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Theater Reviews—Broadway Musical “The Color Purple”; Off-Broadway Play “Steve”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 28 December 2015 23:58
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Color Purple
Music & lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis & Stephen Bray; book by Marsha Norman
Directed by John Doyle
Opened December 10, 2015
Steve
Written by Mark Gerrard; Directed by Cynthia Nixon
Closes January 3, 2016
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| The cast of The Color Purple (photo by Matthew Murphy) |
There didn't seem to be any compelling reason to revive the musicalThe Color Purple—especially in John Doyle's typically sterile staging—at least until British actress Cynthia Erivo, as Celie, the downtrodden but resourceful heroine of Alice Walker's tough but poetic novel and Steven Spielberg's more sentimental movie adaptation, holds forth for her 11 o'clock number, “I’m Here.”
Erivo—who gives a poignant portrayal of a woman who has been impregnated by her father, had her babies taken away from her, has been beaten and dehumanized by her abusive husband Mister and has had her beloved sister Nettie banned from ever seeing her again—slowly builds Celie's declaration of independence until she belts out the liberating words the audience has wanted to hear for more than two hours. Erivo delivers the goods, bringing the dramatically bumpy show to a rousing, and cathartic, climax.
Thanks mainly to Erivo, The Color Purple works as well onstage as onscreen. Although Marsha Norman's book adroitly streamlines events in Walker's novel—primarily written in Celie’s voice as letters to God, obviously tough to recreate in the film or in the theater—the story as shown never entirely escapes its soap opera-ish leanings. The songs of Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray skillfully range across a variety of genres, from gospel to blues to jazz to romantic balladry, with occasional moments of heartfelt power.
Director John Doyle came to prominence through gimmicky Sondheim revivals with performers playing their own instruments onstage; shrewdly, he then changed to productions set against foreboding, often massive backdrops, from the ugly wall overwhelming his disastrous Metropolitan Opera Peter Grimes to the grey, decaying city of Broadway’s The Visit last spring.
For Purple, Doyle has designed an imposing wall made of wooden planks, with several chairs jutting out from it at different heights. Other chairs are the only furniture available for the characters to sit on; what this has to do with Celie’s drama is anyone's guess: and, although it quickly gets tiresome, for a few moments the set does have a pleasing look.
In an accomplished cast—of the men, Kyle Scatliffe stands out as a sympathetic Harpo, Mister's grown son—the spectacular voices make the music and drama soar. As Harpo's wife Sofia (Oprah Winfrey’s role in the movie), Danielle Brooks is over the top but never gratuitously so, with a powerhouse voice to match; as famed singer Shug Avery, who bewitches Mister and Celie and everyone in between, Jennifer Hudson shows off her amazingly controlled vocals, even if her ability to act like a sex symbol leaves something to be desired. And, as mentioned before, Erivo is a flat-out unstoppable Celie, equaling LaChanze and Fantasia’s turns in the initial Broadway production.
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| The cast of Steve (photo by Monique Carboni) |
Steve—Mark Gerrard's comedy and the second play this fall to track gay fathers through the minefields of contemporary Manhattan (after the wiser and less wisecracking Dada Woof Papa Hot)—is simply too clever for its own good.
The main couple, Stephen and Steven, have a young kleptomaniac son, whose theft of Stephen's cell phone allows Steven to discover that Stephen has been sexting with one of their closest friends, Brian, long-time lover of another close friend, Matt; this causes Steven to have a dalliance with a younger, gorgeous dancer/waiter Esteban. In addition, the main quartet's lesbian BFF, the endlessly snarky Carrie, is dying of cancer.
All of this allows Gerrard the chance to display gallows humor, which at times is funny but is mostly gratuitous. And the play must also set some kind of record for how many inside theater jokes and insults can be flung in 90 minutes. Again, some of these sting amusingly while others simply wither and die.
As schizophrenic as Gerrard's script is (there are actually four characters named some variation of Steve, including an unseen—but hot—trainer at the local gym with whom Brian and Matt end up cohabitating), director Cynthia Nixon shows a remarkable ability to orchestrate the madness into a semblance of coherence; when she can't, there are bouncy theater tunes that the cast performs with aplomb, even at the curtain call. Nixon’s harmonious cast—Matt McGrath (Steven), Malcolm Gets (Stephen), Mario Cantone (Matt), Jerry Dixon (Brian), Ashley Atkinson (Carrie)—goes above and beyond to make Steve broadly entertaining, if rarely insightful.
