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Broadway Roundup: ‘Rocky’ Becomes a Musical & ‘All the Way’ Has Bryan Cranston as LBJ

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 27 March 2014 03:29; Written by Kevin Filipski

Rocky

Book by Thomas Meehan & Sylvester Stallone; music by Stephen Flaherty; lyrics by Lynn Ahrens Directed by Alex Timbers

Previews began February 13, 2014; opened March 13

All the Way

Written by Robert Schenkkan; directed by Bill Rausch

Previews began February 10, 2014; opened March 6

Seibert and Karl in Rocky (photo: Matthew Murphy)

When Sylvester Stallone created the iconic Rocky Balboa for his captivating, Oscar-winning 1976 movie, I doubt anyone would think the Philly boxing hero would be a candidate for a Broadway musical. Well, these days it seems everything becomes a musical—this season alone, there’s The Bridges of Madison County, Bullets over Broadway, Aladdin and Heathers—so why not Rocky? As this proficient but unnecessary musical makes clear, the real question is: why?

The main problem is that Rocky doesn’t need to be a musical. Anyone remotely familiar with the movie might find it off-putting that the movie is basically reenacted onstage—with the same dialogue—only to be stopped at times for musical numbers that feel shoehorned in from elsewhere. Since director John G. Avildsen’s movie is filled with ordinary people straining to get past their inarticulateness, to suddenly have an onstage Rocky Balboa talk to his trusty turtles then burst into lucid, muscular song, crooning “My Nose Ain’t Broken,” provides a disconnect that continues throughout the show.

There are decent musical moments. The haughtily arrogant champ Apollo Creed seems perfectly at home belting “Patriotic” with a trio of backup singers in tow after he decides to choose a local fighter for the big New Year’s bout. And Adrian, Rocky’s painfully shy girlfriend, has a gentle love song, “Raining,” that’s at least partly in character. But Lynn Ahrens’ banal lyrics are no substitute for the low-class poetry in Stallone’s original movie script: his repeated “yo Adrians” and “you knows” are more authentic than sung lines as “and today’s Thanksgivin’/and I’m sorta free/’cept I got no one but turtles/for company/and I was hopin’ that you’d go out with me.”

It’s a given that “Gonna Fly Now,” the original’s rousing theme song, and “Eye of the Tiger,” Rocky III’s faceless anthem, would appear—the former at the beginning and the latter during the too-long training sequences opening Act II—but what’s surprising is that none of Stephen Flaherty’s songs surpasses them. In fact, Flaherty’s generic power ballads and rockers pale next to Bill Conti’s alternately rousing and intimate movie music—indeed, the show’s most notable sounds feature tantalizing bits of Conti’s score.

Andy Karl’s Rocky adroitly blends Stallone’s original persona with his own take that never steps out of lowly character even while loftily, if incongruously, singing. Margo Seibert’s Adrian is as mousily endearing as Talia Shire, Danny Mastrogiorgio’s Paulie is more an amusing pest than the genuine nuisance Burt Young so memorably was, and if Dakin Mathews’ Mickey can’t hope to equal Burgess Meredith’s charmingly crusty trainer, he comes across with engaging klutziness.

As impressive as director Alex Timbers’ physical production is—utilizing Christopher Barecca’s inventive sets, Christopher Akerlind’s supple lighting and David Zinn’s sensible costumes—it reaches its apogee (or the ultimate in gimmickry) at the end, when audience members in front are herded onto the stage to sit in bleachers as the championship ring is moved into their places, giving everyone a better view of the fight. Steven Hoggett and Kelly Devine’s vigorous fight choreography takes over so completely that, after watching Rocky and Apollo (the excellent Terence Archie) prodigiously fake so many upper cuts and feints—even in slow motion— everyone exiting Rocky will be humming its body blows, not songs.

Cranston as LBJ in All the Way (photo: Evgenia Eliseeva)

A larger than life figure standing six foot four inches and owning a proudly abrasive Texan personality, President Lyndon Johnson was a formidable political opponent to anyone who got in his way. And in All the Way, Robert Schenkkan’s serious and engrossing play about Johnson’s politicking for the passage of the Civil Rights Act and his own 1964 election, Bryan Cranston’s towering portrayal of LBJ is less a matter of height (the actor, who’s shorter, has two-inch lifts in his shoes) than of precision. Giving a big, blustery performance that teeters on the edge of caricature, Cranston deftly exhibits the crusty personality that tempered LBJ’s good-natured charm, the anchor of an endlessly resourceful portrait of a politician for whom unscrupulousness comes naturally.

