Wednesday, November 29, 2006

In comes Company…

New York Times: A Revival Whose Surface of Tundra Conceals a Volcano

Fire flickers, dangerous and beckoning, beneath the frost of John Doyle’s elegant, unexpectedly stirring revival of “Company,” which opened last night at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. This visually severe, aurally lush reinvention of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s era-defining musical of marriage and its discontents from 1970 is the chicest-looking production on Broadway.

Newsday: Bobby and company were never so together

[Raul] Esparza, looking relaxed yet detached in a charcoal suit and tie, turns his seductively sleepy eyelids into virtuoso instruments. Although he has played plenty of flashy roles, Esparza cleverly builds tension by holding back until he breaks loose at the piano for Bobby's ultimate (if psychologically dubious) acceptance of "Being Alive." ... [He] finds all the bitterness, hope, bemusement and sullen charm in the colors of his voice.

Variety: Broadway: Company

As Robert, the central figure marking his 35th birthday by pondering why he's the only one of his circle not married, Raul Esparza strikes just the right balance of easy charm and circumspect distance, alone even in a crowd of friends. He's a deeply ambiguous mass of swirling contradictions -- confused but self-knowing, seductive but standoffish, vulnerable but heavily armored, open to love but ambivalent. And Bobby's sexual identity is called more directly into question here than perhaps ever before.

USA Today: Revival of 'Company' works, most of the time

Barbara Walsh's dry, haunted Joanne is a standout, bringing an extra layer of rage to Sondheim's brilliant barbfest "The Ladies Who Lunch". Heather Laws and Elizabeth Stanley amuse as neurotic Amy and dizzy April.

Associated Press: A Chilly, High-Concept Company

By the time Bobby gets to his revelatory moment — "Being Alive" — and sits down at the piano, we are more than ready for his enlightenment. Esparza, who has a powerful voice, gives it his all. The man finally surrenders to his feelings, and for the first time during the evening, we are touched.

And, well, you already know what I think. After an early preview performance in New York a few weeks ago, my opinion stands: this is the best damn Company I've seen—and I've seen quite a few.

Don't miss it.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Now you can see The Light…

Light in the Piazza to Air June 15 on Live From Lincoln Center

The June 15 performance of the Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the Piazza will be aired at 8pm that evening on PBS' Live at Lincoln Center. The show is scheduled to close at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre on July 2, and will then begin a 50-week national tour in August.

The aired performance is scheduled to star Tony Award winner Victoria Clark, Sarah Uriarte Berry, Michael Berresse, Katie Clarke, Patti Cohenour, Beau Gravitte, Aaron Lazar, and Chris Sarandon.

I love this show and I'm thrilled that Victoria Clark's performance will be preserved on video. That Tony was richly deserved. Now a large audience can see why.

Thursday, April 6, 2006

Those good and crazy people…

OK, try not to act too surprised by this revelation: I was wrong.

The marriage between Stephen Sondheim's music and John Doyle's directing is proving to be fruitful. Mr. Doyle's acclaimed production of "Company," now playing in Cincinnati, is headed for Broadway by the end of the year, its New York producers said. There it will join the hit revival of "Sweeney Todd," by Mr. Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, which is also directed by Mr. Doyle.

My recommendation stands. See it, in Ohio or in Manhattan.

Sunday, April 2, 2006

Phone rings, door chimes…

I scooted over to Cincinnati last Thursday to see Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's production of Stephen Sondheim's Company, my second-favorite Sondheim show. (My first, for entirely sentimental reasons, is Merrily We Roll Along. No one else I know counts it in their top five.)

One of the things that distinguishes live theatre from the movies is that our relationship to shows can change in two dimensions: either as a factor of a different production that changes some aspect of the play or of the fact that we're the ones who have changed since first seeing it or, for that matter, both. Movies are static and unchanging; our estimation of them changes only if we acknowledge a change in ourselves (age, experience, whatever).

My relationship with Company changes every time I see it, and this was no exception. I last saw the show four years ago at the Kennedy Center, with John Barrowman as Bobby and Lynn Redgrave as Joanne. I said at the time it was the best production I was likely to see for a while; the Cincinnati production now holds that distinction. I'm also a few years older. Joanne's line late in act two about their set being "too young for the old people and too old for the young people" seems a little more apt to me now. That's certainly how I've been feeling lately.

As for the production itself, I can't improve on the praise the many regional and national reviews have piled on it. It just works, and certainly better that director John Doyle's current New York production of Sweeney Todd that employs the same conceit (the actors accompanying themselves as the orchestra), which I enjoyed but didn't love. Company just works better this way, and the necessary compression of the score and reduction of the stage business reinvents the show as more of a chamber piece, boiling it down to the essence.

