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Broadway Musical Reviews—Revival of 'She Loves Me'; Steve Martin and Edie Brickell's 'Bright Star'
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 28 March 2016 23:35
- Written by Kevin Filipski
She Loves Me
Music by Jerry Bock; lyrics by Sheldon Harnick; book by Joe Masteroff
Directed by Scott Ellis; choreographed by Warren Carlyle
Opened March 17, 2016
Bright Star
Book and music by Steve Martin; lyrics & music by Edie Brickell
Directed by Walter Bobbie
Opened March 23, 2016
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| Laura Benanti and Jane Krakowski in She Loves Me (photo: Joan Marcus) |
It’s hard to believe, but the team behind the 1963 musical She Loves Me—lyricist Sheldon Harnick, book writer Joe Masteroff and composer Jerry Bock—would the very next year create the earthshaking Fiddler on the Roof. By contrast, She Loves Me is a modest, intimate show based on Hungarian Miklos Laszlo's play, which also spawned the filmThe Shop Around the Corner and its trite update, Nora Ephron's You’ve Got Mail.
The simple story is set in a Budapest parfumerie in 1934, as salesman Georg trades lonely-hearts letters with a young woman he has yet to meet. Enter fiery Amalia, who lands a much-needed job in the store: needless to say (and unbeknownst to either of them), they are the pen pals, and their mutual attraction on paper belies their constantly getting on each other’s nerves at work. It's no spoiler to say that they are destined to fall in love.
She Loves Me fills this unoriginal plot with romance and humor, heartbreak and redemption, along with some of the sturdiest songs to grace the Great White Way. Although none of them lives on separately from the show like Fiddler’s “Sunrise, Sunset” or “If I Were a Rich Man,” the perfectly pitched songs—from beautiful ballads "Will He Like Me?" and "Dear Friend" to charmers "I Don't Know His Name" and "Twelve Days to Christmas"—make a completely harmonious whole.
The rapturous new revival at Studio 54 takes place on David Rockwell’s enormously pleasing jewel-box set, the outside of the store opening into intricate, eye-catching interiors of such enchantment that the audience rightly cheers the dazzling décor. Director Scott Ellis, who provides the entire performance with perfectly paced rhythms, has also cast the show nearly flawlessly: Byron Jennings, Michael McGrath, Gavin Creel and Jane Krakowski—who again shows off her incredible gifts for physical comedy—make a memorable store staff.
If Zachary Levi is merely an adequate Georg, that’s entirely forgotten whenever the radiant Laura Benanti's Amalia is onstage. Finally getting the leading-lady role she’s long deserved, this luminous actress effortlessly shows off her musical-comedy strengths—priceless line readings and facial expressions, gorgeous singing, lithe movement—and makes the most of her opportunity.
Elegantly directed and sharply performed, this She Loves Me revival is, with Laura Benanti at its center, unmissable.
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| Carmen Cusack (center) in Bright Star (photo: Nick Stokes) |
Bright Star, the inconsequential new musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, is supposedly based on a true story, which it tells with all the persuasiveness of your average soap opera. Spanning more than 20 years, the parallel plots encompass young love, adoption, mistaken identity, and finding one's way in the world in ways that are more dramatically (and comically) suspect than one would expect from Martin, one of our most literate writers.
Set in North Carolina in the '20s and '40s, Bright Star features so many cliches and caricatures that at first it seems its creators are putting us on: indeed, when the big plot twist (easily guessed in advance) is finally explained, it's done for laughs, since it's so patently absurd. But mostly this is a painfully earnest show with a negligible bluegrass score of mind-numbing sameness, the lone exception being "I Had a Vision," an emotionally trenchant number that describes the fallout after a woman finds out from her ex-lover what happened to their son 22 years earlier.
Brickell's superficial lyrics actually feature howlers like "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do/When a man's gotta do what he's got to." Martin has, in his occasionally adroit book, come up with enough witty lines to make one wish that there was more of his smart humor to balance the rote melodramatics that drag down the show.
Director Walter Bobbie applies a welcome light touch, especially in the amount of detailed movement on Eugene Lee's spare set, which comprises desks, chairs and shelves moved on and off by cast members, along with a cabin housing several musicians at center stage. Bobbie and choreographer Josh Rhodes are particularly adept at making the songs come alive visually, a needed diversion whenever the creaky plot and repetitive music become too much.
Two accomplished performances, from a compelling and forceful Carmen Cusack and a lively and polished Hannah Elless, help brighten this too often dim Bright Star.
She Loves Me
Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, New York, NY
roundabouttheatre.org
Bright Star
Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street, New York, NY
brightstarmusical.com
March '16 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 March 2016 00:47
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Big Sleep
Key Largo
(Warner Archive)
Hollywood glamour couple Bogie and Bacall were together onscreen and off from 1945 until Humphrey Bogart's 1957 death from cancer, and these classics show them at their tough but tender best, with their undeniable chemistry on display in Howard Hawks' 1946 The Big Sleep, the best Dashiell Hammett adaptation, Bogart's iconic Sam Spade falling for Lauren Bacall's unhappy wife, and director John Huston's taut 1948 Key Largo, with B&B well-supported by Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore and Claire Trevor's Oscar-winning turn as an abused gangster's moll.