The Color Purple
Jacobs Theatre, 242 West 45th Street, New York, NY
colorpurple.com
Steve
Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
thenewgroup.org
December '15 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 December 2015 21:38
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Blood Rage
(Arrow)
Opening with a 10-year-old fatally stabbing a fornicating man at a drive-in, John Grissmer's 1987 slasher flick doesn't blink from the get-go, especially when the kid is released 10 years later: but was it he or his twin brother who's the real killer?
Gleefully gore-filled—Ed French's inventively cheesy effects culminate with a head split in two—Blood stars Louise Lasser, TV's Mary Hartman, as the boys' deranged mother, and features the usual sex leading to death, as it always does in these movies. An R-rated version, Nightmares at Shadow Woods, and a version comprising both cuts are included; the hi-def transfers look terrific, and extras include Grissmer’s commentary and interviews with Lasser, other actors and makeup artist French.
(Warner Bros)
This noisy, messy contraption purports to tell how Peter Pan met Captain Hook and took on Bluebeard before J.M. Barrie's original story begins. Although young Levi Miller makes an ingratiating Peter, Hugh Jackman is a hammy Bluebeard and Rooney Mara is as dull as ever as Tiger Lily.
Then there's director Joe Wright, whose tone wavers so that his movie uncomfortably swings between loud, lumbering set pieces and quiet moments that barely register. Too bad: in the right hands Pan could have been charming rather than something to be panned. On Blu-ray, it all looks incredible; extras include Wright’s commentary and featurettes.
Time Out of Mind
(IFC)
Oren Moverman's earnest homeless drama has its heart in the right place but ends up a feel-good film about a middle-aged man forced to wandering New York's streets and finding some hope in the form of his estranged daughter.
Richard Gere does his best to seem mentally and physically run-down, but he looks more like a man who simply hasn't shaved for a few days: in support, Ben Vereen and Kyra Sedgwick are far more persuasively homeless. The movie has a fine hi-def transfer; extras are a featurette and Gere PSA.
Queen of Earth
(IFC)
As a woman devastated by her father's death and boyfriend's unexpected betrayal, Elisabeth Moss is alternately exasperated and angry or docile and distant, but she can't turn such disparate elements into a coherent whole in Alex Ross Perry’s slender study content to display petty outbursts sans any psychological complexity.
Katharine Waterston is sensational as the best friend discovering how difficult it is to help our heroine recover, but despite both actresses, Perry relies too heavily on Keegan DeWitt's derivative score, uncomfortably reminiscent of Penderecki’s eerieShining music, which fails to transform Queen into a horror movie of the soul. Extras are a commentary by Perry and Moss and a making-of featurette.
Xmas Without China
(Icarus)
Can an American family celebrate Christmas without having anything in their house that was made in China? That question hangs over director Alicia Dwyer's lively, incisive documentary about how much cheap products are part of our daily lives: after awhile, the family talked into becoming part of this experiment openly questions why they are doing it, since it's basically ruining their holiday—and their lives.
Tom Xia, who came up with this challenge, also introduces his Chinese family, whose dual allegiances provide more sets of eyes open to the cultural clash of identity and consumerism.
The Wiz—Live!
(Masterworks/Broadway)
For its third live musical telecast, NBC resurrected the hip 1975 Wizard of Oz update that was a Broadway hit with Stephanie Mills as Dorothy and a bomb onscreen in 1978 with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, despite director Sidney Lumet’s inventive use of familiar New York locations.
The latest version, populated by an eclectic but very able cast, has a cameo by Mills and the good sense not to give a disastrous Common any more screen time than he deserves. Happily, the singing is often on-target (Queen Latifah, Ne-Yo, Uzo Aduba) and sometimes more than that, especially from the powerhouse 19-year-old newcomer Shanice Williams.
Christmas Music--New York Pops Concert and CDs
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 22 December 2015 16:10
- Written by Kevin Filipski
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| Brian d'Arcy James and Stephanie J. Block with conductor Steven Reineke and The New York Pops (photo: Richard Termine) |
This month's uncommonly mild weather has made it seem more like late spring rather than the holiday season, so the New York Pops’annual Christmas concerts at Carnegie Hall (December 18 and 19) were a needed antidote.
