10,000+ nights

I just got back from a book event at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center for a book event celebrating the launch of 10,000+ nights: Theatre Before the Plague by Marvin Carlson.

The book is a sequel to a previous book Carlson wrote recounting 50 years of theatre going and ending in 2010. This noticeably slimmer volume covers 2010 through 2019, with discussions of Sleep No More, Blood Knot, Mr. Burns, An Octoroon, Hamilton, and Great Comet among other plays.

During his talk, Carlson suggested that the movement toward immersive theatre was one of the big trends in New York prior to the shutdown related to Covid. Sadly, there hasn't been as much immersive theatre since, though I did enjoy the immersive Great Gatsby last year. I was surprised at how optimistic Carlson was about the future, predicting that all the social distancing would remind us of the indispensability of live performance.

Tomorrow night, I'll be enjoying a live performance of David Willinger's new play Bring Them Back at Theater for the New City. Then on Saturday I have the first rehearsal for a staged reading of Snip o' the Shears, which will be presented at the Hamilton Grange Library on June 1st at 1:00 pm. I hope you can make it!

Sing it Again

I first saw Anais Mitchell's Hadestown in 2016, when it was playing Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop. It was such a wonderful show, I saw it again at the National Theatre in London when I was in England visiting my sister.

That production got a bit lost in the cavernous space of the Olivier, a theatre that Iain Mackintosh has named one of the worst theatre spaces designed during the 20th century. When the show opened on Broadway, I did not run out to see it a third time.

However, this year singer/songwriter legend Ani DiFranco joined the cast as Persephone. She sang that role in the show's original concept album, so this casting made sense, and as someone who went to a liberal arts college in the 1990s, I was contractually obligated to see Ani DiFranco on Broadway.

Last night, I finally got a chance to do just that, and DiFranco did not disappoint. Amber Gray originated the role of Persephone on stage, later appearing on Broadway in such musicals as Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 and Here We Are. DiFranco might not be as experienced of an actor as Gray, but she exerts an aura that made Persephone a joy to behold.

Each actor I have seen in the role of Hermes has been completely different, but Jon Jon Briones, who is currently Hermes on Broadway, made the role work for him in a manner that was unique. It probably helped that his real-life daughter Isa Briones is in the show as Eurydice. The tender moments between the god and the mortal became even more tender when audience members recalled that the two performers are actually related.

While I didn't see Jordan Fisher as Orpheus, I had no complaints with his understudy, Brandon Cameron, a swing who made his Broadway debut with this show. Previous performers I'd seen in the role either had amazing voices or were strong actors, but Cameron's singing and acting were both superb. The same could be said for Max Kumangai, who played Hades, though in a manner quite different from Patrick Page, who made the part famous.

If you've never seen Hadestown before, now is a great time to go.

Into the Woods

When I was younger, I saw a touring production of Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. I adored the show and bought the cast album on audio cassette. I listened to it so much, I eventually wore out the tape. I later got another copy. I think I wore out that one, too.

So it's safe to say that I'm fairly familiar with the music in the show. I missed the sold-out run at Encores, but the play is on Broadway again, this time at the St. James Theatre, so of course I had to go. The production is minimalistic, as one would expect for a transfer from an Encores reading, so the real draw for the production is the dream-team cast.

Last night I saw understudies Delphi Borich and Paul Kreppel as Little Red Ridinghood and the Narrator. Both were brilliant, so I've no complaints there. Nor can I complain about other replacement cast members who have now taken over for the performers who opened the show this summer. Patina Miller was no doubt an excellent Witch, but I got to see Joaquina Kalukango, who I loved in Paradise Square.

Sara Bareilles opened as the Baker's Wife, but that role is currently being played by Stephanie J. Block, one of the hardest-working performers on Broadway and my favorite singer in the show. She plays opposite Brian d'Arcy James, who was brilliant in Something Rotten, but was somewhat outshone last night by Block, whose emotional interpretation of songs like "Moments in the Woods" made him seem almost cold by comparison.

