Don't Feed the...

At the end of the iconic Off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors, audience members are entreated, "Don't feed the plants!" At the end of another camped-up Off-Broadway film adaptation, Teeth, the audience might be wary of feeding... something else.

Little Shop was inspired by a cult horror/comedy film. Similarly, Teeth is adapted from Mitchell Lichtenstein's 2007 cinematic tale of a young woman who discovers vagina dentata are more than just an ancient legend. (She later decides to embrace her newfound biological "gift" from Mother Nature.)

The musical was penned by Anna K. Jacobs, who also composed the score for the Andy Warhol musical POP!, and Michael R. Jackson, best known for writing A Strange Loop. From what I've read, it departs significantly from the film, but I'm not a fan of blood-and-gore movies, so I confess to not having seen the original.

Blood-and-gore stage plays, on the other hand, are a favorite of mine. I loved, for instance, the production of Tamburlaine I saw in Brooklyn where they had to mop up the stage blood at intermission. Teeth has no intermission, but it does have a "splash zone" where audiences are warned they might get covered with blood. All audience members should also watch out for falling phalli.

The world of Teeth is filled with Promise Keeper Girls who slut-shame anyone who engages in premarital sex and Truthseeker incels who are intent on bringing down the "feminocracy" by any means necessary. That there is no middle ground is probably the point, but this makes it difficult to sympathize with any of the characters, unlike Little Shop, where we fall in love with the leads.

Teeth is currently playing at New World Stages. Jacobs's score is tuneful, and some of Jackson's lyrics are quite clever, but if you have an aversion to stage blood, you might want to bring a poncho.

Stereophonic

David Adjmi's new drama Stereophonic, now playing at the Golden Theatre on Broadway, bears more than a few resemblances to Jez Butterworth's The Hills of California.

Both plays show musical artists in the 1970s struggling with the choices that brought them fame as well as heartache. Both show talented Brits bumping up against a music industry controlled by Americans. Both present us with characters making... questionable sexual choices.

However, it isn't Stereophonic's resemblances to Butterworth's play (which are probably coincidental) which have gotten Adjmi in trouble. Rather, the show's producers got sued by former Fleetwood Mac producer Ken Caillat (and his co-author Steven Stiefel), who wrote a 2012 memoir called Making Rumours about the origin of the rock band's most celebrated album.

Is the fictional band onstage a thinly veiled version of Fleetwood Mac? When I went to see the show last night, many of the people in the audience seemed to think so. I overheard a couple discussing which Rumours songs were paralleled by original music composed by Arcade Fire member Will Butler for the stage production. The audience also went into hysterics when a character onstage said he didn't want to be spreading rumors.

This isn't the first time Adjmi has gotten into a copyright tussle. He was also sued over his play 3C, which reimagined the sitcom Three's Company in order to deal seriously with social and political issues that emerged during the 1970s. In that case, most dramatists were on Adjmi's side. The piece was truly transformative, and should have been protected by the same fair use rules that allow satire and parody.

Fortunately, Stereophonic's producers came to an agreement to resolve the lawsuit earlier this week, so if you see it on Broadway now, you'll know it's no longer under legal threat!

The Holidays Begin

I'm pleased to announce that my short play Burns Night has passed into the semifinalist round of the Holiday Playwright Contest held by Kinsman Quarterly.

The play premiered in 2019 at the Secret Theatre in Queens, which is now one of many companies doing productions of A Christmas Carol throughout the five boroughs of New York and beyond.

While I don't know that I'll be able to get out to see that production before it closes on December 22nd, I plan on going to see another production closer to home. On December 3rd and 4th, Sean Coffey will be performing his one-person adaptation of Charles Dickens's story at the historic Van Cortlandt House Museum in the Bronx.

John Kevin Jones will be performing his own one-person version of the tale in Manhattan at the Merchant’s House Museum in Manhattan through December 29th. If you're in the mood for a larger production, head over to Staten Island, where Sundog Theatre is producing a large-cast musical version of the tale on December 7th, adapted by Cash Tilton, with original songs by Susan Mondzak.

Most exciting to me, though, is a puppet version of A Christmas Carol performed by Drama of Works on December 19th at Rubulad in Brooklyn. Drama of Works founder Gretchen Van Lente is sponsoring a “XMAS CAROL” puppet slam, breaking up Dickens’s story into six parts, each performed by a different puppetry troupe. Gretchen designed the puppets for my own adaptation of the story in 2007, so I'm expecting great things.

Across the river, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey is producing a stage version of A Christmas Carol in Madison, adapted by Neil Bartlett, which plays until December 29th. Yes, that's a lot of Carols! It so happens, I am regarded as enough of an expert on these things that I will be co-hosting the last episode of the Rosenbach Library's "Monsters and Ghosts" online program on December 16th, discussing the legacy of a Dickensian Christmas.

So however you celebrate this month, I wish you a very merry holiday season!

At the Kit Kat Club

Cabaret is a musical deservedly lauded for utilizing a Brechtian Alienation Effect so that book scenes and song-and-dance numbers can comment on one another rather than integrating the entire show into one cohesive whole.

This would seem to make Cabaret an odd choice for an immersive theatre experience. However, a production in London successfully marketed the Kander and Ebb classic as an opportunity to wander around a Kit Kat Club recreating Weimar-era Germany.

When producers tried to recreate the experience on Broadway, they had trouble capturing the same magic, and while the show has been kept afloat by stars like Eddie Redmayne and Adam Lambert, critics were less receptive and ticket sales less robust than in London. Though the Broadway show has its flaws, it's still very much worth seeing, as I discovered when I finally caught up to it last night.

