April 15, 2008
The Little Flower & The LAB
Something really great is happening at the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York.
I ran into LAByrinth about a year ago, on my way to the Bermuda International Film Festival. I had scheduled a few days in NY, which was a balmy 65 degrees for most of my trip, before heading over to the festival.
And then, that Thursday, a freak snow storm. But not just some snow… it was 8 inches of snow all over Manhattan in a matter of hours. The airlines shut down. The slush was thick. And me, without a coat, was looking around for something to do while I waited for a flight that was going to take off.
There was nothing that I wanted to see on Broadway after four shows in three days. And then, I noticed in the paper that Oscar-winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman was in a show at The Public that had a Saturday afternoon show.
Okay.
The show was Jack Goes Boating. It was still in previews and I was able to grab a seat at the last minute. And as I found out, not only was Hoffman in the show, but it co-starred John Ortiz, one of those actors out there whose face people know, but whose name they forget… and whose performances I seem to always adore, including his turn as Jose Yero in Mann’s Miami Vice, playing Crowe’s cop partner in Scott’s American Gangster, and Juan Abreu in Schnabel’s Before Night Falls. (In other words, he’s a guy who quality directors want to work with, but who has not found a celebrity-making hook yet.)
And what I get, up in The Public’s third floor walk-up theater, is a wonderful little piece of pairs acting, primarily Hoffman & Ortiz as best buddies, a modern dysfunctional Kramden & Norton. Then there was Ortiz and his wife in the show, Daphne Ruben-Vega, whose marriage was constantly challenged by one of her past missteps, always feeling like a real relationship. And finally, Hoffman and Beth Cole, who plays the girl he is interested in and who gently, slowly, relentlessly tries to step up to the challenge. It was funny. It was poignant. And it was real. It was kitchen sink drama with a joint sitting in the ashtray.
But there was also some remarkable sets by David Korins, combined with lighting by Japhy Weideman and sound by David Van Tieghem, creating such abstractions as a city swimming pool while also bringing to life more traditional spaces like the apartment where most of the action takes place.
Before the summer was over, I had missed two more LAByrinth shows… and I wasn’t happy. I decided to buy a LAB Pass so I would at least be aware of what I was missing.
The first show of this year was The View From 151st St, which was also written by Jack Goes Boating playwright Bob Glaudini and directed by the same director, Peter Dubois. This piece was much, much grittier than the earlier piece. The two main locations were The Street and an apartment, where an undercover cop who has taken a bullet to the head lives and tries to recover from the damage. Also trying to recover from his damage is his old army buddy, Ray (played by Andre Royo, best knows as “Bubbles” on The Wire), fighting to be the man he knows he must be.
On the street, actor muMs da Schemer (who also goes by Craig Grant) is the force of nature. Built like an artillery shell in an oversized jacket, every step on the street feels like an effort to plant his footprint on 151st Street as though it was some jacked up Grauman’s Chinese Theater. (We had tickets in the front row of the theater and got too close as Delroy decides to piss all over his enemy. We are pretty sure it was prop urine.)
I found the show powerful, though not quite as compelling as Jack. This show, after the previous one featured a white couple and a Latino couple, was even more multi-racial, seeing past race to class in New York. There were more familiar but name-unknown actors giving mighty performances.
After missing the company’s Unconditional because of a scheduling glitch, we caught up with The Little Flower of East Orange a few weeks ago. This time, it was Hoffman directing a play by Stephen Adly Guirgus. The duo had successes before with Our Lady of 121st Street and Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train.
And once again, it was a show about a multi-racial universe that was not about political correctness, but about the simple truth of what the urban world looks like when you live in it.
At the center of this show is Michael Shannon, another actor whose face and voice would be immediately familiar to most of you, but whose name you probably don’t know. He is the teller of the tale, a writer who is looking back at a pivotal moment of his life and his family’s life… the time his mom ran away from home.
Well, it’s not quite that. She has fallen down stairs and is being treated for her injuries and for an alleged case of amnesia. As the story goes, her family – son and daughter – come to her side and the family drama begins. The issues are raw and utterly familiar. The question, as it is in any examination of a lived life, is how these dysfunctions come to be visited upon this particular family.
