DC Theater Arts

Tag: Scarlett O’Hara

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #11: New York’s Ten Best of 2015 by Richard Seff

It was an active year, heavily marked by new and revisited musicals. The attendance and box office numbers were good, both on and off Broadway. I, as the only writer covering New York theater for DCMTA, could not see everything, but from the 35 plays and musicals I did attend, I submit the ten that I found most distinctive. I list them in no particular order, but all of them rewarded me on any number of levels.

Kristin Chenoweth, Peter Gallagher, Mark Linn-Baker, Michael McGrath, Mary Louise Wilson, and Andy Karl in ‘On the Twentieth Century.’ Photo by Joan Marcus.

(1) In mid-March, when I joined DCMetroTheaterArts, I reported that On The Twentieth Century at the Roundabout was in the capable hands of director Scott Ellis and Choreographer Warren Carlyle who gave it a sleek and lively new look. It’s always interesting to see good material interpreted by original artists who, as performers, start from scratch and build their own characters. Certainly Kristin Chenowith, Andy Karl, Mary Louise Wilson, Michael McGrath and Mark Linn-Baker gave us musical comedy fun all night long. Leading man Peter Gallagher is just a bit too sane to have given theatre genius Oscar Jaffe the barely hidden madness that made him move, but he looked the part and sang well.

Comden and Green, late in their careers as book writers and lyricists, here proved they never lost their ability to take perfectly ordinary people and turn them into highly original lunatics and lovers. And Cy Coleman sprinkled his musical notes all along the way. Together all of these gifted artists, totally committed, came up with a merry musical.

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Leanne Cope and Robert Fairchild in ‘An American in Paris.’ Photo by Angela Sterling.

(2) Barely a month later, An American In Paris opened on Broadway. It’s a prime example of creative people tackling a beautifully wrought film, and delivering a fresh version of the source material that shines like any great original musical must. Introducing us to Robert Fairchild, on leave from the New York Ballet, was a major plus because as leading man he was notable as singer, dancer and actor. He’d have been snapped up by MGM in an instant had this been played out first onstage, before the film was made, just as Gene Kelly was spotted in Pal Joey on Broadway, and whisked west for a major career on screen.

The delightful George and Ira Gershwin score, (which used highlights from the film, but was augmented by many numbers to serve the new book), that new book by Craig Lucas and the direction and choreography of Christopher Wheeldon all melded to transform the movie into something we’d not seen before, and now we could relish it live on stage.

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The cast of ‘The Visit.’ Photo by Joan Marcus.

(3) The Visit continued the rush of openings racing to happen in time for consideration by the Tony Award committee. It is the last of the many collaborations by John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, the last of the four mostly completed works that Ebb left behind. The other three were finished by Kander and in some cases by other collaborators who contributed finishing touches.

The last of the four was The Visit, a dark musical about revenge that is based on a Dürenmatt play of the same name. It had served the Lunts as a drama, and was in fact their swan song on Broadway, where it was highly regarded. An unlikely source for a musical because it told a very dark story, dealing with revenge for a hurt imposed years earlier. In it, Claire Zachanassian, the world’s richest woman, returns to her desperately poor home town, from which she’d been banished many years earlier when her lover had abandoned her to marry another woman.

Terence McNally, a frequent Kander and Ebb collaborator, adapted the play and wrote an engrossing story of this wealthy woman, her ex-lover and some of the key people of the town. It deals with greed, perfidy, betrayal but remains a love story gone wrong, and there is romance in it when it flashes back.

The score is one of the team’s loveliest, and songs like “Only Love,” “You,” “Yellow Shoes,” and others will live on. I found the show memorable, more so because it offered Chita Rivera the role of a lifetime, and she triumphed in it. I saw it in all three regional productions that preceded Broadway and it was richly rewarding to watch it grow until it positively glowed. It was not popular and only managed a three-month run, but it’s a major work in my opinion, and belongs on any “Best 10 list.”

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Kelli O’Hara (Anna), Ken Watanabe (King of Siam), and the cast of ‘The King and I.’ Photo by Paul Kolnik.

(4) Days after my visit to The Visit I was at Lincoln Center’s large Beaumont Theatre to catch Bartlett Sher’s production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic The King and I. Kelli O’Hara has been lighting up Broadway season after season in some ten musicals since 1997, and her work in South Pacific, The Light In The Piazza, and The Bridges of Madison County prepared her for her major star turn as Anna Leonowens which is still playing at Lincoln Center.