It’s Christmas Time in the City was a wonderfully festive display of great singing and music-making led by Pops music director Steven Reineke, featuring the orchestra, Broadway veterans Stephanie J. Block and Brian d’Arcy James and the chorus Essential Voices USA.
Although Block’s effusive personality threatened to overwhelm the show, happily she hammed it up only during the “Holiday Hits Medley” when she out-Mariahed Mariah Carey on “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Her emotional rendition of Wesley Wheatley and Bill Schermerhorn’s affecting “Yes, Virginia” (in which she mentioned her own newborn daughter) was a highlight, as was her easy rapport with d’Arcy James on their duets “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
D'Arcy James also brought his A game, with engagingly unadorned renditions of “The Christmas Song” and “Silver Bells,” but his best moment came with a song he wrote about his hometown of Saginaw, “Michigan Christmas,” which was heartfelt without being the least bit sentimental.
Essential Voices USA dominated from the opening, a rousing “Deck the Halls.” The evening's lone quibble was monstrously over-orchestrated versions of “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “O Holy Night,” whose orchestral swellings all but buried the chorus’ excellent work (and in the latter, Block’s ringing high notes).
But orchestra and singers came together beautifully for a final singalong of sacred carols that sent the satisfied audience out into the uncharacteristically cold night humming, happy and ready for December 25.
Holiday CDs
Ann Hampton Callaway—The Hope of Christmas
(MCG Jazz)
Putting together a disc of all-new Christmas songs is a daring endeavor, so this collaboration of singer Ann Hampton Callaway and lyricist William Schermerhorn scores right off the bat. Schermerhorn's lyrics, spirited or wistful or amusing or romantic in turn, are the perfect complement to Callaway's warm singing on these 12 new tunes.
Callaway herself wrote the music for the hopeful title track and the personal final song, "Fly with the Angels." The whipsmart jazz arrangements, performed by an exemplary ensemble, give this recording a pleasing seasonal vibe.
(Pentatone)
This collection of new Christmas carols by seven American composers spans generations from William Bolcom, John Corigliano and Gordon Getty to Mark Adamo and Jake Heggie, whose song cycle On the Road to Christmas delightfully resurrects old tunes next to new ones that work well within the seasonal tradition.
Also memorable and likely to last are David Garner's Three Carols and Luna Pearl Woolf's How Bright the Darkness; soprano Lisa Delan and baritone Lester Lynch, conductor Dawn Harms and pianist Steven Bailey are the impeccable musicians.
Paul Hindemith—The Long Christmas Dinner
(Bridge)
In his melodious musicalization of Thornton Wilder's one-act drama of Americana, German composer Paul Hindemith created a miniature masterpiece that would turn out to be his last opera (he died in 1963, two years after its premiere), and its musical subtleties mirror those of Wilder's insightful play about one family over a period of nearly a century.
In this, astonishingly the opera's first English-language recording, conductor Leon Botstein leads an ideal reading that captures the work's emotions with gentle understatement.
(Carus)
Although there are motets for unaccompanied choir on this disc—including the four Francis Poulenc motets that are justly famous seasonal works—this recording's highlight is Ottorino Respighi's Lauda, a rarely-heard Christmas cantata of real substance and heightened dramatic power.
It was Respighi's lone sacred composition in a long and distinguished career.
Patty Smyth—Come on December
(Parallel 22)
For her first holiday album (actually more of an EP, since it's only eight songs), Scandal singer Patty Smyth confidently makes her way through five familiar classics and three new tunes, none of which will enter the canon of Christmas classics.
Smyth—a magnificently controlled singer who has never received the respect and admiration she deserves (compare that to the out-of-control panegyrics that greeted Adele's new album)—makes even the less memorable songs like "Walk with Me" and the title track shine, and she makes standards like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "The Christmas Song" her own.
New Rock Shows—Broadway's 'School of Rock,' Off-Broadway's 'These Paper Bullets!'
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 20 December 2015 22:29
- Written by Kevin Filipski
School of Rock
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber; lyrics by Glenn Slater; book by Julien Fellowes
Directed by Laurence Connor
Opened December 6, 2015
These Paper Bullets!