As the mother, Ellen Burstyn does remarkable, subtle work. I saw the show in previews and there were some stumbled over lines. But Burstyn’s power, mostly sitting in a bed, emerged in subtle ways throughout. Other standouts, besides Shannon, who underplays the role to perfection, are Elizabeth Canavan – an actress who you won’t know from movies, but probably will soon enough – as The Daughter and the combo of David Zayas and Liza Colón-Zayas as the pair taking turns taking care of this woman… patiently, impatiently, carefully, humanly and with great humor and respect. They almost steal the show. Also, there is a girl named Gillian Jacobs who doesn’t have much to do, but who steals your focus – without trying – every time she steps on the stage. Even in her two roles (most of the actors play more than one role), her energy is really different. She’s one of those people you see on a stage and just go, “hmmmmm.”
The show is also another remarkable piece of design, with panels that are moved into a variety of sets by the actors in plain view. It works. And once again, a great lighting effort by Japhy Weideman. And as in all of these shows, Mimi O’Donnell’s costumes simply find reality… dead on… never showy… always right.
Another strong show.
But what really sticks with me is that LAByrinth and Atlantic, New Group, and others are really delivering a side of theater in New York that is what so many of us fell in love with the theater for in the first place, succeed or fail, show by show.
Each group has its own proclivities and focuses. Atlantic has had the most luck being a starter spot for longer runs or bigger venues, in the spirit of Playwright’s Horizon in the past. New Group, in the shows I have seen there, attracts great actors, but keeps things fairly neat. And LAByrinth brings the edge, the color, the fearlessness about demanding a lot from its audience without being afraid of entertaining us.
Uptown, you do get some shows that are really, really about something, whether it is this season’s August: Osage County or The Seafarer or November or Rock-n-Roll, four tremendous new shows (don’t let November’s comedy distract you from its life lessons). But mostly, you get shows aiming for the widest possible level of interest, as hundreds (or thousands) have to be convinced to buy tickets nightly.
But downtown - and particularly LAByrinth – really feels like where the foundational work is being done. And it’s being done by newcomers and veterans alike… stars and unknowns. When you look at the list of the 117 members of the LAByrinth company, you see a family – often literally - a place of inclusion and ambition and “let’s put on a show in that barn… and blow their asses away!”
It’s a reason to keep loving theater.
Posted by poland at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)
December 03, 2007
Is He Dead?
It’s ironic that the two most entertaining new shows on Broadway this year so far are a musical based on a failed movie from 1980 and a straight comedy written in 1898. Both Xanadu and Is He Dead? are original productions. And both are layered with a sense of irony, kitsch, and simply, undeniable theatrical pleasure.
Is He Dead? is one of those shows that is loaded with an unexpected parade of emerging Broadway stars. It is a particular surprise that there are so many musical theater stars in this non-musical farce. The show is led by Norbert Leo Butz, who was last seen on Broadway winning the Tony for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. In support are the legendary John McMartin, Spamalot’s Michael McGrath, Tarzan’s Jenn Gambatese, The Lion King/Sunset Blvd’s Tom Alan Robbins, and the amazing David Pittu, who was the very best thing to be found in the short run of LoveMusik.
Also in this formidable cast from the non-musical world are Byron Jennings, Patricia Connolly, the great Marylouise Burke (Miles’ mom from Sideways), Jeremy Bobb, and the Broadway-debuting Bridget Regan.
Michael Blakemore, the director who became hot on Broadway for his production of the backstage farce Noises Off, directs the farce that was written by Mark Twain and intended for production in 1898, in the spirit of real old-school theater. The stage is mic’ed, but not the actors. The stage is simple and brightly lit, relying on the actors to move the proceedings along. And that script!
Maybe, if this was a script of this era, one might wonder why it lingers in classic modes of farce. But walking in without thinking too much about what we were about to see, the show jumps in, feet first, and never really lets you go.
Butz is, at least at first, the straight man to a trio of men of different nations; American, Dutch, and Irish. The show is so light-hearted about it, the modern notion of “oh no, three ethnic groups with the stereotypes,” is just not a factor. Butz’ Jean-Francois Millet is based on the real French artist… and France is where the show is set. But the great stereotypical Frenchman of the show is the arch-villain, Bastien Andre, played wonderfully by Byron Jennings. He is the evil landlord… and they can’t pay the rent… but they gotta pay the rent.
Millet, a starving artist amongst starving artists, is doing amazing work, but it is not cheerful enough. They realize how artists like him are better appreciate after they die. And so, a plot is hatched… he will die in public… and not only will they pay the rent, but hope to get rich.
