Opera Review: A Lulu of a "Lulu"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 17 May 2010 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Composed by Alban Berg

Conducted by Fabio Luisi
Directed by John Dexter

She made a memorable Met debut in an otherwise middling Hamlet as Ophelia, but it’s in the title role of Alban Berg’s Lulu that German soprano Marlis Petersen shows that she belongs in opera’s big leagues, a true superstar in the making.

Berg's grim but glorious-sounding 12-tone opera is based on Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays about an amoral woman whose wiles entice men (and women) to their deaths, only to meet her demise at the hands of Jack the Ripper in Victorian London. Done infrequently at the Met, Lulu is one of the few “must-see” 20th century operas to be regularly performed, so seeing John Dexter’s elegant 30-year-old production is always a treat. Fabio Luisi’s supple conducting coaxes all of the varied musicality out of Berg’s rugged score, reaching its apogee in the brilliantly orchestrated interludes that nod toward the composer’s gorgeous Violin Concerto.

Although stars appear in pivotal supporting roles (Anne Sofie von Otter as Princess Geschwitz, James Morris as both Dr. Schön and, in the final scene, Lulu’s killer), it’s Petersen, traversing Berg’s sadistically difficult vocal writing with apparent ease, who makes this a lulu of a Lulu. A tall, handsome woman whose great legs become a pivotal point of this production—of course our Lulu must be irresistible!—Petersen also has impeccable singing and acting chops, letting the audience follow this atonal anti-heroine to the depths of hell in a tragically inevitable climax  to Berg’s musically and dramatically exhilarating four-hour journey. I’m sure most Lulu lovers would gladly follow Petersen again and again.

Lulu

Metropolitan Opera

Lincoln Center

New York, NY

Performances on May 8, 12, 15, 2010

metopera.org

Theater Review: Adopting "The Kid"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 14 May 2010 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Book by Michael Zam
Lyrics by Jack Lechner
Music by Andy Monroe
Based on the book by Dan Savage
Musical staging by Josh Prince
Directed by Scott Elliott

Starring Kevin Anthony, Zachary Berger, Susan Blackwell, Jane Brockman, Jill Eikenberry, Jeannine Frumess, Ann Harada, Tyler Maynard, Brooke Sunny Moriber, Justin Patterson, Christopher Sieber, Lucas Steele, Michael Wartella

If you don't know who Dan Savage is before seeing The Kid, you will just moments into this hilarious, humane musical about Dan and his lover Terry’s attempt to adopt a baby. Savage is author of the savagely funny column, “Savage Love,” giving profane answers to no-holds-barred queries about sexual proclivities still considered taboo.

These people earnestly seeking advice about their peccadilloes in the opening number, “I’m Asking You,” drop us right into Dan’s lap, so to speak.

Expertly directed by Scott Elliott, The Kid makes no bones about being a conventional musical about an unconventional couple. After demonstrating that Dan—portrayed by the impressively laid-back Christopher Sieber, as subtle and low-key as he was boisterously over-the-top in Shrek and Spamalot—deals with questions outside the usual purview of Ann Landers or Dear Abby, the play spends the rest of its pleasantly heart-tugging two-and-a-half hours following a quintessentially American gay couple wanting to settle down, live in suburbia and raise a family.

For some viewers, that might signal some kind of retreat. But the creators of The Kid are too smart not to know that the best musicals have a heart: we wouldn't enjoy watching the hippies in Hair or the drag queens in La cage aux Folles if we didn't care about what happens to them. And so it is with The Kid, which doesn't have the need for a foul-mouthed Dan spouting off against hypocritical right-wing politicians or gently beating up readers who admit to eternally screwed-up relationships.

Instead, with Dan narrating their story, he and Terry are shown in a broader context, like any other prospective parents who worry about how to handle a newborn or wonder if they’ll make any lasting impression on their child.

To that end, The Kid introduces Dan's relationship with his open-minded mother, played by the supremely gifted and always appealing Jill Eikenberry. Mom first comes onstage to banter with her son and assure those in the audience who might not identify with or understand Dan's lifestyle that she'll explain things that need explaining, like “tea bagging” (which is not, however, explained). Eikenberry has a sweetly casual charm that puts the audience at ease. Though she has a disappointingly brief scene in Act I, she compensates with her Act II scene-stealing, topped by the heartfelt “I Knew,” the show's standout song.

