 |
This page requires Flash player to view. Please download it here |
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
John Stamos, Nolan Gerard Funk, and Gina Gershon star in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of the 1961 hit Bye Bye Birdie. Finian's Rainbow, starring Christopher Borger as Harry, Alina Faye as Susan, and William Youmans as Buzz Collins, is now playing at the St. James Theater. Current cast members Rosie O'Donnell, Tyne Daly, Samantha Bee, Natasha Lyonne, and Katie Finneran star in Love, Loss, and What I Wore, written by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, showing this season at the Westside Theatre. J. Bernard Calloway and Montego Glover perform a duet written by Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan in Memphis. Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts's newest play, Superior Donuts, features Kate Buddeke as Officer Randy Osteen, Michael McKean as Arthur Przybyszewski, and Jon Michael Hill as Franco Wicks. |
 |
|
|
 |
|
The latest Broadway season is upon us, so RL Magazine ventured to Midtown Manhattan to check out five recently launched productions—three musicals, one play, and one Off-Broadway, five-woman extravaganza. Although only two of the productions take place in the present day, all are relevant for the times. In the revival of Bye Bye Birdie, the gaggle of teenage girls chasing rocker Conrad Birdie evokes the modern-day mania for stars like the Jonas Brothers. On a more serious note, the controversy over interracial dating in Memphis might seem like a throwback, but the same month the play opened on Broadway, a justice of the peace in Louisiana denied a white woman and a black man a marriage license. Surprisingly, it's the vanishing breed of mom-n-pop bakeshops in the brand-new Superior Donuts that feels almost retro.
Whether you cry your eyes out, laugh out loud or hum along, Broadway's bumper crop is pure, escapist, electrifying entertainment. Enjoy the show!
Bye Bye Birdie
Revivals of Bye Bye Birdie have sprung up just about everywhere in the nearly 50 years since its inaugural run on the Great White Way, except where it started. That changed this fall with a big-budget production starring John Stamos as Albert Peterson and Gina Gershon as his secretary, Rose Alvarez.
Save for a few elaborate, high-tech background effects, Birdie, written by Michael Stewart in 1961, remains a period piece: a smart move on the production team's part, as modernizing the fictional Sweet Apple, Ohio, where fast boys and cigarettes are the gravest of dangers, wouldn't fly in a post-9/11 recessionary world.
The eternally youthful Stamos plays neurotic mama's boy Albert, a music agent whose star, Conrad Birdie (the magnetic Nolan Gerard Funk) is about to be drafted into the army. (The creators loosely based Birdie on the teenage hysteria surrounding Elvis Presley's enlistment.)
Rose conjures up an ingenious idea: on the eve of his departure, arrange for Conrad to sing the yet-to-be-written surefire hit “One Last Kiss” to a randomly chosen fan and plant a big one on the lucky girl. Then Albert can give up the unseemly music business, teach English, marry longtime girlfriend Rose, and (you get the gist) live happily ever after.
So off they go to the Pleasantville-esque Sweet Apple, where teenage fan Kim MacAfee (Allie Trimm) awaits her prince. Conrad's tumultuous trip enrages Kim's steady, Hugo Peabody (Matt Doyle) and father (Tony winner Bill Irwin), whose neck veins might burst at any moment. Love him or hate him, one thing is for certain: post-Conrad, Sweet Apple will never be the same.
Henry Miller's Theatre, 124 West 43rd Street www.byebyebirdieonbroadway.com
Finian's Rainbow
To say that Finian's Rainbow has a lot going on is a bit of an understatement: an endearing leprechaun, an unwaveringly bigoted senator who turns black (after a bedazzling heroine wishes it so upon a pot of gold) and a mute ballerina all make for enchanting theater. But what could have been a rambling production contains, at its core, a simple and poignant message—namely, that people are inherently good.
The revival, which debuted in 1947 (Francis Ford Coppola also made a film version in 1968), takes place in the (fictional) deep-south state of Missitucky. Irish immigrant Finian McLonergan (Jim Norton) “borrows” and hides a pot of gold from neurotic, frenetic leprechaun Og (the mischievous, sparkly-eyed Christopher Fitzgerald). The ensuing action centers on Og's effort to retrieve said pot—which contains three wishes for humans—otherwise he loses his immortality faster than he can say luck o' the Irish.
