#240428 - APRIL in Review, Part 2.

Brian Eugenio Herrera's #TheatreClique Newsletter for April 28, 2024

Apr 29, 2024

WELCOME to #TheatreClique — my irregular newsletter dedicated to encouraging you to click out to some of the most interesting, intriguing & noteworthy writing about drama, theatre & performance (at least, so says me)…

This Week's #TheatreCliquery:

This installment of #TheatreClique brings my latest experiment in theatre commentary, which has me gathering my thoughts (and catching my breath) after the extraordinary experience of a nine show week. But to begin — I lift a bit of “non-theatrical” delight, in the form of this lovely song from my old college pal Pete Sallett…

EDITOR’S NOTE: whenever possible, whenever linking to paywalled pieces, I “gift” the article to #TheatreClique readers. In other words, clicking out to articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, and Wall Street Journal should neither present hassle nor burn through your monthly allotment of free views. Here’s hoping more outlets — hello LATimes! hi ChicaoTribune! yo NewYorker!— adopt similar technologies for subscribers soon...

In Review : April 15-28, 2024.

Capturing brief “capsule” commentaries on my recent theatregoing, with click-worthy links to others writing about the same shows or theatremakers.

PATRIOTS

Written by Peter Morgan • Directed by.Rupert Goold • Broadway • Ethel Barrymore Theatre • April 2024..

A dazzling full-on production of a very British history play about Russia’s recent past. Patriots details how the rise of the Russian oligarchs in the 1990s dovetailed with early rise of Putin in the 2000s, taking as its anchor the narrative of Boris Berezovsky (forcefully played by Andrew Stuhlbarg) a mathematical prodigy (and a Jew) who seized the opportunity of Glasnost/Perestroika to make buckets and buckets of money as the former Soviet Union opened to liberalization and capitalism. Charting both Berezofsky’s rise to economic/political power and his fall from grace and exile from Russia, Patriots tethers our putative sympathy with Berezovsky: a fundamentally unsympathetic character — prone to narcissistic outbursts and outrageous fabulation...just like Putin, who is first his pawn then his foil then his rival then his nemesis and finally his downfall. Putin is portrayed with insidiously cartoonish villainy by Will Keen and the production takes pains to make a joke of Putin while also charting his intentional self-crafting as the strong leader Russia needs. (Putin's measured self-consciousness is played as counter to Berezovsky's "he just can't help himself" arrogance and impetuousness.) Perhaps the most compelling character was Roman Abramovich, played with a tender precision by Luke Thallon. In the battle between the ridiculous yet terrifying antics of Stuhlbarg’s Berezovsky and Keen’s Putin, Thallon's Abramovich becomes all the more relatably human — the oligarch who just wants everyone to get along. And here is where I must confess: I struggle to care about the personal or political struggles of tyrannical oligarchs, no matter how consequential they might be to the shaping of contemporary geopolitics. I could also pick at the fact that the women are given only small handfuls lines as mothers, hookers, daughters, newscasters, or wives; or the production’s decision to use distinct British accents to convey Russian class location; or the fetishization of mathematics as a pure language, devoid of personality, and therefore exempt from the cruelties of ego. But suffice it to say: Patriots is an undeniably skillful production of an undeniably solid script that is, also undeniably, just not my cup of tea.

THE HEART OF ROCK AND ROLL

Music/Lyrics by Huey Lewis and the News, Book by Jonathan A. Abrams. Story by Tyler Mitchell. • Directed by Gordon Greenberg. • Broadway • James Earl Jones Theatre • April 2024.

