The Drama Book Shop

Today, I got a chance to visit the newly reopened Drama Book Shop in Midtown. It was great to finally be able to return!

The Drama Book Shop used to be over on West 40th Street, but it shut down when the landlords figured they could make more money leasing the space to a high-end clothing store. A group of investors, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, bought the remaining stock of the bookstore and promised to reopen is somewhere in the same neighborhood.

Well, there were the inevitable delays, and then COVID hit, so the reopening has been a long time coming. The selection on hand looked about the same as it has always been, though I noticed they also had a section in the front for "Bestsellers" that included novels, poetry, and other books that had nothing to do with the theatre, which I don't remember from the past.

There used to be a theatre downstairs from the bookstore, where I had a reading of a selection from The Mysteries of the Castle of the Monk of Falconara as part of the book launch for The Best American Short Plays: 2005-2006. I was down there more recently for a talk given by the director Ivo van Hove. The new location of the Drama Book Shop has a roped-off staircase leading down to... dare we hope a theatre?

The new location also has a cafe, so you can get snacks and beverages. Currently, management is recommending that you make a reservation to be sure you can get inside, since capacity is capped. When I showed up on a Friday afternoon, though, they just waived me in without checking my reservation, so it looks like they're taking walk-up browsers, provided the store isn't too full.

I bought a volume of some Eugene O'Neill plays while I was there, and I look forward to spending more time reading this summer. Thank goodness the Drama Book Shop is open again for hungry readers like me!

Top Musicals of the Teens

To close out 2019, I'm making a list of the best new American musicals of the teens. I'm only including new American musicals (so no Matilda) that premiered in New York between 2013 and 2019.

No doubt many people will take issue with some of my choices, and wonder why some shows were left off the list. (Sorry, Allegiance and Amazing Grace! There was only so much room. And I never saw The Band's Visit.) Here they are:

10. Something Rotten - Okay, the egg joke runs a little too long, but this musical send-up of Shakespeare practically had me rolling in the aisle.

9. Fun Home - I honestly hated this show when I first saw it, but that was due to Sam Gold's horrible direction. The more I think about it, though, the more I think it might be Jeanine Tesori's best score yet.

8. Dear Evan Hansen - I have reservations about this show as well, but I still think it's far more clever than the critics who praised it blindly. Plus, it's hard to get "You Will Be Found" out of your head.

7.  A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder - This musical managed to escape from development and copyright-law hell in order to win the Tony in 2014. It remains one of my favorite shows of the decade.

6. Desperate Measures - This Off-Broadway gem in one of the smartest shows of the decade, and it deserves to have a long life on the regional circuit. I never would have thought of turning Measure for Measure into a Wild West musical comedy... but it works!

5. Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 - I saw the Off-Broadway incarnation of this play in 2013, and loved it just as much when I saw in on Broadway four years later. Dave Malloy's music is enchanting, and the show manages to craft a small portion of Tolstoy's novel into a stage show that packs a major punch.

4. Unlock'd - Like Desperate Measures, this show had a brief Off-Broadway run, but needs to be seen by far more people. Its source material, Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, was equally unpromising for a musical comedy, but in addition to being as witty as Pope, it also manages to find adventure, pathos, and even wisdom.

3. Tamar of the River - This epic piece by Marisa Michelson and Joshua H. Cohen is one of the most ambitious shows to premiere in New York during the teens. Nothing else sounds quite like it, and if you don't believe me, buy the cast album. The story, taken very loosely from the book of Genesis, remains as important today as it was when the show premiered Off-Broadway in 2013.

2. Hadestown - Though I've yet to see the Broadway version of Hadestown, and the London production left me rather cold, when I saw the show at New York Theatre Workshop it blew me away. The cast recording of that production remains a frequently visited place on my iPod, and not just because of Patrick Page's amazing performance of "Why We Build the Wall." Anais Mitchell's play is one of the best explorations of tragedy the American theater has produced in recent years.

