Tag: Musical

In the musical Barnum, a song lyric compels you to “join the circus like you wanted to, when you were a kid.”  In the family friendly new musical The Giant Hoax, a young farm girl named Emily will do just that.  She’s heard about the Cardiff Giant and wants to see the amazing wonder for herself.  Emily runs away from home and will learn some valuable lessons, meet an assortment of colorful characters and sing about “Wonderful Things.”

Scenic Designer Theron Wineinger places you into the period immediately when you enter the theater.  There’s a shiny red and white circus tent.  The sign promises the “one and only Cardiff Giant” who is ten feet tall and weighs 2990 pounds.  The Albany Daily newspaper headline reads “Scientists Question Authenticity of Giant Man Uncovered in Cardiff.”

This musical is inspired by one of the most famous hoaxes in American history.  On October 16, 1869, workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. “Stub” Newell found a purported petrified man.  Stub (Forest Vandyke) pitched a tent over this discovery and charged twenty five cents for people who wanted to see this colossal human ancestor.

Stub and Emily open the show with a song called “The Cardiff Giant.”  The entire ensemble is noticeably alive with energy.  Emily will see the giant and befriend him.  Their duet is “Imaginary Friends.”  Emily joins Stub’s business and learns some tips about salesmanship and the power of carnival barking.

P. T. Barnum took notice of this profitable phenomenon.  When his offer to buy the novelty was rebuked, he famously made his own version.  (Both versions, incredibly, are on display in museums today.)  Kit Goldstein Grant wrote the book, music and lyrics for The Giant Hoax.  The storytelling is creative and clear.  The songs are pleasantly simple and tuneful.  I dare you to see this show and not exit the theater singing “beautiful things/ beautiful things/ believe in these/ beautiful things.”

This musical, however, does not pander to its target young people audience.  Themes about blind faith, greed and trustworthiness are placed front and center.  Barnum (Paul Aguirre) himself makes that very clear.  “It’s the American way to steal ideas and make them pay.”  Emily’s childlike beliefs and her naiveté will be challenged as she escapes the comforts of home and mother.

The Giant Hoax is memorably staged by Director Christopher Michaels to evoke this particular time period and this bizarrely entertaining story.  The creative elements are outstanding and well coordinated.  Tyler Carlton Williams’ costumes are nicely realistic.  Noel Williams’ puppet design of the giant creates a sense of wonder and an impression of enormity.  The lighting design by Conor Martin Mulligan is superb.  The old fashioned shadow effects are stunning.

There are many elements to enjoy in The Giant Hoax.  The story is an incredible combination of American chutzpah and American gullibility.  People flocked to see this exhibit as proof of the Bible.  Genesis 6:4 mentions giants in the earth.  Dr. Martin (Yvette Monique Clark) from the Yale School of Paleontology begs to differ.  (Ms. Clark is my first choice to play Niecy Nash in her biographical musical.)

Performances are solid across the board.  Staci Stout is a believably wide-eyed Emily.  She’s a smart young lady facing a complicated big world for the first time.  Daniel Moser’s giant is vividly embodied.  The direction and performance of the ensemble is to be commended.  Everyone seems to have a purpose to be onstage which enriches the entire viewing experience.

There are quite a few song reprises in The Giant Hoax which unnecessarily elongate this musical.  In addition, a few distracting side stories – such as the one about the two other kids – do not seem integral to the main plot.  A tighter show would be even more welcome, especially when given a production this thoughtful and imaginative.

The Giant Hoax is running until December 7, 2019 at Theatre Row.

www.bfany.org/theatre-row

www.indieworks.com

There seems to be an endless stream of theater in New York about racial issues prior to the Civil Rights Act and beyond.  Many of them are musicals and quite a number I’ve seen focus on the Freedom Riders.  Broadbend, Arkansas is another one.  This one aims for chamber piece.  The show is baffling, incoherent, poorly staged and seems to lack a reason to exist.