Her new “King” replacement, Hoon Lee, is younger than the original King and is reported to be bringing a more sensual quality to the relationship he has with “Mrs. Anna.” I urge you to see this production, for it is unlikely to be bettered — ever.

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Ben Miles and Lydia Leonard in ‘Wolf Hall.’ Photo by Johan Persson.

(5) The year wasn’t devoted exclusively to musicals. They certainly led the way to record breaking grosses, but in addition to holdover hits like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the British import Wolf Hall arrived in the April rush. This monumental work was really one long play, running some six hours, but to make it user friendly, it was played out with the one title, on two evenings. One could see the two at matinée and evening on the same day. The first play deals with Henry VIII and his life on the throne through his marriage to Anne Boleyn, the second one opens as he is on the verge of marrying Jane Seymour. It dealt with the banishment and ultimate death of Cardinal Woolsey whose power over the English throne was potent when Henry began his reign.

The evenings were filled with rich and informative performances by Ben Miles and this excellent company of British actors. A vast and entertaining history lesson, and a worthy addition to the season it graced.

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Brad Oscar (Nostradamus) and Brian d’Arcy James (Nick Bottom). Photo by Joan Marcus.

(6) April continued to shower us with well conceived and executed products. A refreshing original musical (Something Rotten!) with nothing on its mind but amusement, took up residence in the St. James Theatre, once home to Oklahoma!, The King and I, The Producers, Hello, Dolly! and other crowd-pleasers, where it remains happily pleasing large audiences as it rounds out its first year. This lighthearted romp involving show folk trying to make a buck in London in 1599 offers a cast of farceurs who are tops.

I enjoyed Tony Award winner Christian Borle (so great in Peter and the Starcatcher) and Brian D’Arcy-James (who has played with great range all sorts of plays and musicals. This is his first outing in farce since he was a youngster playing the bellboy in Lend Me a Tenor in Ohio. (I know he can play farce because I was in that production and he was hilarious). It features such great character actors as Brad Oscar, Brooks Ashmanskas, John Cariani, Peter Bartlett and the lovely Kate Reinders, and Heidi Blickenstaff. Check your troubles in the lobby, and c’mon, get happy.

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Steven Boyer (Jason) and Sarah Stiles (Jessica) in ‘Hand to God.’ Photo by Joan Marcus.

(7) April continued to bring May flowers along with 3 and 4 openings a week! I was so busy I didn’t get to see one of those, an original play by Robert Askins called Hand to God. I finally caught it in early June, but its originality and brave use of controversy are still imbedded in my head. As I wrote then: “Askins takes us on a journey into little known territory and with the aid of a first rate cast, he helps us to understand and relish the little band of broken very human beings.” The play deals with the preparation of a Christian puppet show, and the Pastor is demanding that it must be ready within a week.

One of the participants is Jason, a soft spoken lad who has made himself a hand puppet he calls “Tyrone.” Suffice it to say that Tyrone has a mind of his own, and as an extension of Jason’s arm, he will spend most of the evening shocking us as he becomes adversary to the world, particularly when he spots anyone being evasive in answering a tough question. He is the dark side of Jason, and he’s as scary as the demon inside the girl in The Exorcist. Shocking and provocative, beautifully executed theatre that’s been thrilling audience for most of the year. It will play its last performance on Broadway this Sunday, January 3rd, but I’m certain it will pop up again wherever a theatre company can find an actor of the caliber of Steven Boyer to play both roles, often in the same sentence.

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Sam Rockwell (Eddie) and Nina Arianda (May). Photo by Joan Marcus.

(8) Fool For Love deserved a return run (it originally opened in 1983 at Circle Rep) if for no other reason than to give the iridescent Nina Arianda a role she can fully inhabit, not to mention one that can do the same for Sam Rockwell. Set in a motel in the Mojave Desert, it’s the re-uniting of a pair of untidy lovers and they will interest you whether or not you’ve ever met anyone like them. Rough and tumble, that’s them – and the tumbling gets fairly rough between clinches. Ed Harris and Kathy Baker had a field day (and big career boosts) from the original production, as have many other actors in the ensuing years.