Short takes: Raul Esparza, who I like more every time I see him, is hands-down the best Bobby I've ever seen. He sings the hell out of—and means every word of—"Being Alive". I'd never seen a production that interpolated "Marry Me a Little"; here it ends the first act and, rather than diminish the finale as I'd feared, it actually enhances it. When Bobby gets to "Being Alive", you realize "Marry Me a Little" was a perfectly logical, perfectly appropriate stop on his emotional journey. "Barcelona" doesn't work as well when April and Bobby aren't naked and in bed, but I sure don't miss the "Tick-Tock" ballet. Barbara Walsh is fierce as Joanne, the least self-deluded and most honest character in the piece. David Gallo's minimalist set looks great in the Marx space, aided by Tom Hase's lighting, and $30,000 worth of designer clothes look fantastic on the cast in stark black and white. The rest of the company was superb, particularly Matt Castle (hubba hubba) as Peter and Heather Laws as Amy. There were a few places where I thought the sound could have been better, but that may have been a consequence of where I was sitting in the fourth row. Some friends seated in the last row on the floor said the vocal/music mix was fine.

The production continues through April 14 and, although it is substantially sold out, I encourage you to see it if you can. Despite the optimism of my friends at the Playhouse, who have seen a parade of New York producers and potential backers in the audience over the past few weeks, I will be very surprised if this particular production has a life outside Ohio.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Stage on TV

Televised Opera and Musical Comedy Database

Developed in association with the Indiana University Digital Library Program, the Televised Opera and Musical Comedy Database documents more than a half-century of opera, operetta, and musical comedy telecasts produced in the United States. The database traces performance programming from early live presentations on experimental TV stations, to contemporary productions released on broadcast television, various cable forms, and home video.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Pitfalls

The Intermission Escape Artist
Or, How One Lifelong Theater Devotee Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the Form.

Theater has openly flirted with suckiness since Thespis sassed back from the chorus line. The possibility of disaster is inherent in the form: Every great theatrical event requires harmonious excellence from an array of people, from playwright and director to the various designers; with actors and technicians, the requisite proficiency must also be simultaneous, and produced anew night after night after night. But the risk amps the reward: Yes, nothing sucks like bad theater, but nothing thrills like good theater, and the threat of the former only compounds the joy of the latter.

But beyond the suck potential brought by the high-wire aspect of the form, live theater faces other deadly risks�threats far more insidious than a dumbstruck actor, or a director whose vision consists of transposing The Two Gentlemen of Verona to the antebellum American South. The worst of these threats can abort even the possibility of real theater in utero, and the name of this most heinous threat is romance�specifically, the romanticization of the theatrical form.

Thursday, August 4, 2005

Swamped

Rehearsals start Tuesday for the season, a front-loaded whirlwind that includes seven openings in 12 weeks starting next month. (Get a glimpse of the madness: the mini-site for our new series—a site, incidentally, built in one manic day by yours truly and before anyone says a word, the splash page was not my idea—or see the whole shooting match on our mothership site.)

I just did my daily review of my to-do list for the next two weeks, and my calendar through December. There is not one free day, weekends included, until well into November. Fortunately, I'm too tired to cry.

And I've never had so much fun in my life.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Bugle boys and bugle beads

With one or two exceptions, I must admit I don't much care for the particular brand of musical comedy cornpone peddled by Jerry Herman. The exceptions are Mack and Mabel and Mame. Now, just admitting that probably puts me out of favor with a few folks who'll contend that La Cage aux Folles is an inviolable historic masterpiece and that if for nothing but the sheer audicity and longevity of its most famous star, Hello, Dolly is to the musical theatre canon as Hamlet is to the drama.

Yeah. Whatevs.

Anyway, for a variety of very good reasons, hardly anyone produces Mack and Mabel these days. Mame, on the other hand, is everywhere, God love her, although some Mrs. Dennis-Burnsides are better than others. I still love the show and, thanks to my uncanny abilities of selective perception, I can even watch most of the movie version while editing out the execrable performance by Lucille Ball on the fly.

With great anticipation, then, I braved the oppressive heat last night to see Dee Hoty assay the role at The Muny. I adore Dee (she's an alum of our stage and a bright talent) and couldn't wait to see her coax the blues right out of the horn.

Well: the direction was not very good, the scenic design was a bit of pretty mess, the costumes were hit or miss and there were a couple of very, very dubious casting decisions—look, I love, love, love Georgia Engel (another Rep alum, by the way), but putting her in the role of Agnes Gooch who (and I don't think I'm spoiling any suspense here) gets pregnant in Act II is a pretty wide chasm across which to ask the audience to stretch its suspension of disbelief.

But you know what? None of that really matters, because Dee Hoty was an utterly fabulous Mame and I may even sweat through another three hours to see her sing the role again, she's that good. (I'm not quite at the "Angela who?" point yet, but I could be soon.) There are a few fleeting moments where her emotional pitch seemed just a tad off, but I can't fathom she won't find the right note on that count by tonight or Wednesday. She's a sexy, indefatigable, jubilant Jazz baby and, once the wonderful Jeff McCarthy shows up as Beauregard, they make a thoroughly winsome stage pair.

