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"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)

Theater Reviews: "The Bridges of Madison County" On Broadway; "Stage Kiss" Off-Broadway

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 20 March 2014 21:39; Written by Kevin Filipski

The Bridges of Madison County

Book by Marsha Norman; music & lyrics by Jason Robert Brown; directed by Bartlett Sher

Previews began January 17, 2014; opened March 20

Stage Kiss

Written by Sarah Ruhl; directed by Rebecca Taichman

Performances through April 6, 2014

Pasquale and O'Hara in The Bridges of Madison County (photo: Joan Marcus)

The Bridges of Madison County has the most thrilling musical curtain raiser in recent memory, for one reason: Kelli O’Hara, who has already cemented her position onstage among a crowded current field of talented singing actresses. Indeed, with such magical voices and personalities as Sutton Foster, Audra McDonald, Sierra Boggess and the two Lauras, Benanti and Osnes, alongside O’Hara, this is truly a new golden age on and off Broadway.

When she walks onstage for the first of composer Jason Robert Brown’s wannabe operatic songs, O’Hara brings a joyful sense of real drama to this melodically and lyrically clichéd introduction to Bridges’world of the flatlands of Iowa’s farms, where Francesca—Italian-born wife and mother who has spent the last two decades dutifully raising her family far away from Naples, where she met her GI husband Bud during World War II—spills her soul.

Little else in this show about the brief but torrid affair between Francesca and Robert, a National Geographic photographer who happens by after her husband and two teenage children leave for the Indiana State Fair with their prize steer in tow, rises to that level of passion. It’s primarily due to Robert James Waller’s trashy source novel—Clint Eastwood’s 1995 film, starring Eastwood and Meryl Streep, made its protagonists older, providing a melancholic sense of a missed chance at last love—which Marsha Norman’s book cannot overcome.

Instead, Norman’s book wallows in a cutesy middle America, saddling Francesca—and us—with a busybody neighbor and her husband, about whom far too much is made as the affair runs its course. Then there are Brown’s routine lyrics and derivative music: the latter has pretentions to deeper emotions in romantic arias and duets for the adulterous lovers, but they only reach our hearts due to O’Hara and an equally superb Steven Pasquale.

O’Hara, a meltingly lovely actress who makes us fall deeply for this woman yanked from her world to begin a new life only to find an unlikely escape, and Pasquale, an intelligent actor whose powerhouse singing voice hasn’t been heard on Broadway until now, make a winning couple. Although it’s strange that O’Hara decided to sing with her accent (while speaking, she sounds at times like Arianna Huffington, whose Greek homeland is hundreds of miles from Naples), the pair’s passionate duets make Brown’s songs sound more tuneful than they really are.

Hunter Foster—Sutton’s brother—invests the stock character of Francesca’s husband Bud with a pathos unearned on the page, while Cass Morgan and Michael X. Martin are less irritating than they could have been as neighbors with too much stage time. Michel Yeargan’s set, comprising bits and pieces of kitchen furnishings and one of the fabled covered bridges of the title, is cleverly utilized by director Bartlett Sher, as the supporting cast brings the pieces on and off stage. That they sit at either side when not in on the action is a less felicitous directorial decision.

Despite many drawbacks, O’Hara and Pasquale make this lukewarm musical a white-hot, irresistible romance.

Fumusa and Hecht in Stage Kiss (photo: Joan Marcus)

Sarah Ruhl returns with another heavy-handed, shaky mix of comedy, parody, sentimentality and absurdism: Stage Kiss is a wooden and, finally, quite pointless bit of affected whimsy in which two performers, decades after an affair in their younger days, reunite for the revival of a bad play and discover that the sparks they try to produce onstage are being reproduced backstage and fall for each other again.

Though unoriginal, this isn’t bad material from which to extract a funny, even relevant comedy: real life vs. show biz might be an old-hat concept, but one might find small nuggets of truth and hilarity in the interactions of self-absorbed actors, playwrights and directors. Too bad Ruhl finds few of those nuggets in the story of He and She, who re-meet cutely at the first reading of an awful play that’s been unearthed after years of neglect.

We get far more scenes from this play, with intentional howlers in the dialogue and characters, than we should: maybe Ruhl wants her own play to look better by comparison. The trouble is, Stage Kiss isn’t much better than the two fictional plays it lampoons (yes, there’s another in the second act).

After an overlong first act with endless scenes of readings and rehearsals from the fictional play, the second act shows Ruhl briefly finding her footing, with amusingly lively banter among the characters crowded into He’s apartment: namely He’s girlfriend and She’s husband and daughter. However, after silly talk about souls breaks the brief spell, another lousy play that He and She decide to take on becomes the semi-focus of Ruhl’s unfocused play. Groaningly obvious jokes and one-liners abound, and when the play turns serious at the end, it’s a desperate move to find Meaning in what could have made a decent skit with a few chuckles.

Jessica Hecht gives a bizarre performance, with off-kilter line readings that better fit the characters in the plays-within-the-play than they do She, while Dominic Fumusa is a charismatic, winning He, who’s an actor that’s humorously bad at accents. A few seasons back, Ruhl’s Broadway play In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play was a wonderful surprise: after her increasingly less felicitous The Clean House, Eurydice, Dead Man’s Cell Phone and now Stage Kiss, it’s obvious that The Vibrator Play was the exception that proves the Ruhl.