It’s an early Shepard play; Eddie and May, the two principals characters, will be around indefinitely for their connection is visceral and will not date. There is tenderness and violence within them, with many shades in between, This production lent drama to the year, and deserves credit for that.

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James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson. Photo by Joan Marcus.

(9) To move from Sam Shepard’s Fool For Love to Donald L. Coburn’s The Gin Game is almost like mentioning Charley’s Aunt and Medea in the same breath, in that one is a gut wrenching tug of war between two turbulent characters and the other is a love letter to two aging individuals who have built armor against hurt. Both plays are rich in detail, and are immensely satisfying. Of course plays are meant to be acted, and when that’s well done, an audience can be transformed. James Earl Jones has great range, and in this play he sensibly keeps under control his resonant baritone voice, so useful to him in the past in roles that require thunder (The Emperor Jones is one, The Great White Hope is another). But in this he is just an old guy who is lonely, (Weller Martin) living in a retirement home, who tries to break through the shell constructed by a fellow retiree (Fonsia Dorsey). It’s just the two of them, a series of gin games, and the unfolding of two deep and meaningful relationships, that make up this Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

This production has the good fortune to have Cicely Tyson playing Fonsia. In it she fulfills the promise she showed in her lovely performance in The Trip to Bountiful for which she won the Tony Award. Now over 90, she is in full command of her talent, and her Fonsia is another character she has created from the text, from her imagination, and from her great gift as a creative artist. She never seems to be acting; she is just being. Every moment is real, and as Mr. Coburn has affection and understanding for his characters, some of the effects are chilling, others are terribly funny, many more are just plain touching. An old play, somewhat forgotten, given vibrant new life by two actors in their ancient age, blessed with the ability to deliver.

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L to R: Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, Anthony Ramos, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Photo: Joan Marcus.

(10) The tenth selection I make is virtually mandatory. I refer of course to Hamilton, the incredible achievement of Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the book, music and lyrics and manages to play the central role as well. Noel Coward used to do all that, but that was in the age when theatre folk were revered, when cocktails and cocktail hours were evident in all the smart places, when cigarette smoking was a very sophisticated thing to do.

There is no one like Miranda today, and the theatre is blessed to have him. In the so-called Golden Age we had a dozen or more teams of writers prolifically producing theatre, season after season, including Irving Berlin, Rodgers with Hart and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Cole Porter, Frank Loesser, Jule Styne, Schwartz and Dietz, Harold Rome, Noel Coward, and more, was followed by the next generation, equally gifted and interested in keeping musical theatre alive and thriving. In that group — Kander and Ebb, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Bock and Harnick, Adams and Strouse, Jones and Schmidt and a dozen others. But the generation after that — brought us Stephen Schwartz, William Finn, Craig Carnelia, and Jason Robert Brown.

Now, it’s the post-AIDS generation and Lin-Manuel Miranda is the titan who emerges from it to give us all hope. His Hamilton is audacious, original, and satisfying. It’s different, it casts casting correctness aside with some interesting results, and its rap score will not work for everyone, but it is original and pungent. He is our hope for the future, and of course his work must be on any list of bests that is worth its salt. So here is Hamilton, the biggest hit since Oklahoma!

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I have two latecomers for you, as alternates. One, School of Rock-The Musical, surprised me for I really can’t take rock in the theatre (it’s too loud for me, it’s not always about melody and it takes all nuance out of lyrics).

But this simple tale of under achieving kids finding something to give them confidence, Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber (the show’s composer) has written some stirring anthems and has found Alex Brightman, who is tireless in the leading role, and very funny and appealing. And for once stage kids are appealing and genuinely talented.

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Josh Segarra (Emilio) and Ana Villafane (Gloria). Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Another juke box musical is called On Your Feet!) and is the story of composer/performer Gloria Estefan and her husband. It’s a jolly night out with a superb cast and some wildly exuberant staging by Jerry Mitchell which has you doing the Conga on your way out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkZ1_RL1J3U

Both shows are happy editions to the scene on Broadway as 2015 calls it a day.

LINKS:

Read Richard Seff’s New York reviews.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #1: Special Awards.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #2: Best Musicals in Professional Theatres.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #3: Best Musicals in Community Theatres.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #4: Best Plays in Professional Theaters.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #5: Best Plays in Community Theatres.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #6: Best Children’s/Family Productions.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #7: Best Performances in a Play in Community Theatres.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #8: Best Performances in a Play in Professional Theatres

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #9: Best Performances in a Musical in Community Theatres.