A rom-com popsical that seems an exemplar of the good that can sometimes happen when entertainment company executive hire a team to "make a musical" out of this or that IP. In what is perhaps my biggest theatrical surprise of the season, The Heart of Rock and Roll totally works: it is consistently enjoyable, diverting, and genuinely funny; the ridiculously talented and appealing cast is directed and choreographed with great verve; and the set and costume designs are as silly as they are (totally) effective. The whole visual concept of the set is neon tubes and speaker woofers, evoking a literal jukebox while also being readily adaptable (via deft color transitions) to conjure the decor of a wide range of 1980s interiors. As a story, The Heart of Rock and Roll is basically a mild class-conflict romantic comedy that hits the pleasure points of all those 80s rom-coms with charming rascal protagonists (of the sort typically played by Matthew Broderick, Michael J Fox, Matt Dillon, or John Cusack) whose arrogance makes a mess of things but whose preternatural charm, moxie, and luck makes things right by the end. Cory Cott is perfectly, skillfully generic as Bobby the hero and as Cassandra — his “boss’s daughter, Princeton-alum” romantic interest — McKenzie Kurtz (a recent Glinda) handles the requisite comedy with dexterity. The villain in this variation on the formula here is all things Princeton — embodied with fully villainous glee by Billy Harrison Tighe in the role of Tucker (Cassandra’s finance bro college boyfriend). The Princeton jokes are funny and many —Tucker’s a cappella group (“The Undertones”); the tote, the sweatshirt, the ties; all that gingham — with Tighe’s Tucker embodying the worst clichés of preppy villainy (grasping, greedy, drunk on unearned privilege, ever inclined to bully — with a smile, a wink, or a backstab — his way into getting what he wants while blithely punishing those who get in his way). The music isn't especially interesting but is mostly effective, especially as performed by an ensemble stacked with Broadway troupers (including John Dossett, Raaymond Lee, John-Michael Lyles) and Broadway caliber voices and bodies. But maybe my favorite musical moment is when Cott’s Bobby — grappling with his existential conflict (do I play in the band? or do become a sales executive for a cardboard company?) — starts plucking "I Want a New Drug" on his guitar, as chorus girls emerge from the bed behind him in costumes that mirror/match the design of his guitar and who then proceed to swirl around him in a clear callback to certain iconic 80s music videos. Ultimately Bobby gets to have it all ways. His beloved coworker takes over as lead singer which allows Bobby to stay at the factory and “just” write the band’s hit songs (which is probably a good thing, since those music publishing royalties will likely come in handy when the cardboard factory is inevitably acquired in some kind of leveraged buyout in the 1990s). The Heart of Rock and Roll appears to have few other aspirations than to be a dad-friendly, crowdpleasing story about living your dreams in the suburbs, which — if it catches the attention of audiences — might make this an enduring property, in every sense of the term.

HELL’S KITCHEN

Music and Lyrics by Alicia Keys. Book by Kristoffer Diaz • Directed by. Michael Greif • Broadway • The Shubert Theatre • April 2024.

Hell’s Kitchen lands its Broadway transfer with a refreshing ease and spirit that allows the relatively simple storyline to resonate with formidable force. Where I was mostly underwhelmed in my first encounter with this piece at ThePublic, I found myself more actively and more emotionally engaged by the piece on Broadway. (I had very good seats both times, so it’s not that.) On Broadway, everything felt a bit looser and more relaxed — a fact perhaps most clear in Camille Brown's choreography (so lush with arm extensions, propulsive slides, unexpected/popping kicks) which seemed oddly constrained at ThePublic but which becomes on Broadway the distinctive movement vocabulary necessary to blend with the musical’s other stylizations of the era. The anchor of the entire show however is newcomer Maleah Joi Moon, who is simply extraordinary as Ali, Hell’s Kitchen’s star/narrator. Moon’s performance charts Ali’s transformation (over the course of just a few weeks) from an self-fixated adolescent child into an actual young adult. Her vocal capacity is rich with Broadway power, but also distinctive with its R&B flavor, rock rasp, and country cry. Moon’s is a remarkable and distinctive instrument and it serves this piece exceedingly well in what is a remarkable Broadway debut. At the other end of the spectrum of experience is Kecia Lewis, who — in a character that edges perilously close to a "magical negro”-esque stock character — invests a measure of gravitas and consequence to the character of Miss Liza Jane that Hell’s Kitchen desperately needs. A veteran musical performer (who made her Broadway debut forty years ago), Lewis nails every beat and every button with charisma, power, and remarkable comic timing. The resonance of her lower register and the piercing beauty of her higher notes in tandem with the force of her presence makes her the emotional anchor of the piece. Smack in the middle of professional experience are Shoshana Bean and Brandon Victor Dixon as the parents, who seem to be having a grand time inside the sweep of Keys's melodies and the one song they sing together marks a height of artistry in the piece. But for me, the fatal flaw of the musical returns to basic-ness of Keys's lyrics. Everything is so dang showy yet so dang literal — by turns corny and clunky, even in the bangers — and, even with the soaring sweep of her melodies, the lyrics are what keep the piece from truly launching into something great. Still, an emotionally engaging constellation of powerhouse performances.