Of course, this is a big ol’ farce and there has to be at least one big twist to the proceedings… and it is the twisting of Millet, who can’t stand being in hiding. How will he be out in public without being caught not being dead?
And away we go…
The secret to Is He Dead?’s success is great performances – almost every actor gets at least one showstopping moment – tight, tight direction, and a simple, obvious, delightful play. Every time you decide one character is “the best one,” another one comes along with a great bit. You have the two gorgeous sisters, looking for happy, aesthetic marriages… and the two apparent spinster sisters. You have the trip of sidekicks, right out of Twain and reflected in the films of Preston Sturges… they are scoundrels, but righteous, but selfish, but charming as hell. You have the good older man and the evil older man, both considering younger women. And of course, you have the very talented struggling artist, hoping as we do with him, to overcome the fate of so many legendary artists… hoping to enjoy his success while still alive. (You also have David Pittu in five roles, killing each of them, a real character acting star waiting for his Shaloub moment.)
I couldn’t have had more fun… well, at least not without roller skates. I have no idea how the show will be reviewed. (One major critic grimaced his way through the matinee… likely the only person in the intimate Lyceum Theater.) But audiences will be hungry for this great couple hours of old school, big laugh, sweet spirited theater. It will not be the best new play of this year. (Rock-n-Roll is in the lead there.) But this show has the spirit that made Noises Off and Avenue Q such successes. Simple, smart fun. Go.
Posted by poland at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2007
The Theater Ate My Show!
Ever hear someone talk about a theater actor “playing to the back row?” Last night, playing to the back row only reached the front row on Broadway.
Almost exactly three months after having visited Mel Brooks’ new musical of an old movie, Young Frankenstein, in Seattle, we returned to the show on Broadway to see what changes had or had not been made. Expectations were that there would be minimal adjusting, given that a few who have seen it in both venues indicated that Mr. Brooks, Mr. Meehan (his co-writer on the book), and director Susan Stroman had not changed much from Seattle. More striking were the pans of the show coming from various corners of erudite New York.
The rough reality is… the critics are not insane or recklessly brutal. The show, which I thought was at about 80%/85% in Seattle has actually been improved in some areas. But what critics in NY could not have known, having not been to Seattle, is that the problem with Young Frankenstein is not so much the show… it’s the theater.
I could understand harsh reviews in light of the ubiquitousness of The Producers and the inevitability of backlash. But the harshness was overwhelming. And now I know… the stage is overwhelming.
There was talk about the Hilton Theater being a frickin’ barn when Brooks & Co decided to book that theater instead of the St James, where The Producers played so well. But you can’t begin to understand just how delicate the balance of a show and a theater unless you have witnessed this abuse to one of the great physical stage productions I have ever witnessed… reduced to a wailing infant in the massive bosom of this hall. It was stunning.
I don’t know the actual dimensions, but it seemed that the stage was 30 feet wider, 20 feet deeper, that the front of the set was set 10 feet further away from the front row of the theater, and that the proscenium was at least 15 feet higher than in Seattle. The gut feeling was like watching The Tonys set in Radio City Music Hall, which is so much bigger than any stage for most any show on Broadway… or like a touring company of a Broadway show, which play multi-purpose venues that hold over 2000 people so that they can make a mint when a show comes to town for a week or two. (I grew up with the Theater of Performing Arts in Miami Beach, which was so huge that it became a real problem and they had to design ways to cut off large portions of the theater when straight plays came to town.)
It is also not unlike watching a wide-screen movie on a 15” television.
As a result, the one performance that I really felt was too big and unsophisticated for the Seattle run, Andrea Martin’s, is now the absolute showstopper… because she is the only one big enough – and that includes The Monster – to play to the back row effectively. Everyone else, as the reviews keep saying, is lost on that damned stage. Beautiful subtle bits that the audience – and I – loved in Seattle have that touring company hackneyed feel now… not because of the performances, but because of the stage swallowing the subtleties. And the modern convention of amplifying everything makes it worse, because now everyone sounds like they are in this giant television and we are hearing the audio from speakers.
There were some positive changes. Megan Mullally stopped trying quite so hard with the through-the-nose accent and lets loose while belting… to great effect. The first act curtain is much stronger than it was. Some of the chorus stuff was cut down. And most effectively, the narrowed the “Join The Family Business” number and, it seems, hired a stronger performer – or at least gave him more room to be a fuller character – to Victor Frankenstein, played her by Kevin Ligon. It makes a big difference.