Act I takes place in 1961.  Benny (Justin Cunningham) is an orderly in a nursing home.  He takes care of “ornery white women.”  There is a lot of time spent on a story of two of them.  One is a patient.  The other is Julynne, the woman who runs the facility.  There is a bizarre storyline about the two women fighting over the love of a dead man.  Benny tells and sings about all of this.

Benny has twin daughters but hears the calling of a movement gathering momentum.  He decides to meet up with the Freedom Riders who are riding interstate buses to protest the non-enforcement of civil rights laws.  He is killed by a white police officer for no reason during a traffic stop.  None of this has any dramatic tension whatsoever.  The spoken theme is obvious:  “when you are after justice, you do what it takes.”

His daughters were raised by Julynne who ran the nursing home.  In the second act, his daughter Ruby travels to a cemetery where Benny and Julynne are buried next to each other.  The time is 1988.  Ruby is grieving because her teenage son is in the hospital.  He was brutally beaten by police officers who apparently were “forced” to subdue him.  This act is far better than the first but it also drags on and on.

Danyel Fulton has a lovely voice and came much closer to conveying the emotional heft required of this material.  To be fair, her half was clearly better written.  The libretto was by Ellen Fitzhugh and Harrison David Rivers with music by Ted Shen.

There is no set, just a couple of chairs.  There is not a set designer credited but there is a “scenic consultant.”  The placement of the chairs?  The orchestra sits behind the large platform.  That was ill advised since I found myself watching them playing an intermittently enjoyable jazzy score.  The material is deadly serious but totally confusing.  Placing this unfocused material on a completely bare stage is so odd as to be impossible to fathom.

In every show, there are nuggets to be savored.  Ruby discusses what it’s like to be a black girl in a mixed race school as a child.  She shares her thoughts when asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”  She just picks someone else’s answer.  As a minority she knows “some people’s dreams are less like dreams and more like a foregone conclusion.”  An insightful and effective line.  You have to search hard – and stay very focused – to hear them.

I am an enormous fan of the Transport Group’s work and Jack Cummings III who directed this misguided effort.  This company has been on a tear recently with exceptional productions including Renascence, Summer and Smoke, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine and Picnic.  I understand that the point being made in Broadbend, Arkansas relates to our continuing national strife over racism.  “We must get back on that bus.”  Theater cannot simply topical and relevant.  It also has to be far, far better than this to be recommended.  Frankly, I was blown away that this show was so awful.

Broadbend, Arkansas is playing at the Duke on 42nd Street until November, 23, 2019.

www.transportgroup.org

Isn’t is nice to know that a month in a medieval castle in Italy is just the right prescription to shake off the blues?  An Enchanted April is a new musical from the Utah Lyric Opera having its New York premiere.  The story is an adaptation of Elizabeth Von Arnim’s 1922 bestselling novel.  The stifling and endless rain in London prompts four dissimilar women to pause for a moment and take a holiday.

This castle is overflowing with wisteria and enveloped in life altering beauty.  Lotty Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot belong to the same ladies’ club.  They are not acquainted until Lotty strikes up a conversation.  She is reading a newspaper and sees an ad for San Salvatore.  A month long trip is proposed.  Rose thinks Lotty is quite mad and unbalanced.  Eventually these two women will bond over their unhappy marriages.

Lotty is the dutiful wife to her unappreciative lawyer husband Mellersh (Jim Stanek).  Rose is a quiet type who is absorbed with her charity work.  Her husband Frederick is an author of lurid and titillating novels.  This couple’s relationship my be approaching a dead end.  Their duet, “Everything Was Changed,” is the best song in the show.

Lotty is boisterous and fun.  She doesn’t “mean to be presumptuous and rude, I just am.”  Rose sulks into her books but nervously and excitedly agrees to take the trip.  The rental is very costly, however, so they recruit two additional women to join them.