In fact, the cast around Hoty is almost uniformly swell: McCarthy as Beau, Beth Leavel as Vera, Christian Probst (yep, a Rep rat) and Colin Donnell as the Patricks. Even as the apparently-biologically-miraculous Gooch, Engel is a gem.

See it and, if you can't in its Muny run through Sunday, watch the papers for any possibility that Dee Hoty will be taking up residence at a #3 Beekman Place in your neck of the woods. She's my new best girl, at least as far as this show is concerned.

Friday, July 1, 2005

Best Podcast in a Leading Role

The American Theatre Wing now offers a podcast of its weekly interview show Downstage Center, which features working artists from on and Off-Broadway and around the country.

The program is also aired on XM satellite radio (channel 28) and available through a Real audio archive on the ATW website.

Another theatre-related interview podcast: Erich Bergen's Green Room Radio.

Got a favorite?

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Well, there you are…

OK, this one is for the musical theatre geeks in the audience. (I know you're there.) Although, frankly, I doubt you'd really even have to be an acolyte of the thespianic persuasion to spot the error in this eBay listing.

On the other hand, perhaps it's not a mistake at all. Which would make this copy of an already rare commodity rarer still indeed. No bids so far. Here's your chance to score!

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Tony Nominations 2005

Watching the Tony Award nominations announced this morning didn't really yield any stunning surprises, and despite having enjoyed a rather good Broadway season, I can't really muster much enthusiasm for the doling out of the awards themselves this year.

Herewith a few handicapping notes and picks:

Doubt, hands down, for Best Play. Frayn is just too, too for the Tonys, The Pillowman is way too severe and Wilson, well...I'm just tired of Wilson plays. I think he ran out of things to say four or five titles back. Spamalot will be the Best Musical winner. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a lot of fun, but there's no there there. The Light in the Piazza has a gorgeous score and there's a lot of there there, but it's really too gentle to take a Tony. (It'll get a lot of regional play in the years to come, so don't worry it'll go unseen.) And Dirty Rotten Scoundrels disappointed me. I love the story, but the music often sounds like Full Monty trunk songs and the staging lacked elan. I'll say of Spamalot what I said a few years ago about Hairspray: It's not great art and probably not the best musical on Broadway this year, but it is hands down the most fun I had as a theatregoer this year. Give 'em the medallion and tell 'em to back the truck up to the stage door for a few more.

The other musical awards: Best Book to Craig Lucas and Best Score to Adam Guettel. Best revival? Neither La Cage aux Folles or Sweet Charity were in any way remarkable remountings. I give the edge to Pacific Overtures and hope the Tony voters have long memories. I certainly enjoyed the Roundabout's production, although it didn't top the Chicago Shakespeare staging from a couple of years ago. All of the leading actor nominees are pretty damn good, but give Norbert Leo Butz the trophy. He was a head-and-a-half better than Lithgow (and that's saying something) and he's an old college chum. Alums stick together.

Oh, that Best Actress category! I was a little amused to see Christina Applegate nominated but, hey, what were they going to do? Give Eden Espinosa a pity nom? A wail-belt does not a robust performance make. Anyway, Applegate is fun and flouncy and if Charity isn't a very good production, she's got charm by the bucket and could grow into the part by the time the curtain's rung down. (Besides, I haven't seen a more feminine Applegate on Broadway since Victor Garber did Damn Yankees.) Anyway, Victoria Clark deserves the Tony. Little Women didn't really challenge Sutton Foster and Sherie Rene Scott was really just playing Sherie Rene Scott in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I haven't seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and I do like Erin Dilly, but I think this is Clark's category in a walk.

I think Christopher Sieber's probably a lock for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, and while all of the women in the Featured Actress category are swell, I nod to Joanna Gleason. After Norby, she was my favorite thing about Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Best Scenic Design: Sight unseen, I'd guess Anthony Ward will get it for Chitty and Tim Hatley will probably win Best Costumes for Spamalot, although I though William Ivey Long's clothes for La Cage were a lot of fun. Best Lighting Design is no question: Christopher Akerlind for Piazza. The light for the show is, after all, the title character, and he made it a role to remember.

For the plays, the rightly legendary John Lee Beatty leads for Best Scenic Design with Doubt, and while I didn't see The Rivals, none of the other costume nominees were particularly stretched by their assignments, so I'll give the edge to Jess Goldstein, whose work I've appreciated in the past (those towels in Take Me Out!) and who probably deserves something for surviving Good Vibrations. I really liked Brian MacDevitt's lights for The Pillowman, and that's the only one among the nominees that stood out for me, so there you go.

Best Leading Actor in a Play: I bet Billy Crudup gets it for The Pillowman, but I'd give it to Brian O'Byrne for Doubt, while passing the Best Actress trophy to Cherry Jones with the other hand. (I haven't seen On Golden Pond nor Sight Unseen, but Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner were awful—horribly miscast and poorly directed—in Virginia Woolf, and I like Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner!) Best Featured Actor: Who the hell knows? All of the Glengarry Glen Ross guys were fantastic, even Liev Schreiber who I ordinarily can't stand. Edge to Alda, I suppose. Either Adriane Lenox or Heather Goldenhersh could take Featured Actress and I'd be happy; they gave solid performances and (have you guessed?) I loved the play.