DCMetroTheaterArts: Best of 2015 #10: Best Performances in a Musical in Professional Theatres and Special Awards.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #11: New York’s Ten Best of 2015 by Richard Seff.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #12: ‘Memorable Dance in Baltimore and Beyond’ by Carolyn Kelemen.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #13 in Theater in The Philadelphia Area.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #14: Dance Performances.

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 Honors Begins Tomorrow-A Look Back at the 2014 Honorees.

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DCMetroTheaterArts writers were permitted to honor productions that they saw and we did not review.

January 1, 2016
‘The Lady’s Not For Burning’ at Lumina Studio Theatre

No, she is not. But in the year “1400, either more or less exactly,” per playwright Christopher Fry’s prefiguratively imprecise formulation, written in the aftermath of the, for many, apocalyptic Second World War, women like the beauteous Jennet Jourdemayne, who found themselves “accuse[d] of such a brainstorm of absurdities/That my fear dissolves in the humor of it,” often found little relief, either emotional, practical, or comical, in the power of simple, rational assertions.

Cast of ‘The Lady’s Not For Burning.’ Photo courtesy of Lumina Studio Theatre.

Fry’s prodigiously imagined, linguistically, historically and philosophically rich play, which ran twice on Broadway, winning the New York Drama Critics Circle’s Best Foreign Play award in 1951, is equal parts Shakespearean and metaphysical in language, tone, and concept: a perfect match for Lumina Studio Theatre’s corps of preternaturally gifted young actors and astute production team.

The action takes place in an English market village, and opens in the office of the Mayor. The set, by Jim Porter, is done in delicate colors, with occasional accents: tiled light-gray floor, cherrywood chairs with shield-shaped backs upholstered in ecru and pale peach, a huge wooden cross behind the middle one. A circular wooden plaque with a red heraldic lion hangs at stage left; a large rectangular red-covered settee rests at stage back, below a multi-paned double window reaching to the ceiling. Four floor-to-ceiling entryways with triangular tops are equidistantly spaced along the walls, which are covered in a light gold, floral motif.

All so civilized. Surely, such elegance must furnish and bespeak a place of justice and serenity.

Or… not.

As the play opens, Richard (Molly Beckett), an orphan and the Mayor’s copying clerk, is busily at work. He is approached by Thomas Mendip (Isaiah Silvers), a recently discharged soldier, who tells the startled Richard he has a request to make of the Mayor: he wants to be hanged. “… I have left/ Rings of beer on every alehouse table…/ But each time I thought I was on the way/ To a faintly festive hiccup/ The sight of the damn world sobered me up again.”

Well OK, but still: to be hanged? Isn’t that a bit… extreme? Perhaps; but grounded in fact. The character, and to an extent the play, was inspired in part by the words of a convict who had falsely confessed to a murder the year before, saying that “It was worth while being hung to be a hero, seeing that life was not really worth living.”

And with this paradoxical backdrop, this disjointed admixture of unseeing gentility and blind futility, the play begins. Like the great Elizabethan dramatists, Fry seeds his narrative and characters with elements of contradiction, perplexity, and unpredictability. Unlike the Absurdists, he does not anticipate that the end result will be fertilizer.

Enter the graceful Alizon Eliot (Zoe DeGrazia) in a gown of beige satin (costumes by Wendy Eck and Dianne Dumais), her long, full, platinum-blond hair ending in a cluster of dark blond plaits down her back. Thomas, clad in rustic brown and bright tan with gold chain mail down the sleeves, has an interesting exchange with Alizon, who chides him for appearing to take pride in his difficult childhood: “You mustn’t let it make you conceited./Pride is one of the deadly sins.” Responds Thomas: “And it’s better to go for the lively ones.” Silvers, a largely emotionless Thomas, whose dryness can be seen as a reaction to his early and continuing hardships, effectively conveys the subtle humor and ambiguity of this observation.

Although promised in marriage to the Mayor’s nephew Humphrey (Maddy Sperber-Whyte), Alizon feels drawn to Richard, to whom Thomas has described her in somewhat less personal terms (“…I saw her/ Walking in the garden beside a substantial nun./ Whsst! Revelation!”). Given, however, that Humphrey’s brother Nicholas (Blythe Reiffen) has—or so he says—just killed him in a duel over Alizon and left him lying in the garden, things may be looking up. (If not, perhaps, for Humphrey.)