Although his play could be seen as a cautionary tale for the current president—who for five years has met a hardened opposition party every step of the way—Schenkkan isn’t interested in mere polemics,for he has a rich subject that not only comprises Johnson himself, but the many people and events that revolve around him during a particularly fraught period of our history. The play begins on November 22, 1963—when Johnson assumed the presidency after JFK’s assassination—and ends on Election Day 1964 when LBJ gets four more years in the White House. What happens is well-known, but it’s how we get there, thanks to Schenkkan’s apposite writing, Bill Rausch’s savvy directing and the performances of Cranston and a large cast, that make All the Way a sharp and meaty theatrical event.

Surrounding Johnson on all sides of the political spectrum are FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover (a subtly squalid Michael McKean), racist Alabama governor George Wallace (Rob Campbell, good and slippery), LBJ mentor and Southern Dixiecrat senator Dick Russell (played by John McMartin, who oozes smugness like nobody’s business), spineless senator and wannabe VP candidate Hubert Humphrey (a cogent portrayal by Robert Petkoff) and civil rights agitator Martin Luther King (a fiery Brandon J. Dirden). As LBJ skillfully makes deals with, ignores or inflames these people, Schenkkan shows how this brilliant tactician combined opportunism and what he believed was the right thing. (Schenkkan’s new play, The Great Society, will take the measure of the man during his second presidential term.)

Standing front and center during this lengthy but riveting drama is Cranston’s LBJ. Sidling up to a crony, mentor or opponent to tell him another profane yarn filled with homespun and hard-won wisdom, Cranston lays bare the brazen duplicity that was Johnson’s weapon: he was your best friend who also stabbed you in the back. And All the Way shows how high risk brought high reward for our 36^th president.

Rocky

Winter Garden Theatre, 50^th Street & Broadway, New York, NY

rockybroadway.com

All the Way

Neil Simon Theatre, 250 West 52^nd Street, New York, NY

allthewaybroadway.com

March '14 Digital Week IV

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 25 March 2014 21:10; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

The Americanization of Emily

(Warner Archive)

Arthur Hiller’s uneven 1964 satire—from Paddy Chayefsky’s hit-or-miss script—shows how idiotic war is as a skeptical navy man goes ashore on D-Day since his superiors want one of their own to be first to die heroically on Omaha Beach.

Acted with gleeful urgency by James Garner, James Coburn, Julie Andrews and Melvyn Douglas, Emily scatters its shots far too widely, which Hiller and Chayefsky would repeat in The Hospital seven years later. The Blu-ray image is good; extras comprise Hiller’s commentary and on-set featurette.

Atlantis

(BBC)

The lost continent has been found in this entertaining retelling of Greek myths and legends, as a group of ancient-world “three musketeers” named Hercules, Pythagoras and Jason deals with the likes of the Medusa, the Minotaur and Pandora’s Box.

Although it’s done lightheartedly, the actors look a little embarrassed to be spouting banal dialogue masquerading as wit; but at least there’s the wonderful Juliet Stevenson as the Oracle. The locations—the series is shot in Morocco and Wales—look stupendous on Blu-ray.

Carlos Kleiber—I Am Lost to the World

(C Major)

One of the most renowned 20^th century conductors, German-born Carlos Kleiber was also a major recluse, according to Georg Wubbolt’s first-rate documentary.

His Beethoven and Wagner conducting was sublime, as clips of his work show, and his attentiveness to detail was second to none—as attested to by his many colleagues and friends who are interviewed—but he rarely performed, and if this this doc doesn’t get to the heart of his troubles, it’s still a riveting portrait of a talented artist. The hi-def transfer is decent.

Faust

Werther

(Decca)

German tenor Jonas Kauffmann, the hottest voice in opera today, dominates these 19^th century French opera stagings. He’s a powerhouse in the title role of Charles Gounod’s Faust, dueling with Rene Pape’s equally mighty Mephistopheles, in Des MacAnuff’s entertaining 2011 Met Opera production.

Kauffmann is also formidable vocally and dramatically in the title role in Werther, Jules Massenet’s lyrical romantic tragedy based on Goethe’s novel, with fantastic support from soprano Sophie Koch as the woman he can never have. The hi-def video looks fine, while the music sounds strong throughout; Faust extras include brief cast and director interviews.