The Bridges of Madison County

Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 West 45th Street, New York, NY

bridgesofmadisoncountymusical.com

Stage Kiss

Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY

playwrightshorizons.org

Film Review: "The Muppets: Most Wanted"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 20 March 2014 00:59; Written by Matt Oakes

"The Muppets: Most Wanted"
Directed Sean Bobin
Starring Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell, Tina Fey, Steve Whitmire, Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz
Adventure, Comedy, Crime
112 Mins
PG

From the first musical number, TheMuppets: Most Wanted admits what it's up to. "We're doing a sequel," the beloved Jim Henson puppets croak and caw, "that's what we do in Hollywood. Though everyone knows that a sequel's never quite as good." And even though Kermit might be spot on with his sentiment, starting things off with this kind of disclaimer doesn't offer a ton of hope to an expecting audience. Following that mantra of mediocrity, director and writer James Bobin offers up a Muppets that's fully tolerable but never exceptional.

Film Review: "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 19 March 2014 00:57; Written by Matt Oakes

"The Grand Budapest Hotel"
Directed by Wes Anderson
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Jude Law, Tilda Swinton, Saoirse Ronan, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartzman, Lea Seydoux, Owen Wilson, Bob Balaban, Mathieu Amalric, Tom Wilkinson
Comedy, Drama
100 Mins
R

Fiennes, Brody, Dafoe, Goldblum, Murray, Law, Swinton, Ronan, Norton, Keitel, Schwartzman, Seydoux, Wilson, Balaban, Amalric, Wilkinson. Wes Anderson's latest may have more big names working for it than ever before but their characters are more paper thin than they've been, more fizzle than tonic, more Frankenstein's creations than humans. His company of regulars - joined by a vast scattering of newbies - are relegated to playing furniure-chomping bit roles, filling the shoes of cartoonish sketches, slinking in long shadows of characters. From Willem Dafoe's brutish, brass-knuckled Jopling to a caked-up and aged Tilda Swinton, gone are the brooding and calculated, flawed and angsty but always relatable characters of Wes yore. In their place, a series of dusty cardboard cutouts; fun but irrevocably inhuman.

Here in 2014, Anderson's ability to attract such a gathering of marquee names to his eccentric scripts has never been as potent. He's a talent magnet and his tractor beam is set to high. It's just too bad that this gathering of the juggalos is as caricaturesque as they are (arguable even more than the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox). But what can you expect when your face is painted up and you're dressed like a Slovenian underground fashion show. Upon dissecting what he's got to offer, the seemingly indelible Wes Anderson appeal is as clear as day.

In the jungle of Hollywood, roles are mostly relegated one of two ways: the tentpole blockbusters, where characters are written like ham steaks - vessels for plot diversions, jukeboxes for one-liners, sarcophagi for the next action scene - and the smaller budgeted "independent" movie, wherein the tone is usually somber, the scenery is left unchewed, and emotional preparation ought to be through the roof. Anderson's films flirt a very thin middle ground, a Bermuda triangle between indie cred and mainstream. To his credit, it looks like a blast.

Inside his pictures, Anderson's stars are afforded a chance to play dress up in the midst of gorgeous sets at exciting locales. What's not to love? Plus, this particular project had an added advantage: European travel. For these thespians, being a part of Anderson's playground is like being a kid again. However, their childishness is more apparent here than in any of Anderson's finest work (save for maybe Moonrise Kingdom). But through the haze of these colorful yet superficial oddities shines Ralph Fiennes' Monsieur Gustave, a beacon of complexity in an otherwise skin-deep cast of characters.

Gustave is a relic of the past. He's an icon of chivalry, a servant dedicated to his craft, a well-groomed pet for his adoring clientele. He sluts it up for the elderly ladies who pass through his hotel (but he enjoys it too, so he tells us), making him a bit of a tourist attraction in himself. A hot springs for wilting feminine physiques, Gustave becomes the recipient of a pricy artifact (an ironic art piece called "Boy with Apple" - the customary brand of wry Anderson platitudes) when one of his doting golden-agers (Swinton) bites the dust. With her family trying to discredit him and blame the murder his way, Gustave must go on the run.

The cat and mouse, European romp to follow is as much an episode of Tom and Jerry as it is The Great Escape. Fiennes' soulful gravitas brings immeasurable life to what is otherwise a series of cartoonish escape plots and hijinks. Anderson's offerings are easy to consume and his persnickety eye for detail and Fiennes' brilliant performance brings life by the pound to the otherwise far-fetched proceedings.

In this recent turn in his career, Wes Anderson has almost becoming a mockery of Wes Anderson. Though I thoroughly enjoyed The Grand Budapest Hotel it lacks the rounded emotional honesty of his pre-Fox efforts. He's lost the intellectual intensity he had going in Rushmore, The Royal Tenanbaums and (I know I'm in the minority here) Darjeeling Limited, largely replaced by quirk by the bucket and enough billable names to make your head spin. Nevertheless, Fiennes is magical; a perfect vessel for Andersonisms, the savior of the show.

B+

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