But the pain of watching stuff that worked so well get lost on that stage… agony. Please, please, please Mr. Brooks… spend whatever it costs and move the show to another house that won’t swallow it whole! You will be paid back with extra years – really, years – of patronage.
And though I hate experiential journalism, I will offer my sister, who lives in the Washington, D.C. area and comes to New York on package tours a few times a year. Her tastes are not terribly sophisticated… this show is PERFECT for her. But she is already wondering, based on the reviews, if it is a good choice. And I have to say, if I didn’t know what I had seen, I would be questioning whether it was worth seeing. When Fredrick and Inga roll, roll, roll in the hay, the moment is true Broadway magic. But not anymore. It is a great song, great performance, great choreography down to the horses, a great visual… and lost on the massive stage of the Hilton. (One cannot be redundant on this point.)
Even the curtain for the show, which is the image from the film of the Frankenstein castle on the hill… it was beautiful in Seattle and looks like crap here. Why? Well, one of the functional problems of a space that large is lighting needs to be brighter. And you see it all through the show. You are looking at big lights trying to do their work… work you are only supposed to see subconsciously. And it’s like filling a cavern.
I have to admit… at first I thought the actors were bored already, which would be shocking so early in a run. But what they were trying to do is to connect… in any way, connect, like they did in Seattle. So Roger Bart really is SCREAMING all of the time… Christopher Fitzgerald lovely vaudeville stuff becomes him jumping up and down to get your attention, Sutton Foster, lanky and lusty, is barely a prop now, and Shuler Hensley as The Monster is shockingly unimposing.
Move the show. Or it will not be alive, alive half as long as audiences would like it to be. In fact, it may be a better road show than a Broadway show… and it deserves better. It’s not the best show ever. But it’s a lot better than this.
Posted by poland at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2007
Things We Want
Things We Want is the new show from Jonathan Marc Sherman, author of more than a half dozen off-Broadway shows. Having not seen any of the other work, it is hard to put this work into context, other than to say that you can feel from the play that it is a direct descendent of David Rabe’s Hurlyburly… for better and for worse.
The 4-person show, directed by Ethan Hawke, screams out for 4 tour de force performances, the depth of story and subtext no deeper than the individual turns of each character. This show will be very popular in acting classes, since each actor gets a big speech or two that is built to bring down the house. Unfortunately, only one performance has that effect, Peter Dinklage’s. He is stellar.
The show presents three brothers. There is Dinklage, Paul Dano (of Little Miss Sunshine and breaking out for many critics in There Will Be Blood), and Josh Hamilton, who is probably best known for his turn in Kicking & Screaming (the indie one) and for various other indie turns. The conceit is that Dano, as Charlie, returns home to the apartment he owns with his brothers… inherited when their mother followed their father (a few years later) out of the very same window that still dominates the living room. He is distraught over a lost love… or lust… or whatever. One brother (Sty, played by Dinklage) is a funny drunk, spending great effort to find and re-find his blanket and his Jack Daniels bottle (or are they the same?). The third (Teddy, played by Hamilton) is Mr. Positivity, caught up to his intestines with a self-help money-making guru.
Eventually joining this trio, rounding out the cast, is Zoe Kazan, as Stella, who Sty happens to know from his much misused 12 step group.
The big turn – and I don’t want to be too specific – is that in the second act, all three roles have changed in the dynamic of these brothers. You get the feeling, thanks to some very clever writing, that they have been flipping positions for all of their lives. But this also becomes one of the major – and kinda obvious – flaws of the show. Where is the third act, where they all flip again? The play is like a toy that Santa forgot to finish… a toy with a trick that doesn’t announce itself for a while, but then chooses not to reveal itself entirely.
That said, while Dinklage is spectacular playing both sides of his character, the other three all seem better at one side than the other… and clearly out of their depth in the weak one.