A young man I sat near had seen the play multiple times on two continents, and he assured me that while individual performers had different takes on their characters, the set-up in New York was essentially the same as in London. If that's true, perhaps Brits deal better with crowds, as the downstairs space that featured much of the pre-show entertainment was so packed it was difficult to see and appreciate the performers.

Fortunately, upstairs there were smaller groups of performers, providing music while audiences mingled and enjoyed the atmosphere. There were also plenty of bars available to get drinks, though they had a surprising lack of variety in cocktails. As I took my seat, a floor show had already begun on the main stage, so wherever you wandered there was bound to be something to see and hear. The stage, by the way, is in the round, and features some wonderful turn-table action.

I saw Adam Lambert as the Emcee and Ayla Ciccone-Burton as Sally Bowles. Those roles are frequently considered the leads, while the protagonist Cliff, who is the audience's point-of-view character, is a mostly thankless role of a bland American simply observing life in Berlin as the Nazis are on the rise. Calvin Leon Smith made the role come alive, though, and was perfectly marvelous as Cliff.

The biggest treat in terms of the cast was Bebe Neuwirth, who played Fräulein Schneider, a role originated by Lotte Lenya. Seeing Neuwirth in the late-night cabaret show Here Lies Jenny was an unforgettable experience, and while she is no longer performing the athletic dance moves she had in that show, her voice is still amazing, and her rendition of "What Would You Do" exquisite.

When the show premiered in 1966, it shocked audiences by lulling them into a sense of tranquility with songs like "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" or amusing them with numbers like "If You Could See Her" and then turning on them with those same songs, refashioning entertainment into terror. This production tips its hand, disturbing the audience from the beginning.

Still, the brilliance of the original show shines through, and the immersive aspects are quite enjoyable. If you haven't seen it yet, go.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, the short play by Bara Swain that I directed for an evening of her work called The Boob Tube Plays, is closed now, but I just got photos that were taken of my wonderful actors.

That's Megan Greener looking oh-so-chic as her character (Olivia) snores and dreams she's on the television show Law & Order: SVU. Tomorrow is her wedding day, and she's so excited that she went to sleep in her veil!

Here's Lloyd, her husband-to-be, played by Nick Walther. Getting up at 3 a.m. to discover your fiancée sleepwalks and just might want to kill you isn't a very pleasant situation to find yourself in, and please do not ask me if I know this from personal experience.

Thanks to everyone at American Renaissance Theater Company for putting together this evening of short work, and especially to Bara for trusting me with her play!

The Devil's Disciple

I've written about Bernard Shaw's play The Devil's Disciple, and seen the Hollywood movie based on it, so I was particularly keen to watch the latest New York revival of this comedy, now showing on Theatre Row.

Gingold Theatrical Group produced this new version, which was adapted and directed by David Staller to feature only five actors--all female--who perform this testosterone-driven tale of the American Revolution with grace and style.

A framing device introduced by Staller shows a young woman who has inherited a house as old as our country, and much like the current United States, badly in need of some serious work. The woman, played by Folami Williams, discovers the house is haunted by numerous ghosts. She then finds the diary of one of the house's first inhabitants, Judith Anderson, wife of a stalwart Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Anthony Anderson.

Williams then takes on the persona of Judith, while the ghosts perform all of the other roles. The cast does an amazing job, with Tina Chilip playing Rev. Anderson, and Nadia Brown playing the bad boy Dick Dudgeon, the titular Devil's Disciple who rebels not just against the British but against his puritan upbringing represented by his mother (played with ice-cold ferocity by Susan Cella). Assorted other roles are filled in by the ever-versatile Teresa Avia Lim, who previously appeared as the Queen of Egypt in GTG's production of Caesar and Cleopatra.

Toward the end of the play, Staller inserts a speech Shaw wrote for a revival of the play starring Maurice Evans, in which America is hailed as "a land that will never be home to kings or tyrants or demagogues." That line lands a little differently post-election than it did before, but perhaps that just means we need it there now more than ever.

The show is playing until November 23rd, so if you haven't seen it yet, go! This is a revival you won't want to miss.

A Wonderful World

When I saw there was a new Louis Armstrong musical with the title A Wonderful World, I had my doubts. Would this just be a feel-good celebration, overlooking the more difficult and problematic aspects of the life of the King of Jazz?

Still, I love Louis Armstrong, so I went, and I'm glad I did. Far from avoiding sensitive topics, the book to the musical, penned lovingly by Aurin Squire, deals head-on with prostitution, drug use, organized crime, and the rampant racism that dogged Armstrong throughout his career.

Tony winner James Monroe Iglehart plays Armstrong with grace and charm. I'm not sure if he's angling for another Tony Award with this role, but he would certainly deserve one. The rest of the cast is game, too, as is the orchestra. When I saw the show last night, the band was actually out on the street before the play, entertaining the crowd that waited to come in to their seats.

This is a musical, of course, so there are plenty of songs associated with Armstrong's lengthy and varied career. Cole Porter's "Now You Has Jazz," Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing," and Oscar Hammerstein's "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" all make appearances in the show's first act as we watch Armstrong climb to fame. The second act charts his conquests of Hollywood and New York, all while facing down America's demonic racism as well as his own personal demons.

It's in the second act that we hear Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek," Jerry Herman's "Hello Dolly," and of course "What a Wonderful World" by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss. Armstrong was listed as composer on some of the songs he made famous, but in a sense all of these songs are Louis Armstrong's since he was able to bring them to life even if he wasn't the initial composer

The musical is currently playing at Studio 54, and it's well worth seeing if you get a chance.