Both B&W films look splendid on Blu; Sleep extras are an alternate cut of the film with an intro and comparison.
Rage of Honor
(Arrow)
One of the best mid-70s buddy teams was Pam Grier and Margaret Markov, together for the 1973 prison B-movie Black Mama, but also in the next year's The Arena (when is that finally out on Blu?): Mama is nothing special, but its real virtues are Grier and Markov. Too bad that (as she says in a new, included interview) Markov retired shortly after when she married Mama's producer.
Rage, the 1986 sequel to the equally tepid Pray for Death, is another rote martial-arts flick starring Sho Kosugi, who shows as little charisma as he did in the original. Genre fans may like it, though. Both films have good, grainy transfers; extras include interviews and featurettes.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2
(Lionsgate)
Four lengthy films later, The Hunger Games finally ends, and if the enterprise's self-importance rarely allows those who hadn't read Suzanne Collins's original novels to enter their insular futuristic world of rebellion, there is one reason to watch: Jennifer Lawrence.
This extraordinarily empathetic actress makes everything (even Joy) worth sitting through, and her presence makes this jumbled, dour, overlong third sequel less than risible. There are entertaining bits by Woody Harrelson, Natalie Dormer, Julianne Moore and Donald Sutherland, but it's Lawrence's show all the way. The film has an excellent hi-def transfer; extras include a commentary and an eight-part making-of doc.
(Olive Films)
The last film directed by Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Shootist) was a 1982 adaptation of a Frank D. Gilroy novel that's a mishmash of farce, road movie, Bette Midler musical numbers and an implausible murderous plot that never coheres, despite a few genuinely amusing moments.
Most of those are provided by Rip Torn, gloriously sleazy as Midler's sugar daddy, and Midler's impeccable comic timing. But the reported bumpiness of the production—both Siegel and co-star Ken Wahl reportedly disliked Midler, and vice-versa—unfortunately shows up onscreen in spades, jinxing the whole enterprise. The new hi-def transfer is solid, with good grain.
The Trip
(Olive Films)
Jack Nicholson, of all people, scripted this psychedelic mess by director Roger Corman, an attempt to chronicle the "tune in turn out" Summer of Love in 1967: Peter Fonda plays a director given LSD by friend Bruce Dern to help expand his creative mind, but all it does is give him anxiety over his recurring, mind-blowing "trips."
There's rudimentary visualizing of acid trips with quick cuts, blasting music, exaggerated settings and dream-like, woozy kaleidoscopic colors, but there's little here unless one is a fan of Fonda, Dern, Dennis Hopper or Corman himself. The bright hi-def transfer looks authentically trippy.
(Warner Archive)
In Alfred Hitchcock's most straightforward drama, Henry Fonda plays an innocent musician taken into custody when witnesses finger him as an armed robber: based on a true story, this 1952 drama shows that Hitchcock could spin tension out of any kind of material.
Fonda, typically understated, is nicely complemented by Vera Miles as a wife who loses her bearings once her husband is accused. On Warner Archive's first-rate Blu-ray transfer, the black and white compositions have an authentically grainy look; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
DVDs of the Week
40 Love
(First Run)
The continually shifting dynamics of a modern family are on display in this acute psychological study of a father with employment difficulties, a wife with her own issues and an 11-year-old son with a passion (and talent) for tennis.
Director Stephane Demoustier's precisely observed drama is beautifully acted, and his shrewd script leads to a devastating twist ending that further illuminating his characters' behavior.
(Anchor Bay)
A mildly amusing satire of grandly self-important television dramas, this IFC mini-series is too late to the party: parodying the likes of Rich Man Poor Man, among many others, is just too dated and scattershot to be consistently funny, and its huge cast follows suit.
For every priceless comic turn by Tim Robbins, Michael Sheen or Val Kilmer, there are misfired appearances by Tobey McGuire, Kristen Wiig and Will Farrell. Of course, if you enjoy such obvious parody, then your mileage will vary.
Welcome to Leith
(First Run)
The invasion of a small North Dakota town by white supremacists—and how citizens fought back—is fascinatingly recounted by Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker's documentary, which plays as a cautionary tale, a horrifying look at our new reality and even a mesmerizing thriller in which the outcome is in doubt.
Led by Craig Cobb, "nationalists" attempt to take over, while those already there—including an interracial couple next door to Cobb's property—try to make sure it doesn't happen. In the supposed post-racial age of Obama (not to mention the rise of Trump), this is necessary viewing. Extras are an extended and deleted scene and an interview.