THE GREAT GATSBY

Book by Kait Kerrigan, Lyrics by Nathan Tysen, Music by Jason Howland • Directed by. Marc Bruni • Broadway • Broadway Theatre • April 2024.

A visually diverting distillation of the classic novel — one that uses the Fitzgerald narrative as scaffolding for a briskly sequenced constellation of musical numbers that chart Nick Carraway's encounter with the world of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan and map his initial entrancement through his subsequent enmeshment and concluding with his ultimate estrangement from them and what they represent. The show features an exceedingly talented cast gamely hitting every mark and belting every number. Even so, and even for someone like me with only a casual familiarity with the Gatsby narrative, this adaptation carries little surprise and perhaps less emotional urgency. Nick's neither the moral center, nor the cipher, nor really the eye of the audience — and without an anchoring point of view, this Gatsby felt more like a gloss of the original than an original adaptation. A dazzling gloss, to be sure, but not something that opens the heart of the material in any meaningful or original way. Indeed, there’s really not much to hold onto, emotionally or intellectually. One character who should really open this piece for me is Myrtle but even her big number — framed as her personal reckoning with the limited horizon open to her and happening in the moments right before everything goes so sadly awry — just stacks slightly different lyrics atop the same melody, perhaps with an escalating key change, so that you really must attend to the swapped words to apprehend that Myrtle’s not "just upset" but actually that she's figuring things out how rigged the game truly is. Myrtle’s song also was staged in the same "park and bark" manner of so many of the show’s biggest numbers. (Jeremy Jordan proved to be kinda the only one capable of making that simplicity work; his presence, charisma, and vocal dexterity confirmed for me why he is a legitimate star.) Everything and everyone is very good but it all lands in solid “middle B” territory, albeit with the implicit expectation that it believes it deserves the A for exertion alone.

CABARET

Book by Joe Masteroff. Lyrics by Fred Ebb. Music by John Kander. • Directed by Rebecca Frecknall. • Broadway • The Kit Kat Club at the August Wilson Theatre • April 2024.

An ostensibly immersive staging of the musical that aims to embed its audience in the fervor and revelry of a crowded, intimate nightclub “like” the Kit Kat Klub. (There is a whole pre-show cast of singers/dancers and musicians who, along with a fairly robust hospitality staff of ushers, barbacks, hosts, and servers, all tasked with creating the vibe of a really elaborate nightclub.) Throughout the show, the Kit Kat club ensemble is constantly emerging from the crowd, underscoring perhaps the idea that "we" (the audience) are Berliners in the pre-Nazi moment. Cabaret’s challenge to its director — and its audience — is to discover a generative balance between the club scenes and the book scenes (or those narrating Clifford Bradshaw’s life-changing encounter with Sally Bowles and Ernst, alongside the story of Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schulz). The club scenes offer social/cultural commentary that — depending on the production — floats above, beyond, or through the book scenes. In this staging, the biggest uncertainty I had was the "reality" of the club scenes. Eddie Redmayne's emcee was a creature from a house of horrors, whose costumes evolved dramatically through variously terrifying guises (manic pixie, evil clown, goth robot) until settling into the drab monstrosity of a brown shirted Nazi. [An aside: the morning after I saw the show, I heard Eddie Redmayne talking to a tv reporter about, in contrast to earlier productions, this production's emcee was a manipulative, exploitative shapeshifter, which helped me to appreciated that this production locates the emcee not as a victim (Cumming) of the turn to fascism, or even as a bystander to it (as per the role’s original stage and screen interpreter JoelGrey) but as a central perpetrator of Nazi ideological capture.] And this pivot does seem to be the biggest intervention of Rebecca Frecknall’s revival, especially in comparison to the revisal featuring Alan Cumming; in this one, everyone (except perhaps Herr Schulz) is in some measure complicit with the Nazis. When we see the club denizens stripped of their fabulousness and clad in drably uniform brown shirts/suits, it's not to suggest that they're off to the camps but rather that they're standing in salute as the Nazi's take power. Even show, the show’s pleasures are many. It was great to see incredible folx like Mimi Scardulla, Natascia Diaz, Colin Cunliffe, Marty Lauter (aka MarciaMarciaMarcia) and David Marino demonstrate the potential diversity — of size, of age, of gender, of hairiness — of the “Broadway Body” while displaying those bodies in Julia Cheng’s incredibly rigorous KitKat girls choreography. Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell anchor the emotional heart of the piece, with Neuwirth adding the kind of fierce veteran gravitas that the role requires and Skybell anchoring Herr Schulz's optimism in integrity (neither pathetic or a fool but someone who believes deeply in what he believes). And actually I quite liked Redmayne’s forceful commitment to the electrifying monstrosity of this emcee. All told, a profoundly impressive and innovative staging of a beloved classic that somehow, in spite of its many thrills and chills and delights, left me feeling mildly perplexed by the entire enterprise.