The Hidden Fortress

Persona

(Criterion)

Fanboys know it—if at all—as the inspiration for George Lucas’ Star Wars (which he readily admits in an included interview), but Akira Kurosawa’s spectacularly entertaining 1958 adventure The Hidden Fortress is a singular B&W widescreen epic seen mainly through the eyes of two nobodies who inadvertently rescue a princess. It works as both a Kurosawa classic and a popcorn movie for anyone to devour; rarely has the Japanese master been so beguilingly light-hearted.

Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece Persona, one of the most profound studies of human behavior ever captured on film, comprises a character study of immense psychological depth and penetrating acting by two Bergman muses, Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann.

The films’ hi-def transfers are luminous; extras include commentaries and interviews (on both discs), an episode of It’s Wonderful to Create (on Fortress), and on-set footage and documentary Liv & Ingmar (on Persona).

Mysterious Skin

(Strand)

Gregg Araki’s best-known film, which helped launch Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s career in 2004, is an ambitious adaptation of Scott Heim’s book about two friends who deal with sexual abuse at the hands of their little league coach differently.

There’s persuasive acting by Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet as the boys and Elisabeth Shue as Gordon-Levitt’s mom, which gives Araki the chance to explore this subject matter with more assurance than in his other films. The Blu-ray transfer is excellent; extras include an Araki intro and commentary, new Gordon-Levitt, Corbet and Heim interviews and deleted scenes.

The Past

(Sony Classics)

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who won the 2011 Best Foreign Film Oscar for A Separation, returns with another look at the effects of a crumbling marriage—this time, on an Iranian husband, his French wife, her children and her Arab fiancée.

Farhadi’s script has much to offer, but ultimately—as in the earlier film—there’s less than meets the eye, as the accumulation of details starts to overwhelm his focus. Still, it’s superbly acted, especially by Berenice Bejo, who showed her comedic side in the frivolous The Artist (did that really win Best Picture?) and demonstrates her raw dramatic chops. The Blu-ray looks sharp; extras include Farhadi’s commentary and Q&A and a making-of.

DVDs of the Week

The Big House

(Warner Archive)

George Hill’s 1930 jailhouse drama—which won Oscars for writing and sound—is dated by muted violence and a squeaky-clean look at hard prison life, but some tough-mindedness remains, thanks to the accomplished cast which works within the narrow strictures of the era.

For added historic interest, both the French and Spanish language versions of the film are included, shot with different casts by different directors on the same locales and with the same (translated) script.

Camille Claudel 1915

(Kino Lorber)

Even though he’s using a movie star for the first time—the usually luminous Juliette Binoche has been scrubbed down to resemble the famed French sculptress during her lengthy stay in an asylum—director Bruno Dumont has made another typically rigorous and disturbing exploration of extreme behavior.

As usual, Binoche holds the screen—and Dumont’s many close-ups—with intelligence, assurance and anything but star-turn theatrics, but Dumont’s method of casting real non-actors to populate the asylum is questionable at best, mitigating the film’s unblinking look at such a sadly illuminating case of an artist whose life took a tragic turn.

Contracted

(MPI)

When Samantha screws a shady guy from a party, she becomes victim to a most insidious STD that turns her by degrees into a zombie in writer-director Eric England’s initially intriguing but ultimately risible horror movie.

Despite Najarra Townsend’s charged performance—she makes Samantha’s physical and mental deterioration plausibly frightening—England’s movie relies far too much on shock effects. Extras are two commentaries, a making-of and Townsend’s audition.

Let the Fire Burn

(Zeitgeist)

This devastating documentary recounts the incendiary standoff between Philadelphia police and radical black group MOVE in 1985, which ended with dozens of people dead (including several children) and the destruction of the group’s headquarters and dozens of houses in a conflagration set—and pointedly not controlled—by authorities.

Director Jason Osder, who cannily utilizes archival footage from the era, unravels one of the most egregious misuses of power against civilians in our history. As a sad postscript, sole child survivor Michael Ward—shown being interviewed afterwards—mystifyingly died last year in a cruise ship pool at age 40. Extras are a 2002 Ward interview and an insightful Q&A with Osder.

Stradella

(Dynamic)

Belgian Cesar Franck composed this tragic opera when merely 20 in 1842 and it was never performed in his lifetime: receiving its 2012 world premiere in Leige, Belgium, it shows an accomplished, mature musical hand.