Mrs. Fisher (Alma Cuervo) is an elderly lady still clinging to her proper Victorian ideals.  She believes “women’s heads are not for thinking.”  Lady Caroline Dester (Gena Sims) is newly engaged but desperately wants to escape the burdens of London society and her celebrity in order to think.  World War I and other tragedies have impacted everyone’s life and mood.  Breathing in the fresh air should be a restorative therapy.

Toss in the castle’s current owner, Thomas Briggs (Peter Reid Lambert), and the gong happy maid, Francesca (Melody Meeks Putnam), and you’ve got a spicy bucatini arrabiata.  Well, not exactly.  These are English stereotypes from 1922 after all.  An Enchanted April is more of a pesto; herbaceous, comforting, recognizable and easily enjoyable, if a tad cheesy.

Elizabeth Hansen and C. Michael Perry wrote this musical.  The score and tone fit seamlessly with the story.  Rhymes are often fun, such as “rules” and “drools.”  William Armstrong’s scenic and lighting design transports these women from depressing London to glorious Tuscany on a shoestring budget.  Alice Jankell’s direction uses limited space creatively which readily accommodates both intimate conversations and awkward tea parties.

An Enchanted April is a sentimental, romantic trifle.  There should be a large audience eager to see this musical, especially in regional theaters.  The show could definitely benefit from a little editing.  Seven reprises is probably too many.  There may be more solos than necessary as well.   Stylistically, the frequent belting vocals seem slightly incongruous with the period.

From start to finish, however, this musical aims to please and entertain.  On that level it succeeds.  The entire cast created nice characterizations and made their story arcs believable without being hokey.  Or, rather, just the right amount of hokey.  Romance, relaxation, reflection and reinvention was in the air!

Christiana Cole’s singing as the introverted Rose was richly melodic.  Leah Hocking’s Lotty is humorously dotty and her facial expressions were priceless.  She sums up San Salvatore in the way I might regard this tuneful new musical.  “We might not need a dungeon… but it is nice to have.”

www.bfany.org/theatrerow.com

www.utahlyric.org

Before the show begins, a sole leaf drifted down to the stage.  The comment could not be avoided.  All you can think is “autumn is coming.”  Fans of Game of Thrones have gathered to see Emmy winner Peter Dinklage take on Cyrano based on Edmond Rostand’s 1897 classic play.

Leaves will fall later in this woefully dull musical so I assume the preview was a tiny technical snafu.  Mr. Dinklage’s wife Erica Schmidt has adapted and directed this tale with music from Grammy Award winning rock band The National.  Cyrano the ugly is in love with the beauty Roxanne but she instead yearns for a man with physical rather than intellectual enchantments.  The story clearly feels right for a musical (which has indeed been attempted before).

The book is fairly leaden from the start and the songs, unfortunately, make it worse.  This one is hard to sit through.  The production interestingly aims for chamber-like dirge but there are few sparks to suggest passion on the stage.  Everyone does not seem to be in the same show.

Mr. Dinklage’s dwarfism replaces the long nose of the character as written.  That choice is inspired.  His performance is good and his gravelly singing voice works well with the mood.  The songs are all unremarkable so it is hard to say that his Cyrano was especially memorable.  He does, however, know how to firmly command a stage.  His pain is palpably rendered.

Jasmine Cephas Jones plays Roxanne.  She created the double role of “and Peggy” and Marie Reynolds in Hamilton.  I didn’t connect to her character in this production.  Roxanne is shallow and favors the handsome Christian over the stylized letter writings of a heartbroken Cyrano.  His pain is visibly evident.  Her desirability is not necessarily so but I felt the shallow angle was handled nicely.

As Christian, Blake Jenner fares best in the part which is self-described as “I can’t write a letter.  I’m so stupid, it’s shameful.”  He sings more beautifully than everyone on the stage which makes the physical attractiveness of his character work and stand out.  On the other hand, everyone else’s singing pales by comparison.  The musical never quite gels as a result.