The Kid, which is based on Savage's 1999 memoir, boasts a smartly amusing book by Michael Zam, whose zesty comic pacing makes Jack Lechner’s hit-and-miss lyrics and Andy Munroe’s serviceable music sound better than they are. Although Lechner hits lyrical bulls-eyes on the biting “They Hate Us” and haunting ballad “Spare Changin’,” Munroe's music glides reassuringly throughout. Yet only in the satirical “Gore Vidal” and reassuring “I Knew” do words and music transcend their otherwise professional competence. 

Happily, the production itself is top-notch. Lucas Steele's deftly-acted Terry is a perfectly handsome foil for Sieber's Dan, proving once again that opposites attract. Josh Prince stages the musical numbers with comic dexterity; the songs kicking off each act, “I’m Asking You” and “We’re Asking You?” are tongue-in-cheek mirrors of each other, musically and visually. The throwaway dance tune “Seize the Day” is nimbly choreographed for maximum effect, with the excellent cast moved around so mischievously that it belies the small stage—upon which Derek McLane’s spiffy set and Jeff Scher’s animated projections work handily.

The Kid threatens to become sentimental mush as the men fret over their unborn adoptee, whose mother is homeless, alcoholic teenager Melissa (played with bruising naturalness by Jeannine Frumess); the no-good father Bacchus (a lacerating Kevin Wartella) unexpectedly returns to make trouble. But whenever it’s ready to plunge into a sappy abyss, The Kid--aided by its creators' refreshing refusal to overdose on cynicism—easily wins us over.

The Kid

The New Group

410 West 42nd Street

New York, NY

Performances began April 16, 2010

Houston Has a Problem in "Enron"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 11 May 2010 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Enron
Written by Lucy Prebble
Directed by Rupert Goold
Starring Norbert Leo Butz, Gregory Itzin, Marin Mazzie, Stephen Kunken

Morality play, cautionary tale, acidic satire: Enron is all of these and more. Lucy Prebble’s audacious play attempts to encompass the whole story of the energy giant's precipitous fall to earth with a thud.

Prebble also shows Skilling at home with his young daughter, and we see that even family members are treated like employees and fellow executives: as props to prop himself up as their savior. Norbert Leo Butz shrewdly plays Skilling as a skillful juggler, parts innocence and nastiness, with a fervor underlying it all that makes us think—if only momentarily—that he wasn’t disingenuous about what he did, even when dressed in prison oranges to deliver the play’s final words about America’s love affair with money.

Alongside Butz, Gregory Itzin makes chairman Ken Lay a believably (and notoriously) devil-may-care figurehead, while Marin Mazzie (who looks dazzling in a succession of form-fitting dresses) registers strongly as Claudia, a composite of several Enron female execs.

Enron, the play, failed on Broadway even faster than the original corporation went under: it closes just over a week after opening, a huge flop by any standard. But there are mitigating circumstances. First, the play's title should have been anything but Enron, a buzzword that conjures up another era and dates it immediately, with most people—wrongly, of course—assuming that it concerns long-forgotten events. The current volatile stock market puts the lie to the “lack of relevance” claim, and what happens onstage is still being played out in company board rooms.

Too bad for those who stayed away: those who came saw a spectacularly entertaining piece of theater, staged with rip-snorting cleverness by Rupert Goold, furthering the Brechtian distancing devices already in Prebble's script, and introducing forceful, deliriously theatrical imagery to provokes visceral reactions in its audience.

The play's first image, three life-size blind mice standing in for Enron’s board members, return later. When Enron’s financial whiz, Andy Fastow (played by a brilliantly crazed Stephen Kunken), creates a scheme that he calls “raptors” to hide the company’s enormous losses from Wall Street, men wearing dinosaur heads similar to flesh-eating monsters of Jurassic Park slither around the stage, gobbling all the debt-laden cash Enron's drowning in. Sure, it’s an obvious metaphor, but it comes to humorously absurdist life onstage, perfectly capturing such tumultuous times.

Sure, Goold sometimes goes too far: a lengthy sequence about the rolling California electricity blackouts steered by Enron fills the stage with green light sabre-wielding traders, a la Star Wars, and comes off as amateur night at the cantina. Yet mainly, Goold's elaborately-done sound and light show (with several jokey musical interludes) proves that overkill is not too much when dealing with such a legendary—and still reverberating—flame-out that began this century in a dire direction that has appallingly continued.

Enron
Broadhurst Theater
235 West 44^th Street
New York, NY

Closed May 9, 2010

enronbroadway.com