Nicholas and Richard are sent to retrieve Humphrey, whom no one seems to believe is dead. (And he is not.) Sperber-White and Reiffen do a superb job making opposites out of two characters that could just as (if not more) easily be played as peas in a pod. The boys’ mother, Margaret (Tolly Colby), a literal standout in gold-trimmed orange cape accessorized with a huge, angular, multistory headdress (the chapeau equivalent of Carol Burnett’s Scarlett O’Hara shoulders) and a permanent sneer, is snippily dismissive of her sons; Colby’s command of the character’s cartoonish disagreeableness is a standout as well. (As is Carl Randolph’s Make-up Design.)

Time for the Mayor to enter the fray. Hebble Tyson (Ben Lickerman), in short grey beard and plum-colored doublet accented with a gold chain belt at the hip, is Margaret’s brother, and, in the end, no more agreeable: While refusing to hang Thomas based on his claims to have killed two men, he will prove himself all too ready to put Jennet Jourdemayne to the pyre based on others’ unfounded accusations that she is a witch. Lickerman locks in the slipperiness of the prototypical politician: we recognize him immediately. (I suspect that every audience member had names and faces pop into their consciousness as he spoke.)

Jennet (Natalie Behrends), despairing, has come to the Mayor for help, begging him to tell the populace that the ludicrous accusations that have been lodged against her, which she laughingly recounts in an effort to make light of them, are false. Instead, he repeatedly insists that Richard summon the constable to arrest her. As Thomas has observed: “He can see she’s a girl of property,/And the property goes to the town if she’s a witch;/She couldn’t have been more timely.” Indeed, he can see more; and in Act II, Justice Edward Tappercoom (a sober, sensible and, rare among the officials, evidently moral Natalie Gradwohl) will mock the Mayor for his roving eye.

The Chaplain (a wonderfully rubber-faced Sarah Trunk) enters, blathering about the wonders of the small things of the world, contemplation of which has caused him to be late. Thomas, repelled by the craven self-interest around him, announces that the world is coming to an end, and that he is the devil, and must be hanged. The Mayor is all too happy to accommodate him, and orders both him and Jennet arrested.

Cast of ‘The Lady’s Not For Burning.’ Photo courtesy of Lumina Studio Theatre.

Jennet is young and beautiful, clothed in a dress of rich peacock blue that complements the long dark hair flowing down her back. Deep-voiced and red-lipped, with a quiet wisdom beyond her years, in Act II she will profess her love for Thomas, and her desire that he live, and choose to do so. Behrends is enormously moving here, not just vocally but with eyes that are filled at once with water, and with fire: happily, the only fire that will touch her body.

This rarely seen play certainly caught fire, thanks not only to cast and crew, but to the masterful hand of Director David Minton, whose meticulous attention to historical and histrionic detail made the flame burn brightly and warmly. A special mention must also go to Sound Engineer Ron Murphy’s music, a cinema-like soundtrack of Renaissance and film music that hit all the right narrative and emotional notes.

Finally, it should be noted that in addition to the Shakespearean elements mentioned earlier, what could be called a “reverse Shakespeare” was also at play here: Instead of men or boys playing female roles, as they did in the time of the Bard, in this production five of the seven male roles were played by girls or young women, and so skillfully that the difference was barely, if at all discernible—or, borrowing from the playwright, played “either more or less exactly.” Judging from the capacity audience’s wildly enthusiastic reception, I’ll be hanged if it’s not “more.”

Running Time: 2 hours, with one intermission.

The Lady’s Not For Burning played at Lumina Studio Theatre on April 17-19, 2o15, performing The Black Box Theatre – 8641 Colesville Road, in Silver Spring, MD. For information on their upcoming production of Hamlet on May 1-10, 2015, go to their website.