Best Direction: Mike Nichols (musical), Doug Hughes (play). Best Choreography: Jerry Mitchell, probably for La Cage aux Folles (poor fella, if he wins, he loses). The Piazza should take Best Orchestrations; could they possibly have crammed in more strings?!

Hmm...I sat down to jot a few notes and I think I hit all the major awards. Maybe I'm more enthusiastic about the season than I realized.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Is this a doughnut I see before me?

D'oh! I don't know whether to be frightened, disappointed, excited or scared. I love The Simpsons. I love Shakespeare. I'm not sure what to think about the prospect of MacHomer, a one-man version of the Scottish play performed entirely using voices from The Simpsons.

I suppose I'll have to reconcile my feelings one way or another. Rick Miller's show plays at the Blanche on May 13.

Here's a NPR interview with Miller about the show from 2003.

Saturday, February 19, 2005

A new road to The Rep

With requisite apologies to my friends and familiars for whom I haven't had as much time or attention over the past few months, this might explain a bit what's been distracting me.

At a time when regional theaters around the country are cutting back programs and bemoaning an aging audience, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis is taking a nervy step in the opposite direction. This fall, it will add a third subscription series, one with an urban setting and a provocative sensibility.

Have a look. Off-Ramp is gonna be a lot of fun.

On the other hand...seven openings in 13 weeks? Brad's gonna be tired.

And, as if I actually needed evidence that creating more art in today's cultural and economic environment is a chancy dare, today came the news that the long-struggling Charlotte Rep is going dark for good.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

The Mystery is almost history

The Mystery is almost history: It's been a crazy month at work: three shows in rehearsal, one on stage and a major event just around the corner make Brad something something. But it's been even crazier than a typical December, thanks to the marvelously madcap production of Rupert Holmes' The Mystery of Edwin Drood we've had on stage.

It's such a fantastic company and a real romp of a script and score! And there are only four performances remaining in the run so if you've heard about it and put off going, your chances are slipping away. After this week, the Mystery is history.

Monday, May 3, 2004

Farewell, friends…

Spot the theme:

1. This 1991 Broadway musical starred Alison Fraser, Mandy Patinkin and Daisy Egan, the youngest actress ever to win a Tony Award.
2. Wilson Jermaine Heredia played Angel in this Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning 1996 musical.
3. Robert Weede played the title role of this 1956 Frank Loesser musical (also revived on Broadway in 1979 and 1992) that featured the song, "Joey, Joey, Joey".
4. Cy Coleman wrote the music and Larry Gelbart wrote the book for this 1989 musical heavily influenced by the works of Raymond Chandler.
5. Richard Adler and Jerry Ross wrote the music and lyrics for 1955's Damn Yankees and for this 1954 musical based on the novel 7-1/2 Cents.
6. Joanna Gleason made her Broadway debut as Monica in this 1977 musical about wife-swapping, which also starred Lenny Baker and James Naughton.
7. After she went on as a replacement Fantine in Les Miserables, Rachel York played a ditzy blonde bombshell named Norma in this 1995 stage adaptation of a movie.
8. In this 1888 Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, a young maiden named Phoebe loses her heart to a scientist sentenced to death for sorcery.

Oh for heaven's sake, cut me a little slack on the first one, eh?

Monday, April 19, 2004

Season in review

We wrapped up our season at the theatre this weekend and said "so long" to two marvelous casts. For the past few years, it's been a personal tradition to take some time to reflect on the shows I saw over the past few months and pick out my highlights. I've always made notes to this effect in my personal, private memoirs but I suppose there's no reason not to share my impressions here as well.

It's not easy to sort through 182 ticket stubs — surpassing 1998's high of 176 — and choose my personal bests and disappointments. But I generally wait until the season's end to do it, figuring that the impressions that linger in my mind sometimes months after the fact are the strongest and most true.

Please note that the list is in no particular order, that I've pitched in a couple of concerts, and that I'm including the good, the bad and the "meh".

Bounce: I saw this show three times during the season, twice at the Goodman in Chicago and once during it's run at the Kennedy Center. Flawed though it may be, I have a soft spot for it still, thanks to the infectious title tune, the absolutely charming Richard Kind as Addison Mizner and the always delicious Gavin Creel as Hollis. Howard McGillin was a bit out of his depth as the more scheming of the two Mizners; I kept wondering what the show would have felt like if Nathan Lane had reprised the role after tearing into it with gusto in the 1999 OB workshop I saw, back when it was still Wise Guys. (Unfortunately, I figure Richard Kind would have been eaten alive in the midst of the scenery chewing.) Bounce didn't make it to Broadway — with cause — but I'm looking forward to the cast album, recorded in Washington, which will be released next month.

