Tag: Musical

People (like me) with unhealthy theater addictions are occasionally rewarded for their willingness to let talented artists take them somewhere unique, fascinatingly creative and wholly original.  In the Green is a new musical written by and starring Grace McLean.  I’ve seen and loved her work in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, this season’s Alice by Heart and the simply awesome (and why didn’t it run forever) Bedbugs!!!  In her new show, she takes us on a powerfully feminist musical journey based on the true story of Hildegard von Bingen.

Hildegard is one of medieval history’s most creative figures.  As a composer, she wrote Ordo Virtutum, an early example of liturgical drama and probably the oldest surviving morality play.  She also wrote texts about theology, botany and medicine.  She is credited with liturgical songs and poems.  At the age of 42, she was commanded by a presence called The Living Light to write down her visions.  Pope Eugenius III (proclaimed the Second Crusade; later became a saint) heard about her writings and approved of them giving her instant credence.  That support from the church is likely the reason so much of her works still survive.

In the Green mostly occurs prior to this prolific output.  When Hildegard was 8 years old, she was given to the Catholic Church as a tithe or a sacrifice.  She was the tenth child of a noble German family who may have done so as political positioning.  She was assigned as a handmaid to Jutta von Sponheim, a noblewoman who became an anchoress, someone who withdraws from society for religious reasons.  Jutta took her last rites and locked herself in a cell connected to an abbey church living as a dead person to the outside world.  Young Hildegard was locked away with her until Jutta died thirty years later.

Ms. McLean has taken this fascinating history and crafted a powerfully commanding chamber-like show.  In the Green is a psychological dissection of the relationship between these two women.  The self-exile of Jutta takes place from 1106 to 1136.  Imagine what it was like to be a woman living during the Middle Ages.  In the Green confidently proclaims its worldview by demonstrating “this is how you gain control.”

Flooded with superlative creative flourishes, this musical soars.  The piece is indeed religious and somber but Ms. Mc Lean brings a snarky edge to her book and portrayal of Jutta that surprises and gives the show a sharp edge.  This woman locked herself up for thirty years pretending to be dead.  She sees the way:  “if you kill your every care, your burden will be less to bear.”

Rachel Duddy, Ashley Perez Flanagan, Mia Pak and Hannah Whitney are ideal partners playing multiple roles.  The harmonies are difficult and beautifully executed.  While there is a feeling of medieval to these songs in their dissonance, the use of a loop machine to Ms. McLean’s voice adds texture and a modern touch to her moody and introspective songs.

Director Lee Sunday Evans orchestrated a team of first rate contributions for this uniquely quiet and boldly theatrical musical.  Kristen Robinson’s set design rotates to reveal the inner world where two women will bond and where Hildegard will finally emerge.  Barbara Samuels’ lighting design is fascinating in its use of shadows.  The sound design by Nicholas Pope enables the loop idea and disparate harmonies to join in an exultation that is both religious and angry.

In the Green is not a show for everyone and two people skedaddled in the middle of this ninety minute performance.  For fans of abundantly imaginative stagings that serve to beautifully enhance a story, this is an infinitely rewarding visual and auditory delight.  For fans of the medieval era, this musical is a thoughtful slice of history with a unique perspective.

The story of Jutta and the emergence of the brilliant Hildegard is a radically feminist one.  A note in the program states that Ms. McLean was “interested in remembering and celebrating this extraordinary woman, and in doing so I want to knock her off her saintly pedestal in order to recognize her humanity.”  This tale about women making their way through a world that is hostile to them should seem less relevant today.  In addition to its masterful staging, In the Green is also lightly commenting on the incomplete progression of women in our societal era.  This largely female creative team and cast have truly given us something special that is worthy of the ladies commemorated so memorably in this show.

www.lct.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/alicebyheart

Religion is not my personal cup of tea (with or without honey) in any form.  Watching the new musical  The Secret Life of Bees, I was surprised how powerfully the case was made for fervent belief.  It’s 1964 in the American south.  Not being white is a troubled proposition.  A century after the Emancipation Proclamation, people are still being murdered for the color of their skin.  A movement expanding civil rights and eliminating discriminatory voting barriers like literacy tests is encouraging people to do their part.  That environment can be dangerously toxic.

Imagine a country where governmental leaders use threats to suppress a group of people based on their racial profile.  What about providing unequal and inadequate education to those same citizens?  While parallels can easily be drawn to the harshly racist conservative movements in today’s America, this fictional tale is a cousin to Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and Kathryn Stockett’s The Help.  Set in the same general period, all three are reminders of our very recent history.  These trials and tribulations may not seem new but the necessity of telling them has clearly not abated.

Which brings me back to the religious angle that passionately separates this particular tale from the others.  August lives in her grandfather’s home with her sisters.  They are in the business of making honey.  The label on the jar is a picture of a black Madonna.  They have a statue of her carved into wood which they use during their Sunday ceremonies.  They are joyously devoted yet desperately seeking healing and guidance to see them through difficult days.  You can palpably feel their spiritual connection to generations of their ancestors.  Clinging to hope that salvation from oppression can and will arrive.  The strength to live each and every day until that freedom shines.

