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Off-Broadway Play Review—“Sabbath’s Theater” with John Turturro

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 13 November 2023 20:48; Written by Kevin Filipski

Sabbath’s Theater

Written by John Turturro and Ariel Levy; directed by Jo Bonney

Performances through December 17, 2023

The New Group @ Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY

thenewgroup.org

Elizabeth Marvel and John Turturro in Sabbath's Theater (photo: Monique Carboni)

Even more so than his other novels, Sabbath’s Theater was Philip Roth at his most sardonic and scatological. His hero of sorts, Mickey Sabbath, is a 64-year-old former puppeteer who is, by his own admission, a dirty old man: seemingly all he thinks about is having sex when he’s not actually having sex. After his insatiable Croatian mistress Drenka dies of cancer, he is thrown for a loop, which causes him reevaluate his life choices, including his marriages, other relationships with available women, and family memories, notably his beloved brother Morty’s death while flying planes against the Japanese in World War II.

Can a 105-minute play hope to distill the essence of Roth’s masturbatory fantasy of self-abasement? Based on the evidence of John Turturro and Ariel Levy’s stage adaptation, in which Turturro stars in a tour de force as Sabbath, the answer is: not really. Although the adapters have plucked certain incidents and scenes out of the book into their version, it has a scattershot feel, since most of it is pruriently sexual, which makes Mickey Sabbath far more one-dimensional than in the novel.

The play begins with the sounds of a sexual encounter between Mickey and Drenka, then the lights come up to the pair wrapped up on the floor as she coos sweet nothings in his ear about cooking him the best Eastern European dishes. The scenes between Mickey and Drenka have a spirited frission, helped by Turturro and Elizabeth Marvel (despite a bizarre accent), whose terrific rapport extends from the physical to the intellectual.

But when Mickey deals with men—like Norman, whom he repays for letting him stay at his Manhattan apartment after the funeral of Norman’s former producing partner Linc by attempting to seduce Norman’s wife and steal his daughter’s panties from her bedroom—the results are a comedy of embarrassment, but Roth does this queasy sort of thing better on the page.

Then there’s the story’s nadir, when Mickey visits Drenka’s grave and masturbates—it’s here that the otherwise adroit director Jo Bonney succumbs to the cheap scatology by showing his shadowy ejaculation—only to find another man also performing the same act. Such a blunt comedy of debasement keeps Mickey at arm’s length, however charmingly garrulous is Turturro’s performance.

Turturro and Levy smartly end their adaptation with the poignant meeting between Mickey and a 100-year-old cousin, Fish (touchingly played by Jason Kravits), in which Mickey finally decides that his wasted life is worth living. Notwithstanding Turturro’s gratuitous nudity as he drapes himself in the flag that Mickey’s mother received after his brother died in action, it provides a satisfying way out of a too often enervating take on Philip Roth’s most scathing self-depiction.

Concert Review—Lea Michele at Carnegie Hall

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 10 November 2023 11:52; Written by Kevin Filipski

Lea Michele

October 30, 2023

Carnegie Hall, New York City

carnegiehall.org

Lea Michele at Carnegie Hall (photo: Richard Termine)

Lea Michele opened her first Carnegie Hall concert with a flourish, strutting and beaming as she made her way down the aisle to the stage in her sheer black dress belting out the first of many showstoppers, “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” a highlight from her recent Broadway run headlining the recent Funny Girl revival.

For the next 90 minutes, Michele treated her adoring audience to more Funny Girl numbers, other show tunes and pop tunes from the TV series Glee, all delivered with her effortlessly powerhouse voice. Her between-songs patter, though charming, was a mite excessive—I heard people grumbling afterward that she talked too much—but obviously the bigness of the moment contributed to some nerves while she spoke about her life and career.

Michele remembered being in this very hall at a young age watching other Broadway greats, hoping she would follow them one day. She obviously did—and on the journey through her early career, she resurrected “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables, her first Broadway show; followed by “Gliding” from Ragtime, which she starred in alongside Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and her beloved Marin Mazzie.

Michele also told the story of her audition for Spring Awakening, at which she was asked to sing a pop song. The naïve 14-year-old could only think of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” prostitute Mary Magdalene’s Jesus Christ Superstar power ballad. The grownup Michele sang it winkingly, knowingly and, of course, beautifully.

For this special night, Michele’s special guests were her good friends and costars in Spring Awakening and Glee, respectively. First, Jonathan Groff joined her for a wonderful duet on “Word of Your Body” that segued into a thrilling bit of Sondheim’s “Somewhere,” then Darren Criss joined Lea for a spectacular “Suddenly Seymour” and, with Criss strumming an acoustic guitar, a touching take on Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love.”

After those dynamic duos, Michele kept the Broadway hits coming: "Papa Can You Hear Me" was followed by "Maybe This Time" and then a terrific Funny Girl medley of “I’m the Greatest Star,” “People” and “Music That Makes Me Dance.” She followed that with a boisterous “My Man,” a song the real Fanny Brice sang in concert but that wasn’t in the stage musical of Funny Girl—although Barbra Streisand sang it in the movie. Pianist and music director Steven Jamail and his taut, tight band provided strong accompaniment throughout.

For her lone encore, Michele sang a tearfully reflective "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," showcasing a voice of passionate restraint. She promised the cheering fansthat she would return to Broadway soon—which was music to everyone’s ears.

New York Philharmonic Present "Pictures at an Exhibition"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 06 November 2023 19:30; Written by Jack Angstreich

Susanna Mälkki conducts the New York Philharmonic with Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing Ligeti Piano Concert. Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, on the evening of Saturday, November 4th, I had the exhilarating pleasure of attending a marvelous concert featuring the New York Philharmonic under the exceptionally impressive direction of the Finnish conductor, Susanna Mälkki.