RATING:

April 21, 2015
‘An American in Paris’ at The Palace Theatre in New York City

“Fresh as paint” kept buzzing through my head as I sat, enthralled, as this latest “new musical based on a famous film” sang and danced its way across the boards of the famous Palace Theatre. Soon I suspect there won’t be any famous films left that might inspire the current crop of musical theatre creators. Of course we can’t be certain; perhaps even now there are writers, directors, even stars planning to add song and dance to Cool Hand Luke, Stage Coach and Dark Victory. But we must be grateful that Playwright Craig Lucas, Director/Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, Arranger and Musical Supervisor Rob Fisher, and Set and Costume Designer Bob Crowley got together with just such a plan, and somehow managed to put together a consortium of several dozen producers to guide it to the Palace, where if there is any justice in the world, it should remain — forever.

Leanne Cope and Robert Fairchild in ‘An American in Paris.’ Photo by Angela Sterling.

You see it is “inspired by” the MGM film of the same name. The Arthur Freed unit at MGM during Hollywood’s golden years was the most creative and successful in all the world of motion pictures. In 1951 Gene Kelly was at the peak of his considerable popularity, and he and Freed convinced big boss Louis B. Mayer – and his associates – to ok a project very close to Kelly’s heart. Kelly, Vincente Minnelli and Alan Jay Lerner, all riding high from recent successes in film and on Broadway, wanted permission to film an original story with music from the George Gershwin estate, one which would bravely stretch the boundaries of movie musicals by, among other things, including an uninterrupted seventeen minute ballet. The movie was made, it won eight Oscars including Best Picture, and has remained one of our most cherished musical movies. All this made it a great challenge to anyone attempting to transform it into a vibrant and original stage musical that didn’t bring to mind Gigi, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, State Fair, A Time for Singing, and so many other pale imitations of the films that inspired them. To get to the point, this team has met that challenge, and come up with a lollapalooza of an “original musical” that should delight the whole family, cynics, and sourpusses included.

Robert Fairchild (Jerry Mulligan), Brandon Uranowitz (Adam Hochberg), and Max von Essen (Henri Baurel) with the cast of ‘An American in Paris.’ Photo by Mathew Murphy.

For starters, book writer Craig Lucas has put Alan Lerner’s script into a blender, and extracted from it the bare bones of a story about an ex-GI named Jerry Mulligan, a would-be painter, who decides to remain in Paris for a while at the end of World War II. He has a friend there, a composer now named Adam Hochberg (I say “now named” because in the Lerner screenplay he is Adam Cook). There will be a girl named Lise Dassin thrown into the mix (she was called Lise Bouvier in the Lerner version) and a friend of Adam’s (Henri Baurel, from an aristocratic background, but stuck with a dream of becoming a professional singer). The name changes are not arbitrary. Mr. Lucas has background stories for his principal characters that enrich them, make them more substantial, for he’s also moved the time slot to 1945 when more than memories linger in the aftermath of the just ended great war. The show begins with the tearing down of the Nazi flags, the early days of recovery, and gives weight to many of the references to what’s gone by, to the hope for a better future for all of these interestingly fleshed out characters.

But wait! I haven’t mentioned that Jerry and Lise are played by two who are new to Broadway, both from the world of ballet. He is Robert Fairchild, principal dancer with New York Ballet since 2009, and she is Leanne Cope, trained in the Royal Ballet School and graduated into the company in 2003. Both are making their Broadway debuts, and both are absolutely smashing. He is movie star handsome who is exciting from the moment he opens his mouth. That he can sing, act with great conviction and charm, is a bonus we hadn’t expected. When he dances, which is often, he almost seems animated, for no one in recent memory on Broadway can compare.

Ms. Cope manages to capture all the charm that Leslie Caron brought to the role in the movie, but Caron was French and Ms. Cope is not, so this in itself is an achievement. But like her partner in dance, she seems to float effortlessly throughout the evening, and in the end the two created the kind of magic we just don’t see all that often in the post Golden Age of Musical Theatre.

In support, Brandon Uranowitz as Adam Hochberg, now renamed to make him Jewish in the role Oscar Levant inhabited in the film, is far more than the wisecracker Levant played.

Max Von Essen wraps himself around Henri, and stops the show with the fantasized version of “A Stairway to Paradise” which Mr. Wheeldon and his collaborators have designed around him.

Veanne Cox is playing a character not in the film, Madame Baurel, Henri’s mother, and she extracts from it juicy contradictions, a woman freed of many of the restrictions life forced upon her during the war. To watch her cut loose in a moment when she can no longer contain herself, is pure joy.

Leanne Cope (Lise) and Jill Paice (Milo) in ‘An American in Paris. Photo by Angela Sterling.

