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Theater Review—Classic Musical "1776" Returns, via Encores
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 02 April 2016 03:11
- Written by Kevin Filipski
1776
Book by Peter Stone; music & lyrics by Sherman Edwards; directed by Garry Hynes
Performances through April 3, 2016
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| The cast of 1776 at Encores! (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Forget Hamilton. 1776 remains the champion of Revolutionary-era American musicals, and the current Encores! semi-staging furthers its case for uniqueness, brilliance and sheer entertainment, all intact since its 1969 Tony-winning production.
Smartly directed by Garry Hynes with appropriate nods to the original director, Peter Hunt (who also helmed the classic film version with original cast members William Daniels, Howard da Silva and Ken Howard), 1776 is buoyed by what is probably the greatest musical book in Broadway history: Peter Stone provides savvy, droll and endlessly quotable dialogue for the Founding Fathers (some of which came directly from them), who come vividly to life as merely flawed men who are, as Ben Franklin sagely notes, "trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed."
But although Stone's book is the show's backbone—indeed, it would also make a wonderful straight play—Sherman Edwards' delightful songs further humanize the men (and women) who played the main roles in founding our country, and hearing his music played by the excellent Encores! Orchestra under conductor Ben Whiteley is a special treat.
Hynes' exceptional cast is led by Santino Fontana (an amusingly pig-headed John Adams), John Laroquette (an endlessly witty Ben Franklin) and John Behlmann (a sober, dashing Thomas Jefferson); if none is up to the level of the original performers, Fontana, for one, sings more powerfully than William Daniels. Nikki Renee Daniels charmingly dispatches Martha Jefferson's pretty paean to her husband, "He Plays the Violin," while Christianne Noll's articulate, funny and golden-voiced Abigail Adams makes a perfect foil to Fontana's John, especially in their glorious duets, "Till Then" and "Yours, Yours, Yours."
Edwards' score contains great songs allowing supporting characters to shine: Bryce Pinkham, as John Dickinson, gives a marvelous reading of that cutting hymn to Conservative values, "Cool Cool Considerate Men"; Alexander Gemignani brings down the house as Edward Rutledge, the Southern slave owner, when he sings "Molasses to Rum," that powerful rebuke to Northern hypocrisy when it comes to the "peculiar institution"; and John-Michael Lyles, as the courier who delivers General Washington's distressing dispatches to Congress, is quite moving in the emotional soldier's ballad "Momma, Look Sharp."
It might have been chosen by Encores! to ride the coattails of Hamilton, but 1776 is, in all respects, the superior show.
1776
New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street, New York, NY
nycitycenter.org
Off-Broadway Reviews—Kenneth Lonergan's 'Hold on to Me Darling' & Richard Nelson's 'Hungry'
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 31 March 2016 15:28
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Hold on to Me Darling
Written by Kenneth Lonergan; directed by Neil Pepe
Performances through April 17, 2016
Hungry
Written and directed by Richard Nelson
Performances through April 3, 2016
Kenneth Lonergan and Richard Nelson write plays which ring true with the messiness of real life, however diffuse or undramatic. Lonergan's unwieldy plays often bump up against melodrama or soap opera, with characters bordering caricature and realistic dialogue that rises to a sort of quotidian poetry that provide a fiery aliveness. Nelson has pared down his writing to the essence of drama: a group of people sitting around, talking about nothing—and everything—for 90 or so minutes, laying bare our shared humanity.
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| Adelaide Clemens and Timothy Olyphant in Hold on to Me Darling (photo: Doug Hamilton) |
Lonergan's Hold on to Me Darling begins as a sort-of soap opera parody, as fantastically successful country crossover singer/movie star Strings McCrane struggles with the aftermath of his beloved mother's death: his impulsive decisions—from deciding to marry the lovely (and already married) Nancy, who gave him a massage in his hotel room, to sleeping with his distant cousin Essie after seeing her at the funeral, to quitting show biz to start a feed store with his brother Duke in their Tennessee hometown—mark someone who has never been able to deal with life on its own terms and has instead done what any multi-millionaire celebrity would: think only of himself.
