest filmmakers in that for every masterpiece he produced, he also conjured up real clunkers like Quintet and Beyond Therapy, but I think it was more a symptom of his willingness to take chances more often that most working directors would ever dare. So many moments from so many films rush through my mind. Barbara Harris finally getting her shot in the spotlight in the most tragic of circumstances in Nashville. The hilarious reveal that Tim Robbins is a cop in Short Cuts. Elliott Gould feeding his cat as Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye. Warren Beatty slowly, ultimately fruitlessly, fleeing gunmen in the snow of McCabe & Mrs. Miller. The long closing in on the diner at the opening of A Prairie Home Companion accompanied by Kevin Kline's hilarious voiceover.

I’ve mentioned it before but in that same 1994 interview, Altman said that he always felt that most movies, especially his own, improved on a second viewing because the viewer could relax and stop worrying about the plot and just let the movie unfold. Now that Altman’s entire career is before us, it’s a good time for those of us who loved him and those unfamiliar with much of his work to take the opportunity with the prolific body of work he’s left us. This doesn't even take into account all the films he produced for others, especially Alan Rudolph, such as Afterglow and Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, or films I didn't even realize he produced such as Rich Kids and The Late Show.

The online tributes should be plentiful so I'll include some as I learn of them. Also, please leave some thoughts here as well and join in the communal mourning. Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule has a superb remembrance up. Keith Uhlich has one as well at The House Next Door. John Maguire at Confessions of a Film Critic also joins in the mourning. David Hudson at GreenCine Daily is compiling a multitude of salutes. For links to my writings on Altman and some of his films:
Beyond Therapy
Brewster McCloud
Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
Fool for Love
interview (1994)
MASH
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Nashville
O.C. and Stiggs
A Perfect Couple
The Player
A Prairie Home Companion
quick takes
Quintet
Ready to Wear
Short Cuts
Tanner '88
A Wedding


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Thursday, October 19, 2006

 

Every show is your last show



By Edward Copeland
The Angel of Death (in the form of Virginia Madsen) hovers literally over The Fitzgerald Theatre as it begins its final broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion" in Robert Altman's film of the same name. In many ways, the film plays as if it's marking a summation and an end for Altman as well. We know that's not necessarily true — he's already announced plans to make a fictionalized film based on the documentary Hands on a Hard Body, but though A Prairie Home Companion ends up being merely a pleasant trifle in the Altman canon, you can't help but see allusions to the more glorious films of his past. When one of the performers of the radio show dies unexpectedly backstage, characters are stunned that their leader, Garrison Keillor, doesn't plan to make note of it on the air. Radio doesn't look back, he tells them. When they ask him if he'd want them to remember him if he died, he responds, "I don't want people to be told to remember me."

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but A Prairie Home Companion plays as if this were Altman composing his own eulogy, making certain to reference his many career highlights. The wonderful cinematography by Edward Lachman creates an atmosphere that seems to take the film outside of any specific time period (As Kevin Kline in a great turn as would-be hardboiled detective Guy Noir comments at one point about the radio show: "It's been on since Jesus was in the third grade), almost seeming as if it's set in the same era as Thieves Like Us or Kansas City.

The many musical numbers recall his great Nashville, of course, but they seemed more in tune to me with his frequent musical outbursts in A Perfect Couple that often occurred while offstage events spun on simultaneously and which Altman himself admitted began as an idea for a filmed concert before a narrative interrupted his plans. Some intricately composed camera moves early in the film recall the unbroken take that opened The Player. However, the Nashville resemblance resonates most strongly when an untested performer (this time Lindsay Lohan instead of Barbara Harris) takes to the stage to save the show, though not because of an assassination, but merely to fill extra air time that remains in the broadcast.