When these ladies come together to raise the roof, the score by Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening, Alice By Heart) and lyrics by Susan Birkhead (Jelly’s Last Jam, Working) soar.  The gospel tinged “Tek A Hol A My Soul” and the second act showstopper, “Hold This House Together” dig into deep wells of emotion.  Escaping their own personal troubles together, Lily and Rosaleen will learn about love, life, compassion and beekeeping from these women.

Unfortunately, the director Sam Gold has staged this musical like a reading with a few chairs and some props.  The shiny wooden floor doesn’t make any sense.  I cannot think of a show which had lighting as harshly unflattering as this one (Jane Cox was the designer).  I presume they were going for hot white sun in the south.  Or perhaps, like the Oklahoma! revival, they felt a need for super bright lighting to starkly illuminate the evil lurking in America (a new theater trend?)  Instead, real moments of intense emotion were bizarrely devoid of any atmosphere whatsoever.  In addition, cast members sitting around on stage watching scenes rarely added anything but I guess they were needed to move the tables and chairs around.

Amazingly, the cast is so strong and Sweat author Lynn Nottage’s book is so well told, I was able to see past the visual disjointedness and be drawn into the emotional core of the material.  LaChanze (Once on This Island, The Color Purple) is astonishingly fine as August, the matriarch of this clan and soul of this story.  With her gorgeous singing voice and fully developed characterization, all of her interactions and conversations felt organically believable.

Lily is the young white girl who arrives and is taken under August’s wing.  Critical to this success of this show, Elizabeth Teeter (The Crucible, Mary Poppins) nailed her complicated persona.  She’s the Scout of this story and hers is a much darker tale.  The chemistry between her and Zachary (Brett Gray, excellent) from early friendship development to more significantly complex yearnings were beautifully handled.

Manoel Feliciano plays T-Ray, Lily’s abusive father.  The performance is ideal in its ability to make this evil man multi-dimensional.  Nathaniel Stampley’s Neil woos and woos June (Eisa Davis).  Their exchanges fuel the beating heart of hope and the dreams of perseverance.  This entire cast is stellar, including Saycon Sengbloh (Eclipsed) in the juicy role of Rosaleen, the character who seemingly grows the most as events unfold.

Importantly, the music is extremely tuneful and nicely varied from full throttled gospel to quiet piano ballads to dramatically executed a cappella.  Even the lighter, more musical comedy number “Fifty-Five Fairlane” was fun.  If the lyrics occasionally seem a tad generic in a self-help style, that feeling gets washed away by these exceptional performances.  The Secret Life of Bees can be even better than this production.  Given how much I enjoyed this musical, that is something to look forward to experiencing.

www.atlantictheater.org

In his 1946 book The Sisters Liked Them Handsome, author Stephen Longstreet noted “I can remember when there had been no World Wars, when people still lived in a large world, and the uncles went to places like China and California and Hoboken for their sinning.  It is of those times I have written… of the time when I was young and we all lived in a calm era, 1900-1914.  It is a world you shall never see again.”  From his own source material, Mr. Longstreet wrote the book for the 1947 musical High Button Shoes.

For its 75th anniversary season, City Center has revived this forgotten chestnut as the third and final production of this year’s Encores! series.  The show is notable as the first big Broadway hit for composer Jule Styne (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Funny Girl).  Super fun fact:  Ten years later, Stephen Sondheim would rewrite the lyrics from one of the songs dropped during preproduction.  That is how the Gypsy classic “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” was born. 

Broadway legend George Abbott directed High Button Shoes and, as rumor has it, substantially rewrote the book.  The choreography by Jerome Robbins, however, is what put this musical on the map.  He won a Tony Award for his efforts at the second ceremony in 1948.

How to describe the antics of the plot?  Think Broadway musical comedy filtered through a vaudeville lens.  Slapstick humor given a burlesque styling.  Harrison Floy is a fast-talking conman who dupes the Longstreet family, residents of a small-town New Jersey home.  Floy and his partner in crime Pontdue flee to Atlantic City with a bag of cash they have swindled.  Add in a few romantic subplots (“I Still Get Jealous”) and the Rutgers football team (“On the Banks of the Old Raritan”).  Voila, a musical is hatched.

Some of the comedy is silly and dated but I still chuckled.  “Are you an authority on birds?”  The answer: “I’ve been hawking for twenty years.”  Cockatoos mate for life.  “They must be exhausted.”  Phil Silvers originated the role of Harrison Floy.  You can imagine his physicality and hear his line delivery in Michael Urie’s deftly conceived interpretation.  He is funny and appropriately the big center of attention in this show.

The humor verges on titillatingly naughty.  The lyrics for “On a Sunday by the Sea” gleefully boast “you can misbehave underneath a wave/ and nobody can see.”  More controversial at the time was the song “You’re My Boy” which comes after the love ballad “You’re My Girl.”  One critic slammed the two male crooks as “guilty of atrocious taste in consenting” to sing it.  Others were less rabid, noting that it offered a “funny act of burlesque” which followed “the homosexual comedy pattern of that bygone art.”  Let’s just agree that in this version Mr. Urie underlined the lyric “gay” with the largest Sharpie ever.