Wicked: I didn't dislike this show as much as some of my friends — one of whom absolutely loathed it — and I didn't adore it as much as the gaggle of rabid show queens I ran into in Chicago last week. But I thought it had a lot to recommend it, especially considering its scant nods to the source material and a decidedly lackluster Stephen Schwartz score. Idina Menzel gave, as always, a simply fabulous performance as Elphaba and Kristin Chenowith was an appropriately bubbly Galinda (although she seemed to be treating the show as her audition piece for Legally Blonde: The Musical. I can understand why it continues to pack the Gershwin night after night. Still, meh.

The Boy From Oz: I saw this in the company of some particularly enthusiastic Hugh Jackman fans — although I'm not sure there's a night at the Imperial when you can't say that — and it was boon fun. Jackman is fantastic, the production numbers are appropriately over-the-top as befits their provenance, and Beth Fowler, Isabel Keating and Mitchel David Federan turn in such wonderful performances, it's a shame the show won't survive without its leading man. I liked the show fine, but I'd rather have Peter Allen back writing cabaret again.

Taboo: Awful. Awful. Awful. On the night I saw the show, a fist fight broke out for some reason a couple of rows behind me and to the right. I was tempted to turn around and watch it instead of Taboo. It was probably a lot more interesting. Rosie O'Donnell could have offered me $10 million to see the show and I'd have to think about it.

Caroline or Change: Nobody but nobody does white liberal guilt on stage like Tony Kushner. There are bits of this musical that are too ponderous and drawn out, but in between them are some joyous moments of song and sympathy. See this when it transfers to the O'Neill next month, but act quickly. I've a feeling it won't last long outside the protective bubble of the Public Theater, although it deserves — and will get — great play in the regionals.

Homebody/Kabul: On the other hand...well, actually, I liked Act I of this more traditional Kushner nudge-fest a lot. It's an amazing tour de force monologue that I would have welcomed hearing more of in the second and third acts. Amy Morton just played the hell out of it in the Steppenwolf production. By the end of the play, though, I was just tired. Long Day's Journey Into Night tired. The non-ending gave me a lot to think about for a few days and I've always admired Frank Galati's directorial style, but now I'm quite lukewarm about the piece.

The Light in the Piazza: It's not usually good to have the urge to leave immediately while sitting in the theatre but, damn, did I ever want to get up from my seat at The Goodman and catch the next plane for Florence while watching this. From the lush, string-laden overture (and all the wonderful music by Adam Guettel) to the alternately heart-tugging and -rending performance by Victoria Clark to the pure sex of Wayne Wilcox's voice, it was every inch a winner. It's a beautiful paean to finding human connections in utterly foreign places and situations.

Avenue Q: A must-see. Probably the most pure fun I've had in the theatre in the last year. Nude puppets and the hilarious John Tartaglia — what could be better? (The answer, of course, is if the two were reversed.) It's the most hummable, quotable score of the season and contains the most optimistic line: "George Bush is only for now." Let us all pray they have to change the lyrics in a couple of months. It messes with the rhyme scheme, but I like the sound of "George Bush was only for then."

Never Gonna Dance: A friend of mine called this Never Gonna Sell and, it turns out, he was right. I enjoyed it thoroughly, thanks mostly to the lithe and graceful Noah Racey, to the timeless Jerome Kern songs, and to Jeff Hatcher's winking book. Nancy Lemenager, Peter Gerety, Karen Ziemba — the whole cast just looked like they were having great fun putting on a show. It was sure infectious. I happened to see this on the same weekend as the gorgeous Wonderful Town and while I love musicals that love New York, I loved Never Gonna Dance just a smidge more.

Aunt Dan and Lemon: Not to everyone's taste, but probably the best play I saw in New York this year (not forgetting I Am My Own Wife, which is really in a class of its own). Kristen Johnson's performance was sublime. The production had a few stumbles that pointed up how difficult it can be to get Wallace Shawn's plays right, but I enjoyed it all the same.

Side by Side by Sondheim: The Muny just shouldn't do revues, particularly given the unfortunate tendency of local audiences not to "get" Sondheim. Still, if folks were a little lost here, it wasn't entirely their fault. Under-rehearsed and over-miked, it was a train wreck. Dropped or misspoken lyrics might be overlooked in retros of other composers' work, but lose a line from "Getting Married Today" and it's dead.

Show Boat: This, on the other hand, is a show tailor-made for The Muny and unlike most of their retreads, I'm apt to show up any time it's offered. Michel Bell gave his reliable, wonderful performance as Joe and Karen Morrow fared considerably better as Parthenia than she did in the Sondheim tragedy above.

Starlight Express: No, no, a thousand times no. I actually kind of liked this show years ago when I saw the original production in London. On tour these days, particularly in a barn like the Fox Theatre, it's just wretched. A gimmicky 3-D film replaces the once-thrilling rollerskate race scenes and, as a result, the whole production never achieves any momentum at all, much less the massive amount needed to sell the trite songs.