The opening-night cast for this production included Phillipa Soo as Cinderella. She was brilliant both in The Great Comet of 1812 and Hamilton, so I'm sorry I missed her, but I was glad I got to see Denée Benton in the role instead. (Benton also performed the part for Encores.) This isn't the first time Benton and Soo have swapped a role. After Soo originated the role of Natasha in Great Comet off-Broadway, Benton stepped in as the new Natasha in the Broadway version. I missed her when I saw the show on Broadway, as the understudy went on that night, so this was my first time seeing Benton live on stage.

Last night's audience went wild for the the two princes, played by Gavin Creel and Joshua Henry. They've been with the show since its opening night, as have been Sondheim veterans Annie Golden and Nancy Opal, who played Cinderella's Mother and Stepmother respectively. Making their Broadway debuts with the opening of this production were Cole Thompson as Jack and Alysia Velez as Rapunzel. They're still with the show as well, and both performed admirably, but the star is really Jack's cow, Milky White, a magnificent puppet operated by Kennedy Kanagawa.

Lear deBessonet, who has staged some dreamy Shakespeare in Central Park, directed the production. If you want to see it, Into the Woods is still playing until January 8th.

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.

It Raineth (But Not Everyday)

The last couple of weeks in New York have been very... well... wet. That's not good for outdoor productions, and the last few performances of The Public Theater's Twelfth Night in the Delacorte in Central Park have been rather soggy.

Fortunately, last night was the exception. I lucked out and got to see the show during a clear evening, and it was phenomenal. The weather looks good for tonight, so you might want to try to get to the Delacorte early to see if you can get standby tickets. That's how I saw Othello earlier this summer, and I got in no problem.

There's no show on Monday, and Tuesday is opening night. After then, it's going to be considerably more difficult to get tickets. This production, the brainchild of singer-songwriter Shaina Taub and co-director Kwame Kwei-Armah, is destined to be legendary. Shakespeare's dialogue is condensed down to its essence, and Taub has penned some brilliant songs that perfectly capture the play's key moments.

The result is an original musical that is faithful to the spirit of Shakespeare's comedy while also creating something wonderful and new. Whether it's Olivia's household arguing over who is the worst, or Malvolio fantasizing about greatness, or the people of Illyria singing about the word on the street, the songs are always entertaining as well as advancing the storyline.

Taub, a veteran performer from the off-Broadway productions of Old Hats, Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, and Hadestown, clearly knows what she's doing. In addition to providing the songs for Twelfth Night, she also plays a feisty Feste with perfect deadpan timing.

Oskar Eustis co-directed this production. The musical originally played the Delacorte for just one weekend back in 2016, so it's great to have it back for a full five-week run this summer. Its next stop will be London at the Young Vic, where Kwei-Armah is the incoming artistic director.

Will a Broadway production follow? One can hope, but my advice is not to wait. See it now!

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.

Hadestown

Last night I saw Anais Mitchell's Hadestown at New York Theatre Workshop. The play gets off to somewhat of a slow start, but it builds to become an emotionally moving reimagining of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth.

Rachel Chavkin, who previously directed Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, helms this production, starring Damon Daunno and Nabiyah Be as the ill-fated lovers. And just so we know they're ill-fated, the fates themselves appear on stage, as a trio of women who provide the role of the chorus.

The burly, bearded Chris Sullivan seems on odd choice to play the god Hermes, but he is surprisingly effective as the show's narrator, guiding us down into the underworld and back again. Make no mistake about it, though--the heart of this show is the immortal power couple of hell, Hades (played by Patrick Page) and Persephone (played by Amber Gray).

I loved Page as the titular king in The Public Theatre's production of Cymbeline in Central Park, and it was great to see him again on stage in the recent revival of Spring Awakening. While I had heard him sing before, never had I heard him like this, dipping down into the lower reaches of a gravelly bass voice. His rendition of "Why We Build the Wall" is nightmarish, and when he later softens at the song of Orpheus, the world itself seems to be changing.

Having a song that can make stones weep is a tall order, but Daunno's trilling falsetto voice works on you like nothing you're likely to hear in a traditional Broadway score. And as Persephone, the magnificent Gray champions the young lovers, both during her spring revels above the earth and throughout her marital strife with Hades below. Gray, who was a replacement for the role of Helene in the original production of The Great Comet, will be reprising that part on Broadway this fall.