Jill Paice, who played Scarlett O’Hara in the London musical Gone With the Wind, is now a wealthy art patron with a yen for Mr. Fairchild. She has taken on the musicalized role Nina Foch played so well in the MGM movie, and she has made it her own.

The brilliant ensemble of singers and dancers, as well as the magical projections of 59 Productions complete this bundle of contributors to the most exciting musical of the season. So far — we still have a couple waiting in the wings. But this American in Paris will be hard to top. Here I am, still aglow on the morning after.

What’s most impressive about this lovely show is that it never settles for the obvious. American in Paris is filled with the imagination and talent of its creators who have truly transformed a marvelous movie into a magnificent Broadway musical, one you will remember long after its attractive central couple finally find each other, having earned their happy ending in a most dazzling and entertaining way.

Running Time: Two hours and 30 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission.

An American in Paris plays at The Palace Theatre-1564 Broadway in New York, NY (at 47th Street). For tickets, call Ticketmaster at (877) 250-2929, go to the box office, or purchase them online.

RATING:

April 16, 2015
‘Twelfth Night’ at Lumina Studio Theatre

All the world’s a stage, and much of life’s a circus. Shakespeare may not have said the second part, but his whirlwind, identity-switching, gender-bending, who’s-on-first 1602 comedy Twelfth Night, exuberantly staged by Lumina Studio Theatre at The Black Box Theatre in Silver Spring, MD suggests it as surely as As You Like It’s Jacques does the inevitable end game of the tightrope we balance on.

From bottom, Jadyn Brick (Viola), Eva Parks (Feste) and Martin Glusker (Sebastian). Photo by Ron Murphy.

The two plays, believed to have been written at about the same time (along with the much staged, filmed and adapted “relationship play,” Much Ado About Nothing) both deal with the eternal verities of male-female misreadings and misunderstandings and the unpredictability and ephemerality of human desire. But Twelfth Night’s two key characters are separated by circumstance—an actual shipwreck, rather than a verbal or emotional one—and the end game for the relationships that play out in it yields a softer, more successful, more satisfying landing.

That is, of course, in the original. In brief—which this writer is here, at her peril: the play, as written by Shakespeare, is exquisitely befuddling enough; as conceived by Lumina, with two casts, each of them covering two productions and 60 characters, and 15 of each cast’s actors playing two roles and one playing three, the achievement could arguably be seen as the theatrical equivalent of creating the iPad—the twins Viola (a very versatile Heather DeMocker, in the production I saw) and Sebastian (an effectively bewildered but determined Martin Glusker) are separated in a shipwreck and land in Illyria. Countess Olivia (a sophisticated, regally commanding Vinta Coulibaly) falls in love with Viola, who has disguised herself as a boy called Cesario and entered into the service of Duke Orsino (a sympathetic James Sleigh)—who is pursuing the Countess, using “Cesario” as an intermediary. Meanwhile, Sebastian has also fallen in love with the Countess. And Viola is gaga over the Duke. (And “Viola” is an almost perfect anagram for “Olivia.”)

Got it? Good. (No, it’s not time for refreshments yet.)

As the play opens, our Viola washes up on shore, sings sadly, and weeps. A tall, slim lady in golden gown and chin-puff beard (yes, you read that right; she is, in fact, billed as “Bearded Lady,” played by Ella Savage) enters to tenderly comfort her Behind her a huge, hulking gorilla emitting booming, calculatedly (he nods knowingly to the audience; you can even see the glint in his eye) exaggerated grunts pulls off his “head” and introduces himself. It is—I was too absorbed to write it down, but I believe it was—Dominic Massimino, who also plays Malvolio, Olivia’s steward, the stuffiest of stuffed shirts, and plays it to the hilarious hilt. As the gorilla isn’t credited, it’s possible that we are intended to see this as a mirror image of the boor, whose color choice (black, from shoes to glasses) is essentially the same as the ape’s.

In the next scene we meet Toby (Sir Toby Belch in the original; here, convincingly played by a woman, Callie Gompf-Phillips), knife-wielding, gypsy-clad and mustachioed, dancing drunkenly and making what we assume would be inappropriate jokes, if he could remember them.