Film director Jaco van Dormael shows a real affinity for opera with smart pacing and striking visuals, leads Isabelle Kabatu and Marc Laho are strong singers and performers, and Paolo Arrivabeni conducts the opera house’s orchestra and chorus, which sings the extended—and vocally ravishing—finale.

Film Review: "Nymphomaniac: Part 1"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 25 March 2014 21:03; Written by Matt Oakes

"Nymphomaniac: Part 1"
Directed by Lars von Trier
Starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stacy Martin, Stellan Skarsgard, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark
Drama
118 Mins
NR

Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Joe, a woman looking back on her life with deep-seated scorn, hounding for condemnation, beaten and broken. We meet her lying on the knotted facade of a cobblestone street corner, caked with dark, unexplained bruises, limp and abandoned like a dove craddling a broken wing. To the head banging tune of Rammstein's thumping German heavy metal, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) spots Joe crumpled under a gentle but deadly snowfall. After attempts to contact the authorities are met with threats of her fleeing the scene, he takes her home for some bed rest and a steamy cup of Earl Grey.

"After Midnight" Thrills in a Journey Back in Time

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 21 March 2014 04:34; Written by Derrel "Jazz" Johnson

Previews for After Midnight began Oct 18; Opened November 3, 2013 and is currently running at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre (256 West 47 street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue). Conceived by Jack Viertel directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle starring Dulé Hill, Fantasia Barrino, Adriane Lenox, Carmen Ruby Floyd, Rosena M. Hill Jackson, Bryonha Marie Parham, Karine Plantadit, Virgil "Lil' O" Gadson and The Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars.

With a great cast of actors, singers, dancers, and musicians, After Midnight brings you back to places like the Savoy Ballroom and the Cotton Club not just through the singing, but through the dancing and period costumes as well.

Actor Dulé Hill -- best known from such TV series NBC's The West Wing and USA Network's Psych -- is the featured actor who pulls the entire show together. Singer Fantasia Barrino, from American Idol fame, is the premiere special guest star. And, thanks to costume designer Isabel Toledo and Warren Carlyle’s tremendous choreography, the show provides an incredible simulation of a bygone but great era.

Featuring classics from such greats as Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, the music comes with high expectations. But as delivered by The Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars under the leadership of artistic director Wynton Marsalis, the performances are absolutely flawless.

While the entire show is phenomenal, some of the highlights include versions of "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" -- performed by Carmen Ruby Floyd, Rosena M. Hill Jackson, and Bryonha Marie Parham -- and the extremely seductive "Creole Love Call," also performed by Floyd. Singer Adriane Lenox gives a spectacular performances of "Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night" and "Women Be Wise" -- written by Sippie Wallace. Her performance seemed so authentic and in character that one wondered whether she was performing or just being herself.

All the dance pieces are performed by a remarkable ensemble, but two dancersdeserved special note. Tony nominee Karine Plantadit (for her work in Come Fly Away) shines in "Black and Tan Fantasy" and numerous ensemble pieces including the show's opening. Virgil "Lil' O" Gadson -- who’s been seen on such reality shows as So You Think You Can Dance and America's Best Dance Crew -- brings elements of hip-hop to his movements which are awe-inspiring. His skills are highlighted in "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" (where he joins Plantadit), and in “Hottentot.”

Fantasia shows off her incredibly powerful voice in this production -- which explains why she won American Idol and has remained so active in today's popular music scene. She sings leads effortlessly on four songs in the musical including "Stormy Weather," taking audiences back in time with the rest of the cast.

An accomplished dancer himself who made his Broadway debut in The Tap Dance Kid, Hill demonstrates his triple-threat talents, showcasing his ability to sing, dance, and act, something he certainly hasn’t had the opportunity to present on television.

The musicians play one last tune after the cast takes its curtain call (which received a standing ovation at the performance reviewed here) and 90% of the crowd stuck around for it.

After Midnight stirs the desire to grab an outfit and jump on stage with the performers. This fast-paced show is so enjoyable that I immediately wanted more when it concluded. Put After Midnight at the top of your list of must-see musicals.

(Singers Babyface and Toni Braxton will be featured cast members from March 18 until March 30 and Vanessa Williams will return to Broadway in the show from April 1 through May 11)

After Midnight
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
(256 West 47 street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue)

Reviews

Broadway Roundup: ‘Rocky’ Becomes a Musical & ‘All the Way’ Has Bryan Cranston as LBJ

March '14 Digital Week IV

Film Review: "Nymphomaniac: Part 1"

"After Midnight" Thrills in a Journey Back in Time

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