But don't wait until then to see her! Hadestown is playing until the end of the month. Catch it while you can!

Fix Me, Jesus

This afternoon, I had the pleasure of seeing Helen Sneed's wonderful play Fix Me, Jesus at the Abingdon Theatre Company. The play takes place in 1986 in a dressing room at the Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas. Annabell Armstrong, played with delightful neurosis by Polly Lee, tries to pick a dress for "the most important night" of her entire life. As she goes through racks and racks of dresses, she relives her life story, from a precocious pre-teen, to a political junky, to a rising star in the Democratic Party. Her insecurities threaten to overwhelm her, as she comes closer and closer to a nervous breakdown, but Sneed's light touch means we in the audience laugh sympathetically along with the character, following her on her journey of self-discovery.

Annabell's younger self is played by Kate Froemmling, a student at the Professional Performing Arts School making her professional debut. Though child performers can sometimes make me cringe, her acting felt completely natural in the intimate Dorothy Strelsin Theatre. Her scenes with her mother (played by Abingdon regular Lori Gardner) giving her diet pills along with life-long body-image issues, were just heart-breaking. Equally effective were the scenes with her grandmother (played by Broadway veteran Lisa McMillan) in which the young girl tries to sort through the racist, anti-semitic, and homophobic diatribes of the older woman and discover what it is about her that is still worth emulating.

The sole male member of the cast is Mitch Tebo, who plays Annabell's psychiatrist and happens to have some of the best lines in the play, all of which he delivers with panache. However, the emotional core of Annabell's world, and of the play, turns out to be the Neiman Marcus sales clerk, Mrs. Craig, played flawlessly by Lee Roy Rogers, who has been seen recently in such hits as Tribes and Orson's Shadow. Mrs. Craig first meets young Annabell on the day that Kennedy is assassinated (and when another event happens that becomes pivotal in the lives of both women). Over the years, she helps Annabell find dresses for all of the important occasions in her life, gradually forming a bond we don't see at first, but that develops into something surprisingly beautiful.

Much of the success of the piece comes from the superb direction by Sam Pinkleton. Best known for his choreography in such shows as Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, Pinkleton maneuvers the cast around the stage of the Strelsin (notoriously about the size of a postage stamp) showing more than 20 years of Annabell's life. To his credit, it's almost always clear where and when the scenes are taking place. In this, he's aided by a set designed by Christopher Ford and Dakota Rose that is perfectly lit by Vadim Ledvin.

Unfortunately, Fix Me Jesus is only running until November 24, so hurry up and see it!

The Great Comet

Last night, I saw Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. The show has moved uptown to a tent in the same empty lot on West 45th Street where the Spiegeltent was last year.

The set-up worked quite wonderfully. Most of the action took place in the center of the floor, flanked by tables where the audience sat and enjoyed drinks and snacks. Around us, however, were raised platforms where additional scenes took place, and where there were additional tables for the audience. We were told that there were no bad seats, and I believe it. We came early, but found they assigned us seats, anyway. This meant we didn't have a choice of where to sit, as is usually the case with general admission, but it all seems to work out for the best, given how well the piece is staged.

The music, composed by Dave Malloy, was fun, though not always memorable. That was fine, however, especially when some of the lyrics (also Malloy's) were so clever. During the opening sequence, the audience is introduced to the cast of characters in a song that keeps adding one more person before repeating everything that came before, a la "Rattlin' Bog" or "Partridge in a Pear Tree." If you still had trouble following the action, there was a family tree (with illustrations) included in the program.

This adaptation of War and Peace made me once again appreciate the brilliance and honesty of Tolstoy's writing. Toward the end, when Pierre asks Natasha whether or not she really loved Anatole, she responds, "I don't know." Instead of renouncing him for a cad or holding fast to the memory or her passion, she is confused, and admits her confusion. It's a wonderful moment.

Originally, Malloy himself played the role of Pierre, but David Abeles, who originated the role of Eamon in Once, has taken over as that character. He does a magnificent job, as do fellow cast members including Phillipa Soo as Natasha and Brittain Ashford as Sonya. I saw the understudy for Anatole, Azudi Onyejekwe, but he also was quite wonderful.