The bare-bones plot concerns a corporation (embodied by Tommy Lee Jones) who buys the radio station and theater that are home to "A Prairie Home Companion" and plans to bring it to an end, even though the real-life version continues. Altman's film really doesn't allow much in the way of characterization, so the person who comes off best is Kline, who plays a caricature as Guy Noir (a role Keillor plays in the radio version). He gets the best lines, written in the P.I. mode of noirs past ("She gave me a smile so sweet that you could have poured it on pancakes"). Kline's verbal and physical skills are a joy to behold and really help what is essentially a very slight film.

In fact, in the somewhat amusing DVD commentary by Altman and Kline, even Altman starts yawning at times and expressing the hope the audience isn't getting bored as well. I never was bored and A Prairie Home Companion certainly made me grin a lot, but it's most interesting if you watch it as if this was Altman's intention for a last film, even though, thankfully, it's not going to be his final one.


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Saturday, October 14, 2006

 

A musical with more cats than CATS


By Josh R
You may or may not know that Broadway is, in fact, the longest residential street in the world. It extends from the southern tip of Manhattan 150 miles north to Albany, N.Y., where it comes to quiet halt, incongruously flanked by modestly apportioned tract houses with neatly groomed lawns…a far cry from the glittering, gaudy majesty of Times Square. In truth, Broadway's reach extends much further than that — all the way to the soundstages of Hollywood, California. For much of the 20th century, The Dream Factory took its cues from The Great White Way, often plundering some of its greatest successes for film adaptation. Many of the most beloved movie musicals ever made — including best picture winners West Side Story, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music — began their lives on Broadway.

In recent years, however, a curious phenomenon has begun to take shape, as the two entities have enjoyed an increasingly reciprocal relationship. Just as Hollywood continues to turn stage hits into films — Chicago, Rent, The Phantom of the Opera, and the upcoming Dreamgirls, to cite a few recent examples — so has Broadway begun adapting successful films into stage musicals. Four of the last nine Tony Award winners for best musical are based on feature films — The Lion King, The Producers, Hairspray and Spamalot, the last of an adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Grey Gardens, which began previews at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Oct. 3 in anticipation of a Nov. 2 opening, is the latest example of this growing trend, albeit one with a curious twist. This musical draws its inspiration not from a scripted fiction-based film, but from a documentary. It is the first (and is likely to stand as the only) instance of a documentary being used as the basis of a Broadway musical.

The film, which has acquired a cult standing since its premiere in 1975, examines the fallen fortunes of two women, both named Edith Bouvier Beale — an eccentric mother and daughter who inhabit the titular estate. Since they share a name, they distinguish themselves as Big and Little Edie, respectively. Their celebrity standing, as far as the outside world is concerned, owes itself to family connections — Big Edie is the aunt of Jacqueline (Bouvier) Kennedy Onassis. Once well-regarded members of the social elite, by the early '70s the two women were discovered living an impoverished, isolated existence in Grey Gardens, a dilapidated 28-room Easthampton mansion overrun by more than 50 stray cats and an assortment of raccoons; judging by the looks of things, the term "squalor" only barely scratches the surface. The New York Board of Health had authorized a survey of the house, once considered a showplace, and subsequently declared it to be "unfit for human habitation" as a result of their findings. The media coverage surrounding these events prompted an eventual, if somewhat shamefaced, intervention by an embarrassed Mrs. Onassis. Although long-estranged from her black-sheep relations, she dispatched a task force of construction workers and pest-control experts to Long Island to get the mansion (barely) back up to code to forestall condemnation of the property and the eviction of its tenants. Even more significantly, filmmakers Albert and David Maysles were motivated to track down the reclusive pair, and film them over a period of months.