The big reason to revisit High Button Shoes, however, is for the choreography of the “Bathing Beauty Ballet.”  At the seashore the bad guys, the people they swindled, the cops, some lifeguards and bathing beauties plus one gorilla engage in a Mack Sennett-like silent movie Keystone cops “ballet.”  Running in and out of cabanas, they pantomime, crash, flip, dance, switch doors and partners with exaggerated whimsy.  Even today’s audience eagerly applauded at its conclusion.  Sarah O’Gleby recreated Jerome Robbins’ original staging for that playful showstopper and also for the lovely soft-shoe number, “I Still Get Jealous.”

I find it hard to make an argument for High Button Shoes as a great musical.  There are some very good songs including the forgotten hit, “Papa, Won’t You Dance With Me?”  My favorite performances in this revival were from Marc Koeck and Carla Duren who had nice romantic chemistry as the love-bitten youngsters, Rutgers’ footballer Oggle and the sweetly heroic Fran.  He croons her with the appropriately goofy “Next to Texas I Love You.”

If you care to take a swim in musical theater history where football and vaudeville could amusingly coexist on stage, High Button Shoes is worth the plunge.  A sneeringly bitter woman behind me loudly and exasperatedly squawked at her husband during intermission, “we should leave, this is awful.”  She reluctantly stayed despite her body language which read as amplified disgust.  The wrong person for this show made a good decision, however.  It’s not everyday that you get to celebrate history and experience what audiences wanted after a decade of the Great Depression and World War II.

www.nycitycenter.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/imarriedanangel/encores

A successful Rodgers and Hart musical from 1938, I Married an Angel has been lovingly brought to life for one week as part of the Encores! series.  George Balanchine was the original choreographer of this show.  Vera Zorina was Angel and married Mr. Balanchine during the run.  The piece is decidedly old school (and dated) but this fine glossy production allows musical theater fans an opportunity to revisit this silly chesnut.

In Budapest, Count Willy Palaffi (Mark Evans) is a successful banker but is having difficulties with women.  His sister, the Countess Palaffi (Nikki M. James), is trying to find him a spouse.  Willy decides that he will only marry an angel.  Miraculously one arrives from heaven and wedded bliss unfolds.  Unfortunately on Earth and in the real world, a truth-telling perfectionist can cause all sorts of problems.  Those slips include insulting an older woman with honesty about her appearance as well as disclosing problems at her husband’s bank.

Mr. Balanchine had been actively participating in the evolution of the Broadway musical at this time.  Two years earlier, he had a smash hit with On The Town which featured the “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” ballet.   Incorporating dance and storytelling on Broadway would advance further in the 1940s with Agnes DeMille and Jerome Robbins.  I Married an Angel is firmly part of important musical theater history.  The show features creative dances such as the geography traveling “Honeymoon Ballet’ and the multiple fantasy sections in the second act.

Storytelling purists might wonder why a show set in Budapest celebrates and pokes fun at New York’s cavernous Roxy Music Hall.  This was the time when Radio City first opened.  The Roxyettes became significantly more famous when they switched venues and were renamed the Rockettes in 1935.  Any opportunity to find space for dance is embraced in this show.  The serious research employed in producing this revival (including original music, scripts, notes and footage) transports the audience back to another age.

Not all of the humor is appropriate for today.  There are certainly jokes about women and what the phrase going for a “walk in the garden” really implies.  The sexual innuendo overall seemed generally harmless.  A subplot between the Countess (formerly a young teenage actress) and the wealthy Harry Szigetti (Tom Robbins) references a prior relationship when she was fifteen years old.  It’s a tad icky but well handled and, frankly, shines some insight on that era.

Directed and choreographed by Joshua Bergasse, his wife (New York City Ballet’s Sara Mearns) is an en pointe Angel.  All of the dancing in this show was extremely entertaining.  The scene stealers Hayley Podschun and Phillip Attmore lead the first act showstopper “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”  Tap and ballet share the stage with more humorous vignettes.  There is a real feeling of being transported back to an entertainment style from long ago.  I Married an Angel is a perfect choice for the 25th anniversary of this series.  Where else can you see such magic resurrected with this level of quality and polish?

As Count Willy, Mark Evans (The Play That Goes Wrong) confidently joins the ever-increasing list of outstanding male leads who deliver a great character performance at Encores!  His singing and acting were very strong and nicely fit the period.  Broadway does not create enough roles (and traditional Broadway song styles) for these talented individuals.  Watching them excel in breathing life into these old theater treasures is a major reason to enjoy these revivals.

The creative team has given this show a beautiful staging, notably with Alejo’s Vietti’s costumes.  For dedicated fans of musical theater who embrace the rare opportunity to see a hit show exhumed from 1938, I Married an Angel is catnip.  As a bonus, there’s even an opportunity to learn a few things about women.   The question posed:  “Are all women bad?”  The answer:  “Only the good ones.”

www.nycitycenter.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/callmemadam/encores