1. Hamilton - This choice should come as no surprise. Lin-Manuel Miranda came into his own with this show, crafting both music and lyrics that resonate on multiple levels. Sometimes the show has to play a little fast and loose with history, but rather than being simply a glorification of Alexander Hamilton, it recognizes his flaws, and even pays tribute to the musical's villain, Aaron Burr. Perhaps most movingly, it rescues Eliza Hamilton from the dustbin of history, writing her back into the narrative.

Who will write the top musicals of the '20s? Miranda? Mitchell? Michelson and Cohen? Maybe all of the above.

End of MLA

Yesterday was the final day of the Modern Language Association conference in New York. I was pleased to be able to present two papers at the conference, one on Charles Dickens and the actor William Charles Macready, and the other on George Bernard Shaw and the Italian playwright Luigi Antonelli.

There were many interesting talks given this year. Frances Ferguson, speaking at the "Romantics at Two Hundred" program arranged by the Keats-Shelley Association of America, spoke about William Hazlitt's criticism in 1818. Hazlitt criticized the poet James Thomson, though he credited him with being the most popular poet among his contemporaries. Thomson was dead by 1818, but his poem The Seasons remained popular. According to Hazlitt, Thomson could not enter into the minds of others, which made him a poor playwright. Thomson's Tragedy of Sophonisba, which opened the same year as George Lillo's The London Merchant, is largely forgotten today.

Speaking of The London Merchant, Laura Rosenthal on Saturday gave a really interesting paper on Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton ghosting 18th-century tragedy. She drew parallels between Hamilton and The London Merchant, which both have scrappy protagonists trying to rise up in the world. In both plays, the protagonist is the victim of a set-up in which a conniving woman gets him to have sex with her, and he then has this event used to get money out of him. In Lillo's play, the protagonist tries to confess his sin to his master, but since Hamilton does not have a master, Rosenthal said, he confesses to the public. Ultimately, she said, Hamilton is sad, but not tragic, because the institutions Hamilton created endure, even as he dies ignobly.

Later on Saturday, Heidi Holder gave a wonderful paper about the popular Newgate drama Jack Shepherd. Shepherd was a real criminal who in the 18th century was arrested for burglary, but managed to escape from prison four times, sometimes with the help of female accomplices. Daniel Defoe wrote an account of Shepherd's life, and in the 19th century W.T. Moncrieff wrote a melodrama about him. William Ainsworth wrote a novel about Shepherd in 1839, which became the basis for numerous other plays, including one by John Baldwin Buckstone, which featured scenery by William Telbin in its original production. Eventually, authorities became concerned that these plays were encouraging crime, and in 1848 the government passed a formal ban on Jack Shepherd plays.

Sunday was the Shaw session I was a a part of, which also included Virginia Costello talking about Shaw and Emma Goldman, Martin Meisel talking about Shaw and Sean O'Casey, and Ellen Dolgin talking about Shaw and J.M. Barrie. It was an honor to join them!

Next year, the MLA conference will be in Chicago. We'll see if they can top the amount of snow we had at the conference this year!

Tail End of the Comet

I really enjoyed the off-Broadway version of Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812. In fact it was one of the best plays of 2013, in my opinion.

When the show moved to Broadway with vocal superstar Josh Groban in the cast, I wondered if director Rachel Chavken would be able to reproduce the intimate feel of the show that gave it so much of its appeal.

Well, the reviews came back as very positive, so it seemed that, yes, she was able to keep the magic of the earlier version, in spite of losing the original Natasha, Phillipa Soo, who had gone on to create the role of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton in Lin-Manuel Miranda's blockbuster musical about a certain Treasury Secretary.

My spouse also enjoyed Chavken's off-Broadway version of Great Comet, and as she had undertaken to read its source material (a slim novel by Tolstoy called War and Peace), I told her I would buy us tickets to the Broadway show... as soon as she finished the book. Well, she isn't even half-way through with the novel (which is a mere 1,273 pages), but the show is closing, so I went ahead and got us tickets.

Okieriete "Oak" Onaodowan replaced Groban as Pierre, and I thought we were going to see him, but then he left the show, to be ultimately replaced by the show's creator, Dave Malloy, for the end of the run. However, until Malloy joins the cast, the role is being performed by Scott Strangland, the actor I saw last night. The original Broadway Natasha, Denée Benton, is still with the show, but I saw her understudy, Lauren Zakrin.