SPOILERS
Hamilton is much better playing the facile jackass of a drunk in the second act than he was as the Greg Kinnear in Little Miss Sunshine of the first act. The problem is, one relies on the other for weight. You need someone who is equally convincing in both sides of that personality, the extremes of high and low. Dano makes an excellent post-pubescent schlub. He mopes as well as anyone. But he is still in the habit – in TWBB as well – of raising his voice to show emotion. It was a wonderful play in LMS because he is supposed to be an inarticulate kid… he is a silent actor until he cracks. And even after that first speech, he really doesn’t talk much. Here, his character is really the center of the show. And he’s okay. But the words by Sherman are, it feels, meant to be loaded to the brim with angst and subtext. And as spoken by Dano, they aren’t. And Ms. Kazan feels, especially in the second act, as though the script is resurrecting Judith Ivey’s character from the original production of Hurlyburly, Bonnie… full of pain and broken resolve and piss and vinegar. But Kazan is not quite the spitfire needed. She is game. But the part calls for, as the character defines her, a woman who might not stop a particularly hot sexual moment if she was told right before the moment it would take that she would get AIDS from continuing. Those are some dark, dark demons. And this young actress, stripped of her skirt and asked to simulate a initiation of fellatio on stage, is clearly concerned about how much of her ass is showing and not milking the oral sex beat (pun kinda intended). I’m sure it didn’t help that her parents were watching the performance I attended. But when a character who turns this raw is written, the performance must be at least near historic to be right.
END SPOILERS
I could almost imagine as cast, with Dinklage, as powerful as (all younger incarnations) Judith Ivey as The Girl, Harvey Keitel as the Big Brother, and Bill Hurt as the pained brother seeking solace – all from that first cast of Hurlyburly – and this show being an off-Broadway legend. It’s like a good musical with GREAT performance. And really, with GREAT performances, it might feel like a great play… especially if Sherman cut the first two acts down to 100 minutes and wrote the much-needed third act.
And my third act – SOME NOTION OF SPOILERS HERE for the non-existent act – would be Dano drunk, Hamilton stuck with a kid and maybe a wife, and Dinklage truly on top of the world, in a worldly way. In other words, the third rotation of the wheel.
END SPOILERS
Don’t get me wrong. All four actors in this are good actors and bring some strong moments. But this script, to work, demands titans. And that, except for P.D., they are not. Is that a weakness or a strength? Hard to say.
In the end, Things We Want is not wasted time. It won’t hurt. But it won’t dazzle as it constantly promises to either.
Posted by poland at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)
October 29, 2007
A Catered Affair in San Diego
October 17, 2007
The horror, of course, is that the sheer energy of crap like Legally Blonde and a single thematic song - in that case "Oh My God" - can drive a show to a lot of audience for a long time. And something much more ambitious and thoughtful, like A Catered Affair, will have a hard time seeing Week 8, if they are ever reckless enough to open this on Broadway.
The thing is, from the perspective of the show producers, they see Middle America in San Diego every night rising to their feet and applauding, so what are they to assume? The lack of restraint by audiences is frustrating as someone who wants to feel that rising to my feet for a performance means something profound and is appropriately special to the actor(s) and director and writers. Some would say driven to nightly standing ovations for every show because they paid so much that they need to prove the money was earned. Perhaps audiences are simply empathetic to the actors who do such a great job up there, even if they don't much like the show. Either way, how do producers on the road judge what they really have when the audience response is either walkouts or overenthusiasm?
How do any of us know what's real anymore?
Posted by poland at 01:58 AM | Comments (0)
Young Frankenstein In Seattle - Detailed, Spoiler Notes
August 29, 2007
This is the follow-up to Monday's spoiler-free review column on Young Frankenstein, now out-of-towning in Seattle. Don't read a word if you want to maintain a show surprise, though most of it is set by the movie we all know so well.
ACT ONE
Scene 1: A Village In Transylvania, 1934
"Frankenstein Is Dead, The Happiest Town In Town"
Posted by poland at 01:56 AM | Comments (0)
Young Frankenstein In Seattle - Spoiler Free
August 27, 2007
The thrill and the horror of Young Frankenstein is that it, unlike The Producers, has the feel of the giant machine shows that have been hitting Broadway in recent years. For instance, the current Grease revival - generated not by the need for a revival, but as a guaranteed pre-sale based on a television contest that theoretically made intimate celebrities of the new Danny & Sandy. (I can’t wait for the all-Real World/Road Rules revival of Spring Awakening in a few years.) Or the insultingly bad, but terribly energetic turn of Legally Blonde from a teen girl cult movie into a teen girl cult Broadway show. Once we learned that Disney knew how to make a Broadway show as special as its family films, we can now expect hits when they make the transfer (even if Tarzan, their first non-musical movie turned musical theater show, flopped.)
