On Broadway: Resurrecting ‘Superstar’ and ‘Evita’

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 06 April 2012 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Evita
Starring Ricky Martin, Elena Roger, Michael Cerveris
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Tim Rice
Directed by Michael Grandage; choreographed by Rob Ashford

Jesus Christ Superstar
Starring Paul Nolan, Josh Young, Chilina Kennedy, Tom Hewitt, Bruce Dow
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Tim Rice
Directed by Des McAnuff; choreographed by Lisa Shriver

Now we have the return to Broadway of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s biggest hits together: 1970’s Jesus Christ Superstar and 1978’s Evita. If the new stagings aren’t genuine cause for celebration, they provide interesting comparisons between the works.

In its new incarnation--directly from the stage of Canada’s Stratford ShakespeareFestival, where it originated last summer--Superstar has not aged well. Telling the story of the last days of Christ, from Palm Sunday to Good Friday (we do not see him risen until the curtain call) in a through-composed rock opera might have been a novelty 40 years ago, but Lloyd Webber’s blunt rock-influenced songs (with more than a touch of The Who’s Tommy) and Rice’s god-awful lyrics (the words have meaning and import only once: on the cross, Christ intones the Bible’s powerful “My God, why have you forsaken me?” and “It is finished“) can’t overcome their pretentions of greater glory.

Happily, Des McAnuff’s inventive staging--which is saddled with Robert Brill’s bland unit set that resembles the all-purpose jungle gym currently in vogue--and fast pace keep things moving, so in no time at all we go from Christ smashing the temple to being flogged as Pilate washes his hands.

McAnuff’s cast, most of whom come from the Canadian staging, is solid but unspectacular: remote otherwise, Chilina Kennedy beautifully caresses the show’s prettiest tune, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” while Josh Young’s Judas registers strongly both in his vocals and his predestined villany. Paul Nolan is more a dignified Christ figure than a compelling flesh-and-blood man, and the Pontius Pilate of Tom Hewitt is well-sung but bland.

If Superstar fizzles rather than sizzles, Evita--imported belatedly from its 2006 London revival, much too late to make people forget the laughable 1996 Madonna movie--shows that Lloyd Webber and Rice improved their craft in the intervening eight years.

Lloyd Webber’s music, more sonically sophisticated than in Superstar, has hints of minimalism in its score a la Adams or Glass. Of course, his lovely lament “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” has such a memorable melody that Lloyd Webber overuses it as a pseudo-Wagnerian leitmotif, weaving it in, out and around other tunes throughout the show. The problem with this approach is that when we finally hear the song proper in the second act, its emotional power has been diluted by so much hinting at it beforehand.

Still, the songs are not only better but more varied, while Rice’s lyrics--still often sophomoric--immeasurably improve upon their predecessors’. Rice even comes up with clever turns of the phrase during Evita’s dress-up number, “Rainbow High” and hubby Juan Peron’s sardonic “The Art of the Possible.”

Those mesmerized by Harold Prince’s original Broadway production--and its then-unknown stars, Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin--might abhor Michael Grandidge’s staging, but it’s fluidity and straightforwardness helps put Argentine history many audience members will be unfamiliar with in context. Rob Ashford’s dances--heavy on the tango, of course, but with an appropriately stomping martial beat as well--work serviceably, as do Christopher Oram’s sturdy sets and costumes. Neil Austin’s lighting and Mick Potter’s sound design bring added visual and aural flair.

There remains the question of whether Lloyd Webber and Rice glorify or excoriate the Perons. Evidence goes both ways, less from ambiguity than uncertainty; but in this staging, excoriation wins. Michael Cerveris--a solid Broadway veteran--makes Peron a zombified head of state with a magnificent singing voice, and Ricky Martin is a charismatic Che (our Everyman narrator), telling the story with an arched eyebrow while singing superbly and with flawless diction.