MARY JANE

Written by Amy Herzog • Directed by Anne Kauffman • Broadway • Manhattan Theatre Clubr: Samuel Friedman Theatre • April 2024.

I was on the cusp of tears for nearly the entirety of this play. Anne Kauffman's direction gorgeously calibrates the stealthy structure of Amy Herzog’s beautifully crafted play, which maps the peculiar yet immediate intimacies of the caregiving experience — the glancing but deeply intimate relationships forged sometimes instantly with nurses, with doctors, with therapists, with other patients, with bystanders, etcetera. There's something so powerful about how Herzog lets us in on what we need to know about the ailing Alex (and his steadfast mother Mary Jane) when we need to know it; it’s likewise smart that Alex is not the only off-stage presence whose urgent needs configure MaryJane's day-to-day decisions (note too the recurring presence of Mary Jane’s well-intentioned but still demanding boss Kelly). Making her Broadway debut, Rachel McAdams is very very very good in this: her easily relatable vibe stirs us to root for her and for Alex almost immediately which seems an intangible but essential key to unlocking this play. McAdams’s steely strength at first seems like softness, even fragility, but it's clearly an expression of how a "regular" young woman had to manifest a kind of single-minded strength within the person she happened to become. I love how the other characters are doubled, almost so they blur together. The superintendent and the Buddhist monk (both played by Brenda Wehle) couldn't be more different but they both hold open the space of humane spiritual wisdom that Mary Jane clearly craves. I really responded to Lily Santiago in the dual roles of the niece and the music therapist and to Sara Parfour as the other mother (Brianne, the wealthy new mom of a high-needs child; Chaya, or the OrthodoxJewish mom of Adina who is hospitalized alongside Alex). The set is a marvel, the lighting is so good, and the sound design — just — wowza. Not splashy but efficient and effective and heart-stopping in its precision…kinda like everything about this play/production. Among most consistently emotionally engaging and compelling theatrical experiences I’ve had this year.

SUFFS

Book, Music & Lyrics by Shaina Taub • Directed by.Leigh Silverman • Broadway • The Music Box • April 2024