For over two and a half hours, Lonergan allows his protagonist to careen wildly between sanctimony and satire, sometimes in the same scene. The biting dialogue, always Lonergan's strong suit, manages the seemingly impossible task of alternating between realism and ridiculous self-indulgence. But whatever is said, even Strings and Duke's amusing asides like "Jesus Christ in a downtown Memphis hair salon" or "Jesus Christ on the Tour de France," always sounds exactly right for whoever is speaking. Even the final scene, when Lonergan introduces a major character who was mentioned earlier, works handily, even while wearing its heart on its sleeve a bit too sincerely.
As Strings, Timothy Olyphant initially seems to be channeling an Elvis impersonator and Tim Robbins' colorful Nuke Laloosh in the movieBull Durham: but even skating on the thin ice of caricature doesn't derail Oliphant's outsized but fully realized portrait. As the women in Strings' life, Jenn Lyon (Nancy) and Adelaide Clemens (Essie) are sympathetic and touchingly funny, C.J. Wilson makes an hilariously deadpan Duke, Keith Nobbs is amusingly harried as Strings' assistant Jimmy and Jonathan Hogan makes the most of his brief onstage time as Mitch.
The play's eight locations are astonishingly realized on Walter Spangler's brilliant revolving set, while Neil Pepe's direction is acutely in tune with Lonergan's off-kilter but penetrating observations on how persons interact while building or tearing down the walls pervading many relationships.
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| The cast of Hungry (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Richard Nelson's Hungry begins a new cycle, The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family. On the heels of his Apple Family Plays, an extraordinary quartet of dramas that looked at one family, the new group of plays—of which Hungry is the first—can't hope to live up to such a high standard.
And indeed, though it is intelligent, humane and beautifully acted,Hungry marks a major playwright treading water, returning to a well that seems to be drying up. The Gabriel family of Rhinebeck, NY (where playwright Nelson lives) has gotten together after a memorial service for Thomas, famous writer and brother of George and Joyce, both visiting his home where his widowed third wife Mary lives. George's wife Hannah and Thomas's first wife Karin have also joined them, as well as their elderly mother Patricia.
Nelson's observations are personal and often poignant, the brief discussion of politics is trenchant, and there is enough naturally arising humor to gloss over his creaky central conceit: that the entire 100-minute play takes place at the kitchen table with the women making dinner and dessert while discussing things both mundane and serious, including various states of hunger.
But Nelson remains an economical writer and director, and his ensemble—Meg Gibson, Lynn Hawley, Roberta Maxwell, Maryann Plunkett, Jay O. Sanders and Amy Warren—is as unbeatable as the one in the earlier plays. (Sanders and Plunkett are the sole holdovers.) So, although Hungry leaves us hungry for more, I look forward to sampling the next two installments.
Hold on to Me, Darling
Atlantic Theater, 320 West 20th Street, Brooklyn, NY
atlantictheater.org
Hungry
Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, New York, NY
publictheater.org
March '16 Digital Week V
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 29 March 2016 23:11
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Bicycle Thieves
(Criterion)
Vittorio De Sica's classic—one of those films appearing in all-time greatest polls, as well as being part of any Cinema 101 class—remains an emotionally devastating journey that, along with De Sica's own Shoeshine and Robert Rossellini's Rome Open City, introduced the world to Italian neo-realism.
Made in 1948 with amateur performers on the streets of post-war Rome, the film continuously flirts with soap opera but never succumbs; Criterion's new Blu-ray includes a flawless hi-def transfer and the usual illuminating extras: interviews, neo-realism featurette and 2003 documentary on screenwriter Cesare Zavattini.
Ken Russell's View of The Planets
(Arthaus Musik)
Two idiosyncratic directors provide their unique takes on two musical masters in two highly personal films. Werner Herzog's 1995 Gesualdo recounts the murderous life of a 16th century Italian composer; although more straightforward than usual, the grim material is weighty and bizarre enough to keep Herzog busy for an hour.
In 1983, Ken Russell made his own full-length video, with found footage, of Gustav Holst's The Planets; although coming perilously close to self-parody—shots of Hitler and the Nazis are out of Russell's usual playbook—the editing and sequencing of shots is a singular Russell fingerprint. Both films look soft on Blu; although the box lists it, Gesualdo does not include a bilingual Herzog commentary.