Simultaneously, a romance blossoms between Finian's daughter, Sharon (the beguiling Kate Baldwin) and local pretty boy Woody Mahoney (Cheyenne Jackson). Their love evolves through captivating music, particularly the charming duet “If This Isn't Love.” Although Og finds himself equally besotted with Sharon, jealousy doesn't exist in Missitucky.
Finian thoroughly entertains, with more drama than a spiritual revival (which it sometimes resembles) and surprisingly modern themes. For instance, townies discover credit in the form of the Shears and Robust catalogue in possibly the best number of the evening, “That Great Come-and-Get-It Day,” and Woody saves his property from foreclosure in an eleventh-hour miracle. Miracles and magic provide a welcome respite from the recession. Finian and his eccentric mates couldn't have ventured to Broadway at a better time.
St. James Theatre, 246 West 44th Street www.finiansonbroadway.com
Love, Loss, and What I Wore
In the most complex of relationships—those between mother and daughter—a few universal truths prevail: namely, that whenever the two go shopping, it will end in disaster; that any time a mother buys her daughter an outfit, she will hate it; and that searching for a training bra could well be the most humiliating moment of a young woman's life.
Love, Loss, and What I Wore, co-authored by the dynamic duo of siblings Nora and Delia Ephron, adapts Ilene Beckerman's 1995 memoir of the same name. In addition, the playwrights interviewed women—mostly friends and acquaintances—about their lives, loves and losses as told through their wardrobes, the substance of which is then staged as monologues and dialogues.
One scene recalls a wife picking up her husband upon his release from prison wearing nothing underneath her coat. Another chronicles a lesbian couple shopping separately for their wedding outfits—one with her supportive mother, the other, alone and dejected because of her family's homophobia.
Like its kindred spirit The Vagina Monologues, Love, Loss contains comedic moments (“Stop pretending that anything is ever going to be the new black”) and tearjerkers (“No one thinks that a twenty-seven-year-old will survive breast cancer, but I did”) in equal measure.
The rotating cast of five includes bold-faced names (Rosie O'Donnell, Tyne Daly and Kristin Chenoweth), mixed with comedians and up-and-comers (Samantha Bee, Mary Birdsong and Lucy DeVito, performing with mother Rhea Perlman). Under their skillful interpretation, Love, Loss embodies an empowering, optimistic form of feminism fit for the twenty-first century.
Off-Broadway at the Westside Theatre, 407 West 43rd Street www.lovelossonstage.com
Memphis
It's no surprise that soul finally returned to Broadway in the form of Memphis, a city whose most famous resident was the late king of rock ‘n' roll.
Memphis chronicles the lives of ne'er do well Huey Calhoun (Chad Kimball, who nails it as the exasperating yet affable protagonist) and aspiring singer Felicia (Montego Glover, last seen in The Color Purple, who brings down the house with her Aretha-esque pipes). When Huey, at once naïve and revolutionary, falls into a job as the hottest DJ in town—and falls for the African-American Felicia—racial tensions ensue.
With music and lyrics by Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan, hum-worthy tunes such as “The Music of My Soul” and “Everybody Wants to Be Black on a Saturday Night” propel the story along at warp speed. But James Monroe Iglehart, as secondary character Bobby, steals the show with his rhythmic and graceful dance moves (despite his portly physique).
Unlike other musicals that rely upon the proven formula of boy meets girl, then some sort of friction ensues before boy gets girl (The Music Man, Annie Get Your Gun, and Oklahoma! come to mind), interracial love in the segregated south may not be enough to conquer all. But if a recent preview performance is any indication (theatergoers leapt to their feet before the principal actors took their final bows), Memphis will conquer Manhattan.
Shubert Theatre, 225 West 44th Street www.memphisthemusical.com
Superior Donuts
Coming on the heels of his Broadway debut—the Pulitzer Prize and Tony award-winning dysfunctional family drama August: Osage County—is playwright Tracy Letts's sophomore effort, Superior Donuts. Letts manages to conjure up the same types of richly complex and beautifully flawed characters in his latest production.
Donuts examines a family of a different kind—one created not via chains of DNA, but through circumstances and deep emotional bonds that don't always come easily.
Protagonist Arthur Przybyszewski (Michael McKean), proprietor of the titular donut shop, is a draft-dodging aging hippie who rarely expresses emotion. His intimacy issues extend to every facet of his life, from the daughter he seldom speaks of, to the female cop he fancies but doesn't pursue.
Enter Franco Wicks (Jon Michael Hill), a charming, spunky twenty-one-year-old hired