A rousing, stirring, often quite powerful account of the six or so years of activism and organizing toward the passage of the 19th amendment, granting women the right to vote. I saw Suffs at ThePublic two years ago and marveled how completely transformed this production seemed to be. Even so, the piece continues to develop the same three main narrative threads: depicting the labors of Alice Paul and her core cohort, in tandem with those of Carrie Chapman Cott and Ida B. Wells threads. The Woodrow Wilson character has been reconfigured slightly, with only one iteration of his jaunty "Ladies" song, following almost immediately after "G.A.B" (or the “Great American Bitch" anthem). Taub's performance — which I did not see at the Public (she was out due to Covid) is vivid, dynamic, and clear — the best I’ve seen her on stage. The music is very Taub: lots of recursive lyrical loops, lots of soaring notes that dip down in the finish, not always the most dynamic when sung en ensemble. But when sung solo by others — like when Emily Skinner just knocks it out in "Letter from Harry's Mother" — Taub’s distinctive balance of lyrics and melody come into clarion focus. (Indeed, the two letter songs -- the other being "Letter from Dudley Malone" sung by Tsilala Block — are among my favorite moments in the score, which does boast many great songs.) The "If We Were Married" song remains a perfect recurring motif — hilarious and instructive on first encounter, but deepening with context and complexity as the musical unfolds. Perhaps my biggest soft spot with regard to this musical, though, is the way it understands history as recursive, as repetitive, as cyclical, always with rivalries, tensions, and alliances being recalibrated over time. Moreover, Taub’s choice to return to particular lyrical/melodic motifs allows that historical argument to manifest in ways that are as predictable in some moments as they are surprising in others. (It was great to hear the audience around me clocking this feature of the refrains — they sometimes laughed, sometimes sighed, but always with recognition.) I marveled at Hannah Cruz in the Inez Mulholland role, at Nikki James and Jenn Collella who remain great as Ida B. Wells and Carrie Chapman Cott, and especially at the incomparable Grace MacLean who is still just f'n brilliant as Woodrow Wilson. And as I watched, I anticipated with delight a near future when other directors and other ensembles take on this material and am glad that the producers are already thinking toward the moment when this show is available for school productions. But, yes, I ended up loving this iteration of the piece in a way I did not at the Public and am just so dang chuffed that it exists.

BATHHOUSE.PPTX

Written by Jesús I. Valles. Directed by Chay Yew. • Off-Broadway • The Flea, New York City • April 2024.

A latiné queer experimental phantasmagoria on the overlay of filth, desire, intimacy, race, longing, history, cleanliness, and erasure always and forever at play in the gay bathhouse. Jesús Valles’s wildly unruly script — staged beautifully by Chay Yew and a charismatic ensemble of latiné actors — eschews conventional dramatic structure, opting instead for an arguably “postdramatic disgressive” mode. The ostensible scenario: in some politically ravaged moment sometime in the not-distant future, a 10th grade honors student referred to only as Presenter (Sam Gonzalez in a fiercely vulnerable yet vivid performance) endeavors to offer his powerpoint presentation on the history of bathing. Most of the first third of piece then centers on the Presenter’s chaotic attempts to map the history of how bathing became privatized, an effort both supported and also disrupted by the interruptions of his collaborators, his audience, and his own intrusive thoughts. The result is a wild swirl of stories, histories, and comedic bits, all of which somehow provide the context for why the Presenter remains so interested in the lost history of the gay bathhouse. When admonished by his teacher to “show not tell,” the Presenter makes room for several characters within the setting of the North Hollywood Spa — Carlos (the young gay man lost in the world of the bathhouse, played by Gilbert D. Sanchez), Chela (the woman who must remain invisible while constantly cleaning up the unending messes made in the bathhouse, played by Claudia Acosta), and Shaun (the elder gay man who rests in the bathhouse to remember who he once was and those he once knew, played by Yonatan Gebeyehu). The stories of Chela, Carlos, and Shaun subsequently weave through the constellation of scenes and sketches that continue to disrupt Presenter’s flow but their voices ultimately summon Presenter into the overlain worlds he’s describing and demand that he reckon with his own loneliness, longing, and inclination to look for home in a place like the bathhouse. Along the way, we encounter the supervisory obfuscations of the CDC, a child persistently asking about whether you need to boil water before bathing during a boil-water advisory, the arrival of an especially filthy conquistador, a cameo by Laura Linney, a gazillion other things, and a deeply moving passage where two towel-wearing men begin to pleasure one another as they describe their experiences with past lovers — perhaps the most vivid depiction of the expansive intimacies of anonymous gay sex that I've ever seen. The play’s hauntingly elegiac quality, while not exactly mournful, asks us to ponder the "loss" (the cleansing, the erasure, the destruction) of the gay bathhouse not only as communal spaces of intimate convening but also as a repository of otherwise unhoused memories. The play concludes both within and beyond the time/s of the play as Chela (the consistently, stunningly good Acosta) enters an unspecified steamroom, laughs at familiar thump of the music, winces at the pressures of her own physical pains, weeps at the collision of memory and sensation, and finally pleasures herself, as the sounds of eruption and fissure — the world cracking open? — permeate the space. An emotionally vivid, wildly unexpected, formally inventive, and intellectually adventurous play that is beautifully served by this expansively-gifted ensemble in this potent production.