The Hateful Eight
(Anchor Bay/Weinstein Co)
Quentin Tarantino takes such pride in his movie knowledge that his extensive thievery from other, better films is given a pass by many who should know better: unsurprisingly, his latest self-indulgent mess might be his most obnoxious movie yet. For nearly three hours, an octet of annoying characters gets together and, unsurprisingly from the horrible title, proceed to one-up one another.
When not showing a weirdly enervating fantasy about a well-endowed black man, Tarantino gratuitously revels in geysers of blood and (of course) the N-word. Robert Richardson's 70mm cinematography is wasted on the static, interior-bound story, because of which the perfectly adequate hi-def transfer suffers. Extras comprise two featurettes.
(Olive Films)
In John Dahl's disappointing 1989 film noir, then-new off-screen couple of Val Kilmer and wife Joanne Whalley Kilmer are mired in a ridiculously overwrought plot that provides a few scattered moments of tense drama amid routine, recycled moments from better crime dramas.
Dahl directs stylishly, and there's a nicely creepy turn by Michael Madsen as the bad guy, but Kilmer and Whalley-Kilmer—at sea throughout—end up dragging the whole movie down. The Blu-ray transfer is quite good.
A New Leaf
(Olive Films)
Elaine May, who wrote and directed this 1971 black comedy before moving onto Mikey and Nicky (1976) and, more infamously, Ishtar (1987), plays a lonely heiress who marries financially ruined playboy Walter Matthau, after which he tries to get rid of her in any way possible.
May's scattershot script has amusing episodes alongside strained ones, and as director she glosses over some good ideas to inexplicably concentrate on lesser ones. But it has a freshness and daring that hasn’t dated, and both leads are in top form. The movie looks good and grainy on Blu.
(Magnolia)
For those unaware (like me), Noma is a Copenhagen restaurant chosen best in the world several years running, and Pierre Deschamps' portrait of Noma chef Rene Redzepi is sharp and focused, even lucky: when a norovirus fells several diners at the restaurant, cameras record Redzepi and his associates' incredulous, bemused reactions.
Redzepi is forcefully foul-mouthed but engaging, and his unique spin on Nordic cuisine leads to beautifully photographed glimpses of his delectable dishes. The film and the food look splendid on Blu; extras include deleted scenes.
Point Break
(Warner Bros)
In this unnecessary remake of the vapid 1991 Kathryn Bigelow film, an FBI agent and extreme-sports athlete goes up against the ultimate daredevil villain in a movie almost fully bereft of human interaction, instead becoming an excuse for an unending series of excellent stunt sequences awkwardly staged by director Ericson Core.
The astonishing stunt work and photography notwithstanding, most of the movie’s two-hour running time has little in the way of interesting plotting, dialogue and acting. The film looks great on Blu; extras include behind-the- scenes featurettes and deleted scenes.
Killing Them Safely
(Sundance Selects)
The history of the Taser—which quickly entered law enforcement annals as a most effective weapon—is skeptically recounted by director Nick Berardini, who looks at the many incidents of related fatalities when otherwise healthy people died after encountering Taser-wielding cops.
Although the jury's still out on causality, such incidents bring into question the Taser’s efficiency and safety, and despite claims to the contrary by interested parties, even law enforcement officials are starting to gainsay its usefulness.
Mediterranea
(Sundance Selects)
In this sympathetic portrait of Europe’s immigrant crisis, Italian director Jonas Carpignano shoots his gaze at a laborer from Burkina Faso who arrives in Italy prepared to work and send money back to his wife and young daughter: he soon finds that the hard part was not leaving and making the journey to a new country; instead, there is no shortage of difficulties for him and others in their adopted home.
Carpignano takes the measure of his protagonist with intelligence, grace, and not a little humor, ending on a sad but telling incident between our hero and his family back home.
(Anchor Bay)
The second season of Turn continues to chronicle the dangerous adventures of spies who did much of the dirty work for General Washington during fraught times for the ragtag Continental Army against the more imposing, better-trained British troops.
The year is 1777, and events including the horrible winter at Valley Forge and the first arrival of French troops to fight with the colonial army are persuasively dramatized, and the presence of someone named Benedict Arnold portends much traitorous behavior to come. Extras are deleted scenes, extended scenes and featurettes.
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
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