The film is an oddity, alternately shocking, touching, and mordantly humorous in its consideration of two larger-than-life eccentrics living on the margins of society. The musical, which I saw in its off-Broadway premiere at Playwrights Horizons last spring, attempts to provide some context for the women's behavior, giving a glimpse of what their lifestyle was before it all came apart at the seams. The first act takes place in the summer of 1941, when Grey Gardens is at the peak of its splendor and WWII is still just a rumble on the horizon. Prominent socialite Edith Bouvier Beale, played by Christine Ebersole, is preparing an elaborate party at her Long Island estate to celebrate her daughter's engagement to Joseph Kennedy Jr. (the younger incarnation of the daughter was played by Sara Gettelfinger at Playwrights Horizons, and has been replaced by Erin Davie for the Broadway production). Mother and daughter have a complicated and often contentious relationship, exacerbated by the fact that both are natural "performers" competing for the spotlight and the attentions of a physically (and emotionally) absent husband/father. Subconsciously afraid of being abandoned, Big Edie eventually sabotages the relationship between her daughter and her fiance, and the engagement is dissolved. Little Edie resolves to leave Grey Gardens, but her attempts to extricate herself from the role of her mother's keeper are ultimately doomed to failure.

The second act picks up where the documentary begins — with Ebersole switching gears to take on the role of the daughter, while Mary Louise Wilson assumes the role of the mother — and follows the action of the film very closely. Big Edie, now a bedridden, 80-year-old harridan munching on cat food, fondly recalls her days as a prominent socialite and would-be opera singer while singing along in a shrill voice to ancient gramophone recordings. 56-year-old Little Edie, a one-time debutante who counted Howard Hughes, Nelson Rockefeller and John Paul Getty among her suitors, now drifts through the abandoned rooms in a variety of outlandishly bizarre garments (fashioned out of materials as unlikely as duvet covers and old curtains) recounting her triumphs and disappointments to the odd visitor in breathless, stream of-consciousness fashion. Nursing old wounds that never fully healed, the two women seem suspended in a sort of existential limbo where time has little meaning — their sanity eroded by years of neglect and thwarted ambitions, they squabble over decades-old slights and conflicting versions of their shared history. Their relationship is contentious, but not without love — forged in co-dependency, it makes them protective of one another even when airing their resentments.

If this all sounds rather strange, it is, really. But truth, as they say, is often stranger than fiction, and the musical successfully captures the essence of the film, highlighting the absurdity of its outrageous subjects without reducing them to caricatures — which would have been the obvious temptation given how easily the material might lend itself to Grand Guignol (or worse, full-on camp). If the show falls short in certain respects — it does feel like two very different musicals awkwardly shoehorned into one — it is a beautifully mounted production, masterfully directed by Michael Greif (Rent), with an excellent score by newcomers Scott Frankel and Michael Korie. Doug Wright's libretto feels oddly stilted in the first act, but flows more naturally in the second when adhering directly to the dialogue from the film. What really distinguishes the production is the performance of Christine Ebersole, giving twin tour-de-forces in two very different roles which collectively give full expression to the broad spectrum of her talents.

Through far from a household name, the actress has worked regularly since the late 1970s, achieving a moderate degree of recognition as a character actress in television and film. For the first 20 years or so, she seemed like a talent in search of a home — her career seemed to consist mainly of false starts, enticing if fleeting indicators of an untapped potential. A classically trained soprano, she succeeded Madeleine Kahn and Judy Kaye as leading lady in the Broadway production of On the Twentieth Century, more than holding her own against Tony winners John Cullum and Kevin Kline. Two more high-profile Broadway assignments followed — as Ado Annie in the acclaimed revival of Oklahoma!, and Guinevere to Richard Burton's King Arthur in the actor's well-publicized return to the role he'd originated some 20 years earlier, in Camelot. She scored an Emmy nomination for her work on the soap opera One Live to Live, and had featured roles in Tootsie and Amadeus — performing her own singing in the latter as a tempestuous soprano who becomes the composer's mistress. After a disappointing season on Saturday Night Live, in which she was criminally underutilized, she made an ill-advised return to Broadway in the legendary flop Harrigan 'n Hart — better known to history as the Mark Hamill musical. She owned her few minutes as grind-house stripper Tessie Tura in Bette Midler's televised version of Gypsy, and found continued film work in projects as diverse as Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again, Clint Eastwood's True Crime and the Chris Farley/David Spade starrer Black Sheep.