Theater Review—'The Humans’ on Broadway
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 20 March 2016 23:36
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Humans
Written by Stephen Karam; directed by Joe Mantello
Opened February 18, 2016
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| The cast of The Humans (photo: Joan Marcus) |
On Broadway, Stephen Karam’s The Humans shows its seams more readily than it did in its earlier off-Broadway incarnation. In this 95-minute play, the Blake family gathers for a Thanksgiving dinner in youngest daughter Brigid and boyfriend Richard's new Chinatown apartment: father Erik, mother Deirdre and grandmother Fiona drove down from Scranton, while oldest daughter Aimee took the train from Philadelphia.
Although he writes intelligent dialogue for his believable characters, Karam often stacks the deck dramatically, whether spilling family secrets at regular intervals—usually when someone overhears something near the winding staircase separating the apartment's two floors—or dragging in September 11th to give the Blakes another near-tragedy to deal with, as if what's going on in their daily lives isn't enough.
In addition, what was a mere laugh-getter before (upstairs noises, presumably from an annoying neighbor) has been turned into something quasi-supernatural, as the noises get progressively louder until they eventually seem like a horror movie soundtrack. Similarly, the play's final image of a darkened apartment with a door opened onto the building's hallway is the most forced attempt at a desperate shock effect than anything I've seen on Broadway since a ghost's appearance at the end of Shining City.
Then there's Karan asking us to believe that a 60-year-old man and his 61-year-old wife would drive in a Thanksgiving snowstorm for more than three hours with his sickly 79-year-old mother in tow, only to leave after visiting their daughter in Manhattan for a mere hour and a half. Allowing them to spend the night, either at Brigid's place or a nearby motel, and start fresh in the morning would be more—well, humane.
Happily, Joe Mantello's confident direction and the superlative cast—Reed Birney, Jayne Houdyshell, Cassie Beck, Arian Moayed, Lauren Klein and, most impressively, Sarah Steele—make The Humans seem more substantial than it ultimately is.
The Humans
Helen Hayes Theatre, 240 West 44th Street, New York, NY
thehumansonbroadway.com
Broadway Review—‘Disaster!' the Musical
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 18 March 2016 20:45
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Disaster!
Book by Seth Rudetsky & Jack Plotnick; choreographed by JoAnn M. Hunter
Directed by Jack Plotnick
Opened March 8, 2016
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| Adam Rapp and Kerry Butler in Disaster! (photo: Jeremy Daniel) |
Aptly titled, Disaster! is a musical not for the faint of heart. If karaoke versions of cheesy '70s pop hits make you feel queasy, and groaning old jokes and sloppy sight gags give you an upset stomach, then be forewarned: Disaster! revels in gleeful idiocy. Its two hours' traffic on the stage doesn't pretend to be Shakespearean, obviously, but it would have helped if the creators of this forgettable spoof had actually, you know, tried a little harder.
Tepidly parodying the infamous '70s Irwin Allen-style disaster movies—from The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno toEarthquake and Tidal Wave—Disaster! occurs on a newly-outfitted casino boat in New York Harbor, as the usual gaggle of caricatures runs into one another before, during and after lethal Acts of God hit the ship.
That's pretty much it: the entire show consists of long-ago (and mainly forgotten) hits of the era, beginning with "Hot Stuff" and ending with "Hooked on a Feeling," detouring to such nuggets as "Torn Between Two Lovers," "I Will Survive" and "Muskrat Love." Sometimes earnestly, at other times ironically (but always disposably), the songs usually begin after someone makes a remark which is then answered by the first line of the song; whether or not the remainder is apropos is apparently immaterial when deciding which tunes to shoehorn in.
This is sketch comedy of the sub-Saturday Night Live variety (even though that show has itself become sub-SNL), and creators Jack Plotnick—who also nominally directs—and Seth Rudetsky—who also nominally acts—revel in easy jokes and lazy visual humor, which references disco-era fashion and hair. The cast, comprising a surprising list of A-listers, is mostly wasted, especially a game but horrendously used Faith Prince, who spends much of her time spitting out Tourette's-like curses.
Roger Bart's comic oiliness as a dastardly villain is always welcome, while Kerry Butler, the very epitome of sweetness, scores as a tenacious reporter who periodically bursts into things like "I Am Woman." Then there's Rachel York, who manages to raise the hoary cliched bimbo above its usual basement level in a genuinely hilarious performance, besting consensus scene-stealer Jennifer Simard, who plays a nun with a gambling addiction; while amusing, Simard returns to the same well again and again, to diminishing comic returns. (The same could be said for young Baylee Littrell, who plays boy and girl twins with relish, but whose single joke gets less funny as it goes along.)
Like Rock of Ages—another less-than-mediocre jukebox musical that now looks like Oklahoma! in comparison—Disaster! is destined to be campy after-dinner entertainment on a cruise ship, a more suitable venue for it than Broadway.
Disaster!
Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st Street, New York, NY
disastermusical.com
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