As for stuff that we did...

Metamorphoses: Time to toot the horn for the home team. We opened The Rep season with this show and it simply couldn't have been better. A wonderful cast full of new friends (including Manu Narayan, who's currently on the boards in Broadway's version of Bombay Dreams) and an ethereal pool on stage made it like the dream it was meant to evoke. I saw two productions of this show in New York and, rah-rah for our side notwithstanding, I liked ours better.

The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?: Edward Albee's devastating family drama just blew me away the first time I saw it in New York, then again in The Goodman's stellar production with Barbara Robertson as Stevie. The third time was a charm, though, with Andy Matthews and Carolyn Swift in our Studio Theatre production. Absolutely pitch-perfect and an exemplary performance of Albee's smart, precise language.

The Last Five Years: Tony Holds and Kate Baldwin were the perfect Jamie and Kathy in our final Studio production. Don't get me wrong: I adore Norbert Butz, but Tony really nailed the mix of insecurity and ego, swept up by the confusion and pressure of a meteoric career rise, that the role calls for, such a potentially loveable asshole. And as for Kate, she's going places and they're all good (including Paper Mill's Guys and Dolls this summer). I was so sad to see this cast leave.

Concert Highlights: The big three for me this year were Bette Midler's "Kiss My Brass" (seen in an early incarnation at Savvis Center and which I understand just got better along the tour), Eddie Izzard's "Sexie" and The Eagles' "Farewell I" tour. I didn't get to as many arena shows or other concerts this year as I have in the past, and there's not much on the summer roster that really appeals to me. Ah well.

Who knows? Perhaps in a few weeks, I'll offer my prognostications with regard to the gay Super Bowl. For the first time in a couple of years, I've actually seen everything likely to get a major nom.

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Help save a theatre

James McNally -- who, I swear, will steal my Lucky Charms some day if I don't keep an eye on him -- passes along word that Toronto's Brookstone Theatre is facing a fiscal crisis.

For the past 15 years, Brookstone Theatre has been fulfilling its mandate "to radically re-connect theatre and spirit." Brookstone is a small but passionate theatre company that has received many positive reviews and Dora Award nominations (the Canadian equivalent of Broadway's Tony Awards). They receive a small amount of government funding, but since their mandate is broadly Christian, they don't receive the same amount of public funds as other theatre companies of their size. Among churches and the Christian community, Brookstone often gets overlooked or simply challenges people's ideas of what "Christian theatre" should be a little too much. They exist, like many innovators, between two worlds.

The thing that has always threatened to happen is happening now. Brookstone is in danger of falling through the cracks. If they are unable to raise $30,000 by the end of January, Brookstone will simply cease to exist. This would leave an empty hole in the soul of our city. Nobody else is doing what Brookstone tries, and succeeds at, bringing issues of spirituality into the realm of professional theatre. There is not one performance I have attended in the past ten years that has not moved me and caused me to think.

If you're move to pitch in a few bucks or more, there are more details here.

Thursday, January 1, 2004

Theatre on the Cheap

I probably get a dozen calls or e-mail messages every week from folks planning trips to New York or other cities who want to know what they should see at local theatres while there. Actually, what many of them really want to know is if I can score them some primo tickets through industry connections. (I often can, but most are surprised to learn that they're expected to pay for them. I can usually hook up a set of great top price house seats to a Broadway show or just about any legit house in the country, but comps? Forget about it!)

Anyway, the next question from theatre fans is usually how to get the most for their money, and there I can help. Here are a few tips I generally pass along:

New York: Discount tickets to Broadway and off-Broadway shows can be purchased (cash only) at the TKTS booths, operated by the Theatre Development Fund, in Times Square or at the South Street Seaport on the day of performance. Usually, half price or sometimes 25 percent off tickets are available. Demand for these cheap seats is high, so check the booth hours and queue up early for best selection. (It may seem tedious, but waiting on line at TKTS is also a great way to meet people.)

If you prefer to purchase show tickets in advance (and many travelers do), you can still take advantage of discounts on popular shows. Check with your credit card provider; many (American Express and Visa, particularly) make special ticket offers from time to time. A boon for frugal theatregoers is the community website Broadway Box, which collects news, contributed by readers, of special offers and discount codes which you can then use to purchase tickets.

With discount codes, you can mention them to the operator during phone sales or type them into the order form on sites such as Ticketmaster to get the savings. Telecharge, which offers online sales for many New York venues, won't take discount codes, but their partner site, Broadway Offers exists just for that purpose.

Chicago: Check out the Hot Tix booths near the Daley Center or at the Water Tower visitors center on Michigan, which offer half-price "day of" seats for over 100 Chicago-area theatres. Hot Tix offers are also available at some Tower Records stores. Some locations take plastic, elsewhere it's cash only.