Some of these shows, including the jukebox musicals, reach well beyond their roots. The Lion King does. So does Jersey Boys. And of course, The Producers. For me, Spamalot is the example of where the line is clearest. The show is at its best when it uses the Python movie as a starting point for its wonderful musical hall style humor, way off the narrative. The show is at its worst when pandering to the audience that is expecting to see “It’s just a flesh wound” or “Pink… no blue… agghhhhh!” Some moments just don’t transfer. And I am pleased to report that Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan had the good sense to realize that the little girl on the see-saw flying back into her bed was just not going to make it as anything but a laugh of recognition in their show and left it out.
In point of fact, Young Frankenstein does a pretty damned good job of walking that line. Reading the reviews in Seattle after first seeing the show on Friday, I was surprised how unilaterally they all seemed to argue that the show suffered from the “already know the lines” syndrome, especially in kicking at some of the performances. Not I. I was actually quite pleased to find that six of the seven major performers really did find their own space in creating these legendary characters for the stage, even when uttering the same lines.
Posted by poland at 01:54 AM | Comments (0)
Not So Under The Sea
Sept 5, 2007
There is no drama like theater people throwing gossip around about the latest show they hope goes down the drain. When shows fail, the gossip is "I told you so." When the gossiped about shows hit, they suddenly forget that there was any fuss at all.
The latest show to get bashed and bashed hard is Disney "The Little Mermaid," now in a pre-Broadway run in Denver';s Ellie Caukins Opera House. Variety's David Rooney shredded the show and soon after, Michael Reidel, The NY Post's theater attack dog, threw the Variety review and every rumor about the show out into a spectacularly bitchy column.
So The Little Mermaid must be one dead fish, right?
Wrong.
Posted by poland at 01:44 AM | Comments (0)
Hairspray: The Musical Movie
July 13, 2007
I first saw it in a slightly premature screening - New Line was thrilled with what was delivered - and the show was so charming and sweet that it was pretty irresistible. Still, there were flaws that stuck out, the most frustrating being that Adam Shankman is a better choreographer than a visual director. He set things up beautifully and then didn't quite know how to show it. Often, he over-edited when what we, as an audience, needed was a simple shot of the person singing or dancing ... the emotion is in the eyes and physicality of some great performances.
When I finally saw the final version, there were two notable differences ... and, for me, improved the experience by about 20%. First, it felt like Shankman had taken out some of the edits that felt so hyperactive. And secondly - and more importantly - the soundtrack, serviced by composer Marc Shaiman, was complete.
It was truly fascinating to experience. I am used to seeing rough cuts of films. I understand cutting and what is and isn't there when a movie is shown mid-process. But the difference between the first and second screening, for me, was like seeing tiles in a bathroom when they are just being placed and then, when the grouting is done just right. The music, which is far lusher than the Original Broadway Cast Album, fills the empty spaces in a remarkable way. Shots that weren't changed work better than before. And in a show like this, there is something powerful about how rich, emotive wall-to-wall music acts as a hammock for everything else. This is not like Chicago or Dreamgirls, pretending on some level that they were not traditional musicals. This is overtly a musical, from the first number, as Tracy wakes up singing and does the John Waters version of the Beauty & The Beast opening "Belle" number as she walks around Baltimore.
Posted by poland at 01:30 AM | Comments (0)
The Unexpected Pleasure Of Xanadu
June 29, 2007
I saw the biggest new hit to land Off-Broadway in years. Unfortunately for the show, it’s opening on Broadway next Tuesday.
Xanadu, which I bought tickets for after a half-price opportunity showed up in the e-mail and have been apologizing for since whenever answering “what are you seeing in New York?,” turns out to be (nearly) the best of all possible answers to the question, “Why the hell would anyone make a Broadway show out of one of the crappiest movies ever?”
Xanadu deserves to be on the list of Broadway adaptations of other media that actually did the job of creating something more than a pale reproduction, along with The Lion King, Wicked (which does a better job of reflecting on The Wizard of Oz than of the novel that is so much smarter than the show) and Avenue Q (which spins Sesame Street). Xanadu takes the insane camp of the film and reflects on not only the film itself but the absurdities of all kinds of cultural ideas, especially on Broadway, and offers no fewer than three show-stealing performances, which is all you can expect from any show.
Posted by poland at 01:27 AM | Comments (0)