The turning point in a long career of seemingly unfulfilled potential came with the 2001 revival of 42nd Street. Her pristine vocals and well-honed comic delivery helped her to rise above the mediocrity of a production, and earned her a Tony Award for her efforts. Other stage work soon followed, including acclaimed performances in Lincoln Center's production of Dinner at Eight, scoring another Tony nomination as a stand-in for Billie Burke, and off-B'way in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. In Grey Gardens, she has found not one, but two roles of a lifetime, in a performance that has already netted her Drama Desk, Obie and Outer Critics Circle Awards, as well as a special citations from the New York Drama Critics Circle and The Drama League. Ben Brantley of The New York Times has hailed her performance as "one of the most gorgeous ever to grace a musical," which is not an overstatement.

The genius of Ebersole's work lies in her ability to navigate the extremes of both characters — she can be side-splittingly funny in one moment and heartbreaking in the next, without missing a beat. As Big Edie, a preening peacock who regards the world as her own personal stage, she is a delightful contraction in terms — the lofty, cultured imperiousness of a born grande dame coupled with the giddy enthusiasm of an attention-starved child basking in the glow of the spotlight. Blissfully unaware of her own ridiculousness, she treats everyone in her presence as an audience, with the breathtaking conviction of one who has never doubted that applause is her natural due; she literally comes equipped with her own accompanist. In the first act, Big Edie rehearses songs from her repertoire, which she intends to inflict upon the unsuspecting guests at her daughter's engagement party. Ebersole executes these pastiches with hammy relish -- including a hilarious minstrel number that would probably be considered in bad taste even by the standards of 1941. The brittle frivolity of this self-styled diva might brand her as a kind of outrageous, flaky cut-up in the Auntie Mame mold, if it weren't for the subtle flashes of panic and desperation that inform her neediness. The world that Big Edie has created for herself teeters on the brink of extinction — her husband, children and lover are all on the verge of leaving her — and the possibility of being left alone looms large on the horizon. A star cannot exist without satellites to orbit around it, and Big Edie fights desperately to keep her universe intact.

However, it is in the second act that the star of Ms. Ebersole shines the brightest. As the fretful child-woman only intermittently able to distinguish the line between fantasy and reality, her Little Edie is a mass of silly pretensions, wistful yearnings and seething resentments held on a slow boil over a period of decades. She inhabits the role with an eerie exactitude — in addition to capturing the unique look and posture of her real life counterpart, she recreates Little Edie's distinctive voice and cadence with uncanny precision (the accent is too strange to describe — imagine if John F. Kennedy and Katharine Hepburn had a daughter who grew up on Long Island). Rattling around the decaying house in grounds in a series of increasingly bizarre outfits with matching headdresses, she holds forth on a variety of topics in a style that might best be described as incontinent babbling — most of what she says is totally irrational ("They can get you in Easthampton for wearing red shoes on a Thursday, and all that sort of thing"), but the intensity and conviction of the speaker commands a peculiar kind of respect. She's at her happiest when left to revel in delusions of fame and romance waiting just around the corner — it's those piercing moments of clarity, when forced to confront the bleak realities of her present and future, that reveal how lost she truly is.

If there's a style of song that Christine Ebersole can't sing, the creators of this show haven't found it. The act opens with a rib-tickling, Sondheim-esque patter number in which Edie describes, in fastidious detail, her ideas about fashion, "The Revolutionary Costume for Today." It ends with a bittersweet ballad, "Another Winter in a Summer Town," that in the actress's hands becomes a haunting, harrowing anthem of despair and loneliness. Emotionally as well as vocally, she runs the gamut, and it's spectacular to behold. Special praise must also be reserved for the delightful Mary Louise Wilson, who scores a triumph in her own right as the elderly Big Edie. Needling her hapless daughter with vicious little digs (all delivered with an innocuous smile) and deflecting all rebukes with brisk denials, her sunny air of self-satisfaction makes a marvelous foil for Ebersole's prickliness.


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