And was I disappointed? No. Strangland and Zakrin's big scene at the end of the show was amazing and had me in tears. Malloy does something quite clever, and in an otherwise sung-through musical stops the singing at a key moment to allow the main characters to speak their lines for the first time. This adds to the intensity, and allows the truth of the moment to stand out. We get to see a very real human connection between two flawed but fundamentally decent human beings.

Returning from the off-Broadway production is Amber Gray as Hélène, the promiscuous wife of Pierre who also helps to trap Natasha into an ill-fated affair with Hélène's brother, Anatole. (Yes, it's a Russian novel, so it's complicated.) Gray quite impressed me as Persephone in Hadestown (also directed by Chavken), so I was glad to see her again. It was likewise a pleasure to see Brittain Ashford again as Sonya. Her folk-infused number "Sonya Alone" stands out from the rest of the show both in terms of its musical idiom and its perspective from someone not at the center of the action, but deeply concerned about her friend.

Sadly, Great Comet is closing on September 3rd, so see it while you can. When I bought tickets, the guy at the box office advised me that the mezzanine seats were preferable to orchestra tickets, and after seeing the show from the mezzanine, I'm inclined to agree. Wherever you sit, however, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Best Plays of 2015

It's the end of the year, and like many others, I'm putting together a round-up of the best new productions I saw that opened in New York City in 2015. Some of my choices might seem unconventional, while others will surprise no one. Here they are, in reverse order:

10. Allegiance - With all the great new Broadway musicals opening this year, Allegiance is in danger of getting lost in the shuffle. It shouldn't be.

9. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore - Red Bull Theater Company usually does good work, and their production of John Ford's masterpiece was no exception. 'Tis Pity proved once again that you don't have to have the budget of The Royal Shakespeare Company to put on good classical drama.

8. Wolf Hall - Of course, if you do have the budget of the Royal Shakespeare Company, it doesn't hurt. The RSC's adaptation of Hilary Mantel's first two novels about the life of Thomas Cromwell didn't gain as much attention (or fill as many seats) as it did in London, but it was still worth seeing. Wolf Hall was a magnificent display of skilled theatre professionals doing precisely what they do well.

7. Amazing Grace - Speaking of shows not embraced by Broadway, Christopher Smith and Arthur Giron's fantasia on the life of John Newton drew the ire of critics, but thrilled those who had enough good since to ignore them and come anyway. I cried more at this show than at anything I've seen in years. As with Allegiance, the songs did not always rise to level one might hope, but the storytelling was both moving and timely.

6. Cymbeline - Though The Public Theatre seems to misfire with their Shakespeare productions as often as they produce a hit, this summer's Cymbeline was a delight. Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe were hysterical as the play's romantic leads, but the best thing about this production was how the small cast came together to create a true ensemble. Tasteful audience interaction and superb music by Tom Kitt also served to make this a memorable production.

5. Something Rotten - Even more memorable than some of the many Shakespeare productions I saw this year was Something Rotten, the Broadway musical making fun of the Bard. Yes, I saw Fun Home, which beat it out for the Tony this year, but I found myself seated where that play's ill-conceived direction showed nothing but the actors' backs. Something Rotten by contrast has not only a great score, ingenious lyrics, and a creative book, it's also well directed and a pleasure to watch.

4. Freight: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green - Howard L. Craft's one-man play featuring J. Alphonse Nicholson, probably hasn't made it onto a lot of people's top-ten lists, but that's because they didn't see it. Beginning at the dawn of the 20th century and proceeding to the present day, Freight manages to examine the American experience (and more specifically the African-American experience) in ways that are constantly surprising. Each of the play's five scenes move forward through history, yet we seem to revisit the same set of characters over and over again, reminding the audience that even as some things change drastically, others remain tragically the same.

3. Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe - Though Nevermore came to New York once before, this creation by Catalyst Theatre had evolved since then, and it's production at New World Stages counted as a Broadway premiere. It didn't hurt that I saw the play on Mr. Poe's 206th birthday, but my own fan-boy-ing aside, this is one of the most creative and innovative plays I've ever seen. Bretta Gerecke's production design is a goth's dream come true, and Jonathan Christenson's text sounds so natural we hardly notice the play is almost entirely in verse. Like one of Poe's characters, Nevermore doesn't want to stay buried, and we should all be thankful for that!

2. Hand to God - I admit that I came late to this party. Hand to God was a hit off-Broadway way before it opened this year on the Great White Way, but this production was astonishing. In spite of the fact that he is clearly one of America's great playwrights, a Broadway hit still has not allowed Robert Askins to give up his bar-tending job, but that's just the state of the economics of this country's theatre. Never mind. This tale of a high-school misfit engaging in "puppet ministry" in a church basement continually goes to darker and more unexpected places, and Askins' voice deserves to be heard. I'm a sucker for puppets, and this show uses puppetry in ways that are dirtier than Avenue Q and yet with more skill than is hardly ever seen.

1. Hamilton - Okay, no surprise here. Since it opened off-Broadway at the Public, Hamilton has been the hottest ticket in town, but not without reason. Lin-Manuel Miranda has crafted a magnificent show out of American history and American popular culture. The music is exciting, the lyrics are smart, and the story of Alexander Hamilton's life and death, even to those who already know it, is enough to break your heart. Count me along with politicians as diverse as Barack Obama and Dick Cheney as one of the many fans of this show. If you can't see it right away, get the cast album. Listening to it reminds you of so much that the American musical is and can be. Ten dollar tickets (a Hamilton for a Hamilton) are still available through a lottery before each show, but good luck getting them. Spring for a regular ticket. It's worth it.

So that's my list! Honorable mentions this year to Doctor Faustus, I Will Look Forward To This Later, and Spring Awakening!

In the Room When It Happened

When I found out that Lin-Manuel Miranda was writing a musical about Alexander Hamilton, I knew I had to see it. Fortunately, it was going to be at The Public Theater, so I clearly would be able to get rush tickets.

Well, I got that one wrong. Instead of rush tickets, the Public had to establish a lottery for the cheap tickets. That was okay, though. I could play the lottery. And I did. A lot. Unfortunately, no matter how many times I went, I never won.

But that was okay, because Hamilton transferred to Broadway, and the producers announced there would be $10 lottery tickets (a Hamilton for a Hamilton) available on Broadway, too. This time, however, I was smart. I would go the very first day of previews. No one would have gotten word yet, and my chances of winning would be pretty good.

So I showed up for the first preview. As did hundreds of others. Someone tweeted a picture of that first day, and if you look very closely, way over to the right you can see me, hoping against hope that my name would be called. It wasn't called that day. Nor the next day. Nor the next. Nor the next.

All summer long, when I wasn't in Cape Cod for Moby-Dick, I was putting my name in for the Hamilton lottery. Nothing. Nada. The summer ended. When I could, I still tried to play the lottery, but after all the amazing review, all the amazing buzz, getting to see Hamilton for a Hamilton became nearly impossible, and ticket prices were, well... Broadway.

But then I heard that President Obama, who had already seen the show once, was coming back for a special presentation of Hamilton as a Democratic Party fundraiser. Well, I've always supported the Democrats, and even worked on a few campaigns, handling phones for Clinton-Gore before I was even old enough to vote, and knocking on doors in New Hampshire for Howard Dean. Here was an opportunity to support a cause for which I believed, and finally see Hamilton at the same time.

So I did it. I paid... well, a lot. But it went to the Democrats, and I finally got to see Hamilton, and the President, to boot. My beloved "Spouse A" went to Obama's high school (a bit after he graduated), so she accompanied me and got to see a fellow Punahou alum... from a distance. We were in the next to last row, but the view was surprisingly good. The show was amazing, and the President was in rare form. He noted that both he and Dick Cheney loved Hamilton, and perhaps the only thing the two agreed on was that Hamilton was a great show. Marci snapped this picture:

So now I never have to play the lottery again, right? Well, no, because now I want to see it again!