The first half of the program was devoted to music by Hungarian composers, opening with a charming diversion—a performance of the immensely famous Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 of Franz Liszt, transcribed here for the cimbalom by the admirable soloist, Jenő Lisztes. Encountering this work played on this somewhat exotic instrument foregrounded its affinities with Central and Eastern European folk music but it would have been more enchanting in an orchestral version or even in its original form for the piano. Nonetheless, the audience was apparently delighted, responding with an enthusiastic ovation.

More remarkable was the ensemble’s superb account of Béla Bartók’s splendid Romanian Folk Dances, BB 76, which vary across a range of moods and styles—plaintive, ebullient, lyrical, and so forth—although, surprisingly, these exquisite pieces are maybe equally haunting when presented on the piano. The renowned virtuoso—surely one of the greatest of our time—Pierre-Laurent Aimard, then entered the stage to perform the perplexing Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by the celebrated avant-gardist, György Ligeti, whose centennial is being celebrated this year. I am not really competent to evaluate the merits of this intractable score but the initial movement, marked Vivace molto ritmico e preciso, is vigorous and arresting while the ensuing Lento is enigmatic, meditative, and eccentric, becoming highly dramatic. The scherzo that follows—with a tempo of Vivace cantabile—is not especially playful in tone despite its genre. The penultimate movement—Allegro risoluto, molto ritmico—is forbidding in its inaccessibility while thePresto luminousfinale is ludic if also inscrutable.

The summit of the evening, however, was achieved in the event’s second half—a stunning realization of Maurice Ravel’s brilliant orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky magnificent Pictures at an Exhibition. The “Gnomus” episode—the first of the “pictures”—is uncanny and arresting and the succeeding “Il Vecchio Castelo” is elegiac and mysterious. The “Tuileries” section is brief but effervescent and the “Bydlo” movement—“Polish Ox-Cart”—is strangely ominous. It precedes the jocular “Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks” and the solemn “Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle.” Next is the lively “The Marketplace at Limoges” and the lugubrious, portentous “Catacombs: Roman Burial Place.” Eerie but serene was “With the Dead in a Dead Language” while “The Hut on Chicken Feet: Baba-Yaga” was exciting, sinister and dynamic. The panoply concludes thrillingly with the majestic and triumphant “The Great Gate of Kiev.” The artists deservedly received abundant applause, closing a memorable concert.

A New Live Production, “Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors,” Reveals A High Camp Side to this Story of The Undead Count

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 03 November 2023 15:20; Written by Brad Balfour

What: Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors
Writers: by Gordon Greenberg, Steve Rosen
Director: Gordon Greenberg
Cast: Jordan Boatman, Arnie Burton, James Daly, Ellen Harvey, Andrew Keenan-Bolger
Where: New World Stages — Stage 5
340 West 50th Street
Run: Through January 7th, 2024

One thing you can count on every Halloween is an appearance of Dracula or, at least, some form of a vampire added to the mix. That could mean a re-run of the many classic films with the undead count such as Universal’s original version of “Dracula” (with Bela Lugosi) or Hammer’s “The Horror of Dracula” (with Christopher Lee). But this scary season doesn't necessarily require an appearance of the original bloodsucker himself. It could include some resurrection of his character in a movie, play or live visual presentation in some Haunted House.

In 1897, when Irish author Bram Stoker published his long-wrought novel “Dracula” for just six shillings, he didn’t realize that he’d created one of the most iconic figures of all time. Though this story of an aristocratic, undead mastermind was popular in its day, little did Stoker know that his blood-drinking, soulless monster of the night would become the source of countless permutations, reinterpretations, and re-examinations of this creature and its implications. There’s even aBram Stoker Festival in Dublin whichcelebrates the Gothic, the supernatural, the after-dark and Victorian as well as the Count himself.

drac poster Of course, along with Stoker’s horror classic, the inevitable humorous satires, parodies, and various send ups cropped up. From a tale of the ageless Count needing to leave his ancient homeland to resettle in England to tap fresh blood, the original gothic narrative has often been revised with sometimes hilarious results.

Now, through “Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors,” this battle with the master of the undead receives an outlandish rethink. Enabled by a compact, five-person cast — Jordan Boatman, Arnie Burton, James Daly, Ellen Harvey, and Andrew Keenan-Bolger — this rapid-fire comedic reimagining of this archetypal tale garners guffaws and lots of snickering.

Taking off from the original’s classic characters, they’re transformed into these versions: sweet Lucy Westfeldt, vampire hunter Jean Van Helsing, insect consumer Percy Renfield, and behavioral psychiatrist Wallace Westfeldt among others. Here they find themselves in a faux British country estate which doubles as a free-range mental asylum. With its cast of slapstick, quick change comics who switch roles with the aplomb of fast handed pickpockets, this “Dracula” not only makes you scream, it does it with laughter. The show also exposes a fundamental ridiculousness that illustrates just how resilient the original concept is: it can take jabs even at its core of terror and still retain a certain majestic-ness.

Through its compact 90-minute show, elements of goth, camp, and variant sexuality are thrown into a gender-bending, quick-change romp. With all the wacky characters, a pansexual Gen-Z Count Dracula tops the list of existentially challenged characters.

As a buddy of iconic gay Victorian author Oscar Wilde, the actual Stoker was believed to be a closeted gay man in a repressive England, so his novel was rife with suggestive sexuality and gender reversals. Director/co-writers Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen’s send-up of this novel is meant to be viewed through a very contemporary lens.

Just as the book transcended other Gothic horror of its day, this comedy rises above being simple holiday fare. Make your way to the Westside’s New World Stages for a comedic jab at the jugular.

For more information, visit www.DraculaComedy.com

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