Our Evita is the diminutive Argentine actress Elena Roger, who dances beautifully and acts persuasively but sings with a tendency towards shrillness, noticeably in the upper register. She’s also made up to look mousey (at first), then ratty. If the intention is to make Eva Peron so unlikable that we loathe her immediately, then it succeeds. But such a complex anti-heroine needs more understanding and less condescension from her creators.

Evita
Previews began March 12, 2012; opened April 5; tickets on sale thru Dec. 30
Marquis Theatre, Broadway between 45th and 46th Streets, New York, NY
http://evitaonbroadway.com

Jesus Christ Superstar
Previews began March 1, 2012; opened March 22; tickets on sale thru July 1
Neil Simon Theatre, 250 West 52nd Street, New York, NY
http://superstaronbroadway.com

Theater Review: "Painting Churches"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 04 April 2012 01:32

Written by Lucy Komisar

Tina Howe’s “Painting Churches” is a moving portrait of couple’s struggle for survival

By Lucy Komisar

“Painting Churches.”

Written by Tina Howe; directed by Carl Forsman. Keen Company at Clurman Theatre

Opened March 6, 2012; closes April 7, 2012.

In almost a chamber concert of a play, memory and fantasy intrude in Tina Howe’s drama of a family in which the parents are in decline from their artistically productive years and the daughter is moving up. Her feelings for them are part love and part resentment at what she sees as their self-centered interference with her own artistic development and triumphs.

Fanny (Kathleen Chalfant) and Gardner Church (John Cunningham) – for they, not a religious building, are what daughter Mags (Kate Turnbull) wants to paint — have lived for decades in an elegant townhouse in a fashionable part of Boston. They appear to be in their 70s. As if to emphasize their dated classic style, the windows are topped with Greek pediments.

They have to sell the house, because Gardner, a famous author who got a Pulitzer, can no longer lecture and they have run out of money. They are packing up to move to their Cape Cod beach house.

Fanny’s eccentricity is emphasized by her odd pill box hats. Then we learn she picks them up in thrift shops, and it’s perhaps a rare enjoyment at a difficult time.

Mags visits –the first time in a year – to help with the packing and paint their picture. It’s hard to get them to sit still. But finally they choose costumes – he a tux and she a long black evening dress – and pose.

But the picture we see is not that painting, but the disintegration of Gardner, the concern and sometimes anger of Fanny, and the self-centeredness of Mags, who takes the moment of a very difficult time for her parents to bring up a childhood trauma. Her mother had banished her from the dining table for playing with and spitting out her food and then destroyed an “art work” she had made by dripping crayons on her bedroom radiator.

Mags is now a successful painter. She has exhibited at Castelli. Now, she teaches at Pratt. But there is still an emotional conflict. She recalls with anger the time her parents embarrassed and humiliated her at her first solo show.

The play is generally well directed by Carl Forsman. Chalfant is biting, Cunningham intense. They provide a solid anchor – a funny word to use since he is sliding into Alzheimers and she is alternately ditsy and angry.  They play the couple as a little nuts but charming and very dependent on each other. Or maybe that’s about survival. Chalfant shows us a woman fighting to hang on as her husband disintegrates.

However, I don’t agree with Mags’ almost hysterical retelling of her childhood crayon art trauma. It shatters the mood. Still, a small quibble in this elegant production.

“Painting Churches.” Written by Tina Howe; directed by Carl Forsman. Keen Company at Clurman Theatre, 410 West 42nd Street, New York.212-239-6200. Opened March 6, 2012; closes April 7, 2012.

March '12 Digital Week V

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 31 March 2012 15:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Corman’s World
(Anchor Bay)
Alex Stapleton’s engaging documentary about the “King of the B Movies,” producer-director extraordinaire Roger Corman, is as straightforward and unpretentious as its subject, who made trashy fun like The Little Shop of Horrors, The Trip and Jackson County Jail.

Most remarkable about this affectionate paean is how beloved Corman is, as heartfelt reminiscences from Ron Howard and Joe Dante to Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson (at one point he breaks down, overcome by emotion) show. The movie looks fine on Blu-ray, even if the older film clips show their age; extras include extended interviews and “special messages” to Roger.