Washington, DC: Ticketplace is another half-price day of performance outlet, located at the Old Post Office, with tickets for the Olney, Kennedy Center, Washington Opera, Wooly Mammoth and many more. Cash and cards accepted.

London: There's a tkts booth in Leicester Square, although it's not affiliated with the Theatre Development Fund, which runs the New York booths of the same name. Same basic deal, though. Half-price, day of show, cash and cards accepted.

I've used all of the above options at one point or another; selection can be feast or famine with these places, but I've seldom been disappointed. The TDF website has a list of discount ticket booths in other cities around the world.

In St. Louis, many theatres and cultural organizations offer discounts and special offers through Big Thank You.

Monday, December 29, 2003

Thanks for the internet, Al!

Thanks for the internet, Al! I had to look twice at this picture of President Clinton and Trekkie Monster from Avenue Q, just to make sure I was seeing the word "perv" in the right place.

Monday, December 8, 2003

How audiences should act

Bravo! Mind your theater manners

December is the best-selling month of the year for local theaters. ... Some say that's because of all the holiday office parties, but I suspect it's partly because the first thing old friends and family members tend to do after reuniting is plan activities that do not require them to actually speak to one another. So they go to the theater.

Because so many December theatergoers are first-timers, it seemed a good opportunity to pass on a few tips (OK, vents) about proper behavior in a theater, which really isn't so different from offering tips on how to properly behave in any developing country.

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

June 10, 2003

Babs on Broadway: One more Tony note, and then I'll move on. Maybe. During the telecast, presenter Barbara Walters quipped that, although she'd never appeared on Broadway, she was invited to present the award for best revival because the producers presumed she'd seen all of the original productions. "I missed 'La Boheme' when it premiered in 1896," she dead-panned. "I was out of town."

Nice joke. But the set-up isn't strictly true. Barbara Walters did appear on Broadway, in 1962's short-lived musical A Family Affair, playing "Sheila" and as a member of the chorus. The show lasted only 65 performances, but also marked the Broadway debut for Linda Lavin. It was composer John Kander's first show too, and the only one he wrote without collaborator Fred Ebb.

The show was recorded by its original cast, but the LP is long out of print and the score remains unreleased on compact disc. I already have the album in my collection, but if you're itching to hear it, there's one up for bid on eBay.

Sunday, June 8, 2003

June 8, 2003—The Tony Awards

Sometimes, you don't gotta have a gimmick: For as long as I've been watching them -- and I'm only speaking from 20 years or so of experience, so I may be wrong -- the annual Tony Awards telecasts have all succeeded in at least one respect: they got me excited about the theatre. Especially when I was growing up, passionate about music and drama and dance, the Tonys were my ticket, literally, to New York. Every year for two or three hours, television became a window on a world that otherwise existed only in my imagination and within the covers of original cast recordings and scripts that I devoured in my tiny rural midwestern town.

Even as an adult (and an adult so blessed to be working in the industry I love) who finally had the opportunity to routinely travel to the Big Apple itself and see the shows firsthand and meet the professionals who made the magic and, sometimes, to just stand in the middle of Times Square and bathe in the lights, sounds and chaos of Broadway -- even then and now, the Tonys were special. Sacred. A night when the phone came off the hook, a big bowl of popcorn was produced and libations were chilled in anticipation of a TV program not to be missed.

Earlier this week, I turned down two dinner invitations (from gay friends, even! What were they thinking?!) because tonight they'd be doling out the Tony Awards and I wouldn't miss 'em for the world.

I should have gone to dinner. TiVo would have preserved the highlights. The Tonys let me down tonight.

I've accepted that politics play a large role in the nominations and voting. I've made allowances that stilted, scripted banter is an awards telecast given. I've even made my peace with the fact that the technical categories are going to get shafted for screen time.

What I can't accept is that for one night each year, the theatre is given an opportunity to shine, that our profession is alloted three hours of valuable television time to present a commercial endorsement of the magical, powerful art of live performance and it's been terribly squandered. Across America and around the world and, yes, even in tiny, rural midwestern towns, the shrinking audience that tunes in for the Tonys is switching off the set after a long, largely boring broadcast and shrugging its collective shoulders. Theatre? Meh. The Tony Awards producers were given a chance to make the case for Broadway (and, by extension, for the vital, living theatre beyond Manhattan) and they failed, miserably.