In a side trip to Cleopatra-land, we will encounter a pair of antic Roman soldiers with foot-long in-your-face red plumes in their helmets, and a soothsayer berobed in a long black cassock and sporting an Oz-worthy pointy black hat who tells the glamorous pharaoh’s fortune. (It’s not good; however, she does get to hear the kids, now accessorized with wide, gleaming gold collars and gold chains hanging from either side of their headbands, sing “Midnight at the Oasis” with recorded guitar and band accompaniment coming from offstage. The music, an astute and highly effective amalgam of era and genres, is the work of Music Director Wendy Lanxner.)

Yes, in this show, it’s not the story that will reach you (if it can even find you), but the entirety of the production. As I’ve noted with other Lumina shows I’ve attended, these kids are astonishingly, almost preternaturally precocious. The multisyllabic Shakespearean lines combined with or transformed by the wit and wisdom of Director David Minton and “Founder and Guiding Light” Jillian Raye, who was responsible for “so much of this adaptation” and “mentored Lumina’s young actors until her death in November 2008,” spout from their mouths as if they not only understand them, but were born speaking them. They are also astoundingly responsive to the smallest cues, nuances, and subtleties.

I cannot praise the production team enough. The costumes (kudos to Wendy Eck and Dianne Dumais) are an eye-widening combination of stylish period dress, garish vaudeville garb, outré thrift-store finds and elegant evening wear. (The gorgeous gowns and dresses worn by Coulibaly—notably a deep turquoise, white-ribbed, full-skirted cowboy girl outfit trimmed and top-to-bottom accessorized in white, down to a lacy, Scarlett O’Hara-worthy, embroidered snow-white crinoline; and a ravishing cardinal-red dress trimmed in gold, with its capacious, swishing, silk chiffon skirt—are real standouts). The comedic characters are clad in a quirky assortment of mismatched plaids, patterns, stripes, and colors; the makeup (a tip of every imaginable hat to Carl Randolph of Morphiage, LLC) complements and even augments them.

The props (plaudits to Jeff Struewing) run the gamut from the particular (an array of comedically ill-aimed weaponry) to the vehicular (a colorful go-kart emblazoned with the barker’s face that gets wheeled about, weaving precariously in and out, and bearing—and sometimes nearly heaving—various characters). The set is dominated at stage right by a five- or six-foot-high poster stretching the length of the stage (set design by Jim Porter) with images of circus acts in vivid primary colors, the word “Illyrialand”—Illyria = hysteria + hilarity?—and the toothy, grinning visage of a carnival barker.

The lighting by Eve Vawter is striking from the moment you enter the theater. A canopy of white bulbs is suspended gracefully across the stage. In the dark, dancing across the square platform at center stage are white cut-out stars of every size. As the lights come up, we see that the platform is covered in yellow stars. Imagination? Hallucination? Projection? Or . . . perception?

The choreography is masterly: getting some sixty small, junior-sized and adult-sized bodies to coordinate their movements in assorted aggregations has to be a challenge any way you slice it, but Choreographer Billy Griffis has got—dare I say it?—more than a grip on it, assembling the slices into a coherent, satisfying, “tasty” whole.

Political japes and jokes abound, as do dips into contextual and social-media trivia. This is Shakespeare for the Google-cum-Colbert generation, dazzlingly presented by the up-and-coming (and by the evidence presented here, at breakneck speed) one. The concept, according to the program notes, sets Shakespeare’s story in early 20th-century America, which gives a particularly potent and humorous incongruity to the early-21st allusions.

And the circus concept? It’s in excellent company. According to Wikipedia, “A memorable production directed by Liviu Ciulei at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, October–November 1984, was set in the context of an archetypal circus world, emphasizing its convivial, carnival tone.”

What Lumina has done is to take it a step—no, several steps—further. As Fabian (here, Fabiana, played by Gillian Gray) remarks: “If this were play’d upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” It is; and it is left to us to either “condemn” it, or embrace it. By all means see it next week, if you can. I think you’ll find that it’s a “relationship” you’ll be glad you gave a whirl.

Running Time: 2 hours and 25 minutes, with one intermission.

Twelfth Night plays Saturday and Sunday, December and 13 and 14, 2014 at Lumina Studio Theatre performing at The Black Box Theatre-8641 Colesville Road, in Silver Spring, MD. For tickets, call (800) 838-3006, or purchase them online for Green Cast and Plum Cast.

December 9, 2014