David Lean Directs Noel Coward
(Criterion)
This quartet of classics, combining the talents of renaissance man Coward and director Lean, are masterpieces in miniature that predate the gargantuan epics Lean is known for. In Which We Serve (1942) and This Happy Breed (1944) are world-class melodramas, Blithe Spirit (1945) a charming ghostly fantasy and Brief Encounter (1945) the ultimate tragic romance.

The films received British Film Institute restorations for Lean’s centenary and look sparkling; the Criterion Collection’s voluminous extras include a 1971 British TV Lean documentary, short making-of docs, interviews with Coward scholar Barry Day and a 1969 discussion between Coward and Richard Attenborough.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Warners)
Jonathan Safran Foer’s dizzying, unconventional Sept. 11 novel becomes an occasionally touching but mainly annoying melodrama by director Stephen Daldry. Despite good acting by Thomas Horn as the young hero and Max von Sydow in a thankless role as a mute widower who helps the kid find what his dad--killed in the terrorist attacks--left him, the movie is cloying and obnoxious rather than affecting and offbeat.

Daldry’s fairy-tale Manhattan is transferred to Blu-ray with its high gloss intact; extras include featurettes on the film’s making, Horn, von Sydow and tenth anniversary of Sept. 11.

In the Land of Blood and Honey
(Sony)
Rather than a vanity project, Angelina Jolie’s writing-directing debut is a tough, at times tentative drama set during the Bosnian war. Made from the female point of view, it’s unsurprising that the men are caricatures; Zana Marjanovic gives astonishing, emotionally and physically naked performance in Jolie’s insightful, psychologically penetrating portrait of people caught up in war’s horrors.

The film looks vivid and focused in hi-def; one can watch in either the original Balkan languages or in English. The extras are deleted scenes, making-of featurette and Jolie and actress Vanesa Glodjo Q&A.

A Night to Remember
(Criterion)
Roy Ward Baker’s modest but compelling account of the Titanic’s ill-fated maiden voyage is far more satisfying than James Cameron’s overblown, inexplicably boring Oscar-dominating epic version of the same story. By keeping the tragedy on a human scale--something Cameron could never do even if he cared to--Baker has fashioned a memorable cinematic experience.

The 1958 black-and-white drama looks stunningly film-like in its grain on Blu-ray; the Criterion Collection extras include the 2006 documentary The Iceberg That Sank the Titanic, short 1962 and 1993 documentaries, a survivor interview and an audio commentary by Titanic experts.
 
Tannhauser
(Unitel Classica)
In Robert Carsen’s modern staging of Richard Wagner’s operatic fable, the subtext of suppressed sexuality--in the guises of sensual goddess Venus and virgin Elisabeth--is brought blatantly to the surface, subtlety be damned.

Luckily, Carsen’s cast puts its all into the characters, which helps arrest lingering silliness: Peter Seiffert’s Tannhauser is persuasively pitched between Beatrice Uria-Monzon’s vivacious Venus and Petra Maria Schnitzer’s endearing Elisabeth. Carsen’s contemporary interpretation is visually striking on Blu-ray, and Wagner’s enveloping music explodes out of the speakers.

Wizards
(Fox)
After pointed, political animation like Fritz the Cat, Ralph Bakshi made this strange, inert 1976 fantasy that seems, in retrospect, to be a run-through for his animated The Lord of the Rings two years later.

Wizards might not have hobbits and wizards, but this post-apocalyptic adventure has the same sense of dread as Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Bakshi’s unique style, combining traditional animation and drawn-over live-action footage, has a soft look on Blu-ray. Extras are Bakshi’s commentary and 30-minute career overview.

DVDs of the Week
Carnage
(Sony)
Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage is a trite but rip-roaring entertainment about two civilized New York City couples who hash out their sons’ differences and end up at each other’s throats…like the kids. On Broadway, James Gandolfini, Marsha Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis made Reza’s comedy explode.