A few observations:

• Hugh Jackman was a charming host, inasmuch as he was needed, but it should tell you something when several of the presenters begin their remarks by disclaiming, "I suppose you're wondering why I'm here." Mike Wallace? Barbara Walters? Jackman himself? Lovely people all, but it was clear the producers were often stretching to stack the show with bold-faced names rather than turning to some of the people who make the theatre what it is.
• The excerpts from the nominated musicals were mostly enjoyable but certainly not presented to their advantage. In fairness, it's nigh impossible to capture the electricity of a Broadway show when it's ripped from its intimate theatre habitat and plopped into the great barn at Radio City. It's harder still when it seems like the broadcast director had never seen any of the shows and had no idea where to point the cameras next. And on a live TV show, you only get one shot. As much as you want to make the show exciting for the audience sitting in the house in New York, the Tonys absolutely have to be good -- preferably great -- TV. At the risk of heretical wishes, I'd almost rather they work it out with the unions and go into the theatres themselves, shoot two or three performances under better controlled conditions, and edit them into video presentations that really show off the performances. The audience at Radio City is there because they already love the theatre. Give middle America and the world a chance to see why.
• I was glad to see Hairspray do so well. It is not the best musical ever, nor is it necessarily the best musical from this Broadway season, but it is bar none the best time I've had in a New York theatre in a decade and deserves its success. I'm a bit disappointed that my pal Corey Reynolds didn't win as best featured actor, but that the award went to the courtly Dick Latessa is a nice consolation. And I just want to hug Marissa Jaret Winokur to bits. She's such a sweetie!
• Who the hell did the cutting of "Rose's Turn" and what did they use? A rusty machete? That excerpt, combined with the unfavorable buzz about Bernadette's Rose and the loss to Nine will probably doom the Gypsy revival prematurely.
• Speaking of: Yes, yes, yes. We get it. Antonio is a revelation. But I'd rather have seen Chita dance, and I'd wager it'd have sold more tickets. He's hot but when she cuts loose, she's incandescent.
• Best acceptance speeches: Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan; Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (also, best kiss on the Tonys since Spider Woman); Michele Pawk; and the incredibly gracious Brian Dennehey.
• Was anyone else afraid Isabelle Stevenson's face was going to snap and put out someone's eye?
• Amour got shafted. It was a foregone conclusion it wouldn't win anything, but to receive only a brief video montage rather than a staged excerpt was insulting.
• We don't have the time or interest any longer to do excerpts from the nominated plays but Def Poetry Jam -- a fine performance, mind, that closed last month -- gets two highlights? One with wonky audio? And we wonder why drama is dying on Broadway?
• If Hugh Jackman is going to sing, could we at least give him a whole number? Hell, how about a preview of The Boy From Oz?
• In case you blinked, Cy Feuer was "honored" for lifetime achievement with five seconds from his speech at the earlier ceremony, and the great folks at The Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis received the Regional Theatre Tony. It's a pity more prominence isn't given to the regional companies each year -- it's been at least six or seven years since the Tony telecast did a respectable overview of theatre outside New York -- since, increasingly, that's where the new musicals and plays are being born to give a moribund Broadway commercial theatre new life. (The utterly winsome, Tony-nominated A Year with Frog & Toad, for example, was born at, yes, The Children's Theatre Company.)
• Robert Sean Leonard, will you marry me? No? Matthew Morrison? Please?

Everything else is gone: Ed Sullivan, Playhouse 90, the hour-long TV variety show, Rosie O'Donnell, even the way-the-heck-too-perky Caroline Rhea Show has been cancelled. The Tony Awards are the live theatre's single shot at reaching America with the news that the theatre can be a vital, thrilling, relevant and warm place to pass a few hours, in New York or in your hometown.

This year, that shot missed the target by a mile.

Thursday, September 13, 2001

Any IOU I owe…

Our Gypsy cast took up a collection for the American Red Cross after last night's performance and raised over $1,200. Folks were pitching twenties and fifties into the kitty. They'll be encouraging our audiences to contribute after each curtain call, at least through this weekend. [Update: Our very generous audience contributed an additional $1,700 Thursday night.]

Can I tell you how wonderful and generous this cast is? They've also organized a benefit cabaret on October 1 for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and St. Louis AIDS service organizations. (The rest of the cast is gently encouraging Pam Myers, who plays Rose in our production, to sing "Another Hundred People" from Company at the cabaret. Too cool. For the showtune-impaired among my readership, Pam was "Marta" in the original cast of Company.)

Tuesday, July 25, 2000

Give us this day…

Today, we "soft-launch" a new feature here in The BradLands, a half-baked deli serving up slices of life on wry. It's called The Daily Brad, and it will — for the most part — supplant the wildly popular LIFE <META> bits that have been littering the weblog these past few months. Is it a journal? Something like that, but I prefer to think of it as a conversation over a cup of joe and a cruller. C'mon in, and let me know what you think.

I'M BEYOND KAREN: If you only know actress Megan Mullaly from her wickedly funny portrayal of Karen on the sitcom Will & Grace, you don't know the half of it. This spirited gal got her start on Broadway and she's got the chops to be a major diva, in every good way that counts. Her new one woman shows are, by all reports, divine, and her website — well, let's just say it's a well-designed place to meet the dame behind the diva.

Monday, May 8, 2000

Wicked stage

The 1999 Tony Award nominations have been announced. Rather spare assortment of musicals this season, but we knew that going in. A special Tony for Dame Edna? Cool. (Speaking of Edna, Christine Lavin finally found a place for her story of Edna addiction. Congrats!)