Some of the scenes are creatively moody and cleverly work to showcase the two men wooing Roxanne through their different selves.  Ms. Schmidt’s take on Macbeth with school girls last season was tensely disturbing and visually arresting.  Here, the mood is set but what happens feels staged and fake.  The war scene in the second act goes on and on.  The slow motion choreography by Jeff and Rick Kuperman attempted to add gravitas to the moments.  The result was a overlong war ballet with large rifles.

Fans of Peter Dinklage will find this Cyrano a reason to spend time watching a marvelous actor brave this classic tale on stage.  The New Group has been producing star vehicles in recent seasons.  The results have been mixed.  This show, sadly, is hard to recommend.

Cyrano is being performed at the Daryl Roth Theatre until December 22, 2019.

www.thenewgroup.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/macbeth/redbulltheater

The road sign is for Exit 20.  The Point of Interest is marked closed.  Scotland, PA is a nowhere town in the fall of 1975.  A dead end job at Duncan’s Cafe won’t provide access to the American Dream.  That doesn’t mean Mac and Pat aren’t capable of improving their station in life.  They just need to take their ideas and put them into action.

This new musical is based on a 2001 film which was a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.  The show opens with three amusing stoners who substitute for the witches.  The characters include Mac, Duncan, Pat (Lady Macbeth), Banko and a detective named Peg McDuff.  The setting is a hamburger joint.  The political ambition in the Bard’s play is replaced by old-fashioned capitalistic greed.  Out, out damned spot with fries.

Mac has innovative notions to improve the restaurant.  Duncan (Jeb Brown) is a caricature of the vision-impaired American businessman.  He is all swagger and ego.  He will not entertain any thoughts of chicken nuggets.  Pat tells Mac that “we deserve more than a rusty trailer with a space heater.”  Like many Americans, “Everybody’s Hungry.”  The line which sums it all up:  “everything worth fighting for is even better when there’s more.”

Underachievers making up for lost time, Mac and Pat put a plan together to improve their situation in life.  A wild ride through forests of sarcasm, fields of musical comedy and graveyards of horror follow.  1970’s style tunes accompany all of this “wink wink” silliness but there is an excessive quantity of power ballads.  This show falls short of achieving the ambitions craved by its main characters.

There is a lot to enjoy in Scotland, PA.  Two musical numbers clearly stand out from the rest.  They are both are excellent character songs.  A very funny Jay Armstrong Johnson throws a “Kick-Ass Party” as the burnt out cook Banko.  The restaurant owner’s petulant son Malcolm (Will Meyers) introduces the instantly unforgettable new classic, “Why I Love Football.”  Those two moments are the high points in this score written by Adam Gwon.

That two supporting roles have the best songs is not necessarily the problem.  The rest of the show is simply not at that same level.  Michael Mitnick’s book is cleverly cute and winningly repulsive but many jokes fall flat.  Anna Louizos’ set design wittily takes every opportunity to playfully lambaste the McDonald’s chain.  The performances are fine.  Everything does not add up to greatness which is too bad because this one had a shot.

Directed by Lonny Price, this musical aspires to combine rock and roll with a commentary on the pitfalls of unchecked financial greed and self-promotion.  Given the current headlines surrounding the extraordinary corruption and lawlessness of the Trump administration, a comedic rumination on a spiraling modern Macbeth seems timely.  The show is much like the Democrats in Congress.  The smart elements are there but something critical is missing to run the football all the way to a touchdown.

Jeb Brown and Taylor Iman Jones have warm chemistry as the updated Macbeth villains.  True to form, the Lady provides the catalyst from which there will be no inner peace.  Both actors have big story arcs and many moments to shine.  When Peg McDuff arrives, she sees herself as the avenging hero.  Megan Lawrence is hysterical in the part.

So why is Scotland, PA just mildly entertaining?  The concept is inspired.  The book and music are not memorable enough to sustain an entire show.  The denouement is devilishly disturbing but there are too many lulls along the way.  In summation, this musical is “a tale… full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Scotland, PA is running at the Laura Pels Theatre through December 8, 2019.

www.roundabouttheatre.org