MOTHER PLAY: A PLAY IN FIVE EVICTIONS

Written by Paula Vogel • Directed by.Tina Landau • Broadway • Second Stage: The Hayes Theatre • April 2024.

Such a beautifully elliptical portrait of a peculiar family unit: an exacting, narcissistic, alcoholic mother; an erudite, hyper-literate gay brother; and practical slightly-butch lesbian sister. The play maps a period of maybe forty years, give or take, mapping the pivotally transformative moments when the knots of the web that have snared these characters together are unexpectedly rearranged, or loosened, or tightened, or torn asunder. In the central role of Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger) stands as chief witness, the one who — by dint of either her disposition or her circumstance, we’re never quite sure — is the one left to remember and learn. But the true action of the play swirls around the fact of Phillis, the mother, played here by Jessica Lange in a terrifying delight of a performance. Lange’s astonishing vocal and physical clarity fortifies the entrancing charisma she brings to the role. Lange’s Phillis is beautiful, but she is monstrous and untrustworthy; she compels you to love her, bu she also makes you want to run far far away fast. No wonder her children are always deciding between two options: fight? or flight? And if Keenan-Bolger’s Martha is the witness, Jim Parsons’s Carl is the instigator — the brilliantly fey queerer of Phillis's world. Theirs is a perfect little microcosm of an emblematically queer family (the diva, the dyke, the f*ggot) and the unsurprising fact that the narcissistic alcoholic diva is as stubbornly and viciously homophobic as she is unrepentantly misogynist and racist makes her a centrifugal force that holds some tight in her orbit while flinging others just as forcefully out. As an epochal riff on the family memory play, Vogel’s play is a marvel of recursive construction, which director Tina Landau amplifies with wry precision so that the final moment lands stealthily but with Vogel’s signature wallop. I so wanted Mother Play to be good but I honestly didn't expect that it would be as quite as good as it is. I can't wait to see it again. A thrilling, gorgeous, exciting, haunting, horrifying, and adamantly humane play.

#240428 - APRIL in Review, Part 2.

Brian Eugenio Herrera's #TheatreClique Newsletter for April 28, 2024

This Week's #TheatreCliquery:

In Review : April 15-28, 2024.

Capturing brief “capsule” commentaries on my recent theatregoing, with click-worthy links to others writing about the same shows or theatremakers.

Written by Peter Morgan • Directed by.Rupert Goold • Broadway • Ethel Barrymore Theatre • April 2024..

see also…

Music/Lyrics by Huey Lewis and the News, Book by Jonathan A. Abrams. Story by Tyler Mitchell. • Directed by Gordon Greenberg. • Broadway • James Earl Jones Theatre • April 2024.

see also…

Music and Lyrics by Alicia Keys. Book by Kristoffer Diaz • Directed by. Michael Greif • Broadway • The Shubert Theatre • April 2024.

see also…

Book by Kait Kerrigan, Lyrics by Nathan Tysen, Music by Jason Howland • Directed by. Marc Bruni • Broadway • Broadway Theatre • April 2024.

see also…

Book by Joe Masteroff. Lyrics by Fred Ebb. Music by John Kander. • Directed by Rebecca Frecknall. • Broadway • The Kit Kat Club at the August Wilson Theatre • April 2024.

see also…

Written by Amy Herzog • Directed by Anne Kauffman • Broadway • Manhattan Theatre Clubr: Samuel Friedman Theatre • April 2024.

see also…

Book, Music & Lyrics by Shaina Taub • Directed by.Leigh Silverman • Broadway • The Music Box • April 2024

see also…

Written by Jesús I. Valles. Directed by Chay Yew. • Off-Broadway • The Flea, New York City • April 2024.

see also…

Written by Paula Vogel • Directed by.Tina Landau • Broadway • Second Stage: The Hayes Theatre • April 2024.

see also…