Songs by Billie Joe Armstrong; written by Rolin Jones
Directed by Jackson Gay
Closes January 10, 2016
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| Alex Brightman and Brandon Neiderauer trade guitar licks in School of Rock(photo: Matthew Murphy) |
Like the amusing if innocuous Jack Black movie on which it's based, Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical School of Rock is a low-brow but rousing crowd-pleaser of the type not usually associated with the Catsand Evita composer. The 2003 movie had a typically eccentric and lively Black as a failed musician who nabs a substitute teacher job intended for his married roommate, teaching what he assumes are stuck-up young brats the virtues of rock (don't ask how he gets the job and keeps it for so long without anyone noticing). The classroom full of precocious and talented kids helped make Black's usual shenanigans less annoying.
The musical mostly follows that blueprint, and why not? Unlike the movie, our hero Dewey (an inspired Alex Brightman, who resembles Black without slavishly imitating him) now has straight-laced principal Rosalie (the impeccable Sierra Boggess, who has quietly become one of our best musical actresses, killing it whether belting out the show's big ballad, "Where Did the Rock Go," or attacking the terrifyingly stratospheric notes of Mozart's Queen of the Night aria) as a love interest, whereas in the movie she was more his comic antagonist. The show also fleshes out the kids' equally difficult relationships with their uncomprehending parents.
Brightman and Boggess are brightly appealing together and apart, Webber's songs and Glenn Slater's lyrics are not particularly original but loudly get the job done—even if the big number, "Stick It to the Man," sounds like an outtake from another schoolkids' musical, Matilda—and Laurence Connor's slickly busy staging gives the whole thing a credibly ramshackle quality.
But it's all nothing without the tremendously talented and professional kids, especially those in the band like standouts Brandon Neiderauer, who plays guitar like a young Hendrix, and Evie Dolan, who plays bass like a young McCartney. Whenever the kids trade zingers with Dewey or talk back to their parents or sing along and joyously jump around in JoAnn M. Hunter's delightful choreography, School of Rock resembles a real musical of rock.
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| The Quartos in These Paper Bullets! (photo: Ahron R. Foster) |
Since Shakespeare and the Beatles are Britain's greatest cultural exports, why not mash them together and see what happens? That's the lame idea behind These Paper Bullets!, a paper-thin parody ofMuch Ado About Nothing set in London's swinging '60s as a band called the Quartos makes it big.
Rolin Jones' rollicking but juvenile adaptation of the Bard turns the leads Beatrice and Benedick into Bea—a sweet but sardonic London designer—and Ben—the Quartos' frontman—whose verbal jousting (some lines are adapted or wholly lifted from the original play, sacrilegiously) belies the fact that they're bound to end up together. But Jones hedges his bets by enlarging silly subplots of Scotland Yard investigators infiltrating the band's inner sanctum (Dogberry, etc., in the play) and the bumpy relationship between the Quartos' co-leader Claude and girlfriend Higgy (Claudio and Hero in the play), to the detriment of the entire dreary show.
Even Shakespeare occasionally had trouble making it all cohere, so a far lesser writer like Jones can't hope to cope with such fractious changes of style and tone, and hence his overlong (more than 2-1/2 hours!) attempt at farce falls flat on its face again and again, reduced to snarky asides, audience participation and desperate Fab Four in-jokes (villain Don John becomes Don Best, a nod to pre-Ringo drummer Pete Best). Billie Joe Armstrong's tunes—much like his power-pop efforts on Green Day's recent albums—are energetic in the early Beatles mold but lack the smarts, savvy, staying power and (most of all) originality.
Justin Kirk and Nicole Parker might have made a droll couple as Ben and Bea with more pointedly funny material; at least Kirk and his band mates—James Barry (Pedro), Lucas Papaelias (Balth) and the best of the bunch, Bryan Fenkart (Claude)—play the faux-Beatles songs with infectious enthusiasm. In fact, everyone onstage in Jackson Gay's colorful but repetitive staging (on Michael Yeargan's clever turntable set) is equally animated, but little of that good cheer infects the audience. These Paper Bullets! ends up shooting blanks.
School of Rock
Winter Garden Theatre, 50th Street and Broadway, New York, NY
schoolofrockthemusical.com
These Paper Bullets!
Atlantic Theater Company, 336 West 20th Street, New York, NY
atlantictheater.org
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