That’s missing from Roman Polanski’s reenactment: Jodie Foster outclasses a miscast John C. Reilly, shrill Kate Winslet and weirdly out-of-place Christoph Waltz. By beginning with the boys, Polanski wrongly erases ambiguity; by moving his camera around shrewdly in tight spaces, he also reveals the material’s shallowness. Extras include cast interviews, Reilly/Waltz Q&A.

A Dangerous Method
(Sony)
At 99 minutes, David Cronenberg’s study of the professional relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud--based on Christopher Hampton’s talkily literate play--comes across as Psychoanalysis 101.

Still, with terrific acting by Michael Fassbinder (Jung), an unrecognizable Viggo Mortensen (Freud) and a no-holds-barred Kiera Knightley (Jung’s patient-turned-lover Sabine), this is Cronenberg’s most entertaining movie in ages, even with moments (a close-up of post-sex blood on the sheets) where it’s obvious that one of cinema’s least subtle directors is at work. No matter: these people’s sexuality is on the surface anyway. Extras are Cronenberg’s commentary, interview and making-of featurette.

I, Claudius
(Acorn)
Robert Graves’s classic novels about debauchery and ambition in ancient Rome became high-class television viewing in 1976, as a plethora of top British actors and actresses (Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Sian Phillips, John Hurt and Brian Blessed, Patrick Stewart, Margaret Tyzack) sink their teeth into those leading Rome through its rise and fall.

Director Herbert Wise smartly marshals this expressive epic through 11-plus hours, every minute riveting. Extras include extended episodes; I, Claudius: A Television Epic, a feature-length documentary; The Epic That Never Was, a vintage documentary about the failed 1937 film adaptation; a Jacobi interview; and stars and director’s favorite scenes.

Red Persimmons
(Icarus)
This 2001 film--ostensibly about workers in a Japanese village who grow, pick, dry and peel the bright-colored title fruit but really about the dying out of traditional ways of life--was begun by director Shinsuke Ogawa and finished after his death by Peng Xizolian.

The eye-opening footage, which looks seamless, is both invigorating and depressing, since its delicate imagery may be the last we see of such human invention. A bonus feature, A Visit to Ogawa Productions, is a 60-minute documentary of directors Ogawa and Nagisa Oshima discussing their careers and work together.

The Women on the 6th Floor
(Strand)
In this frivolous, far-fetched farce from director Philippe Le Guay, the always resourceful actor Fabrice Luchini makes us believe that a respectable middle-aged stockbroker would fall head over heels for his lovely young Spanish maid (the delectable Natalia Verbeke) under the not-so-watchful eye of his preoccupied wife (Sandrine Kiberlain).

Though he is asked to do many foolish things that are both comic and melodramatic, Luchini never falters, making the movie far funnier (and even romantic) than it has any right to be.

CDs of the Week
Schnittke: 12 Penitential Pslams
(Hanssler Classic)
Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke wrote 12 Penitential Psalms for unaccompanied, mixed chorus for the 1000th anniversary of Russia’s Christianization in 1988. This exceptionally dense work showcases Schnittke’s genius for using simple means to create complex, otherworldly sound worlds.

1972’s four-minute Voices of Nature, which concludes the disc, is a mournful, minimalist ode; the Stuttgart Vocal Ensemble is in fine form throughout.

Weinberg: Complete Piano Works 1
(Grand Piano)
Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (who died in 1996) has been rediscovered recently, on CDs and even a DVD/Blu-ray of his mesmerizing opera The Passenger. His piano music, played persuasively by Allison Brewster Franzetti, runs the gamut from a Satie-esque Lullaby to the unabashedly dissonant Sonata No. 1.

His second sonata has a Romantic-era feel, as do the early Two Mazurkas from 1933, while another Sonata--a 1978 revisiting of a 1951 piece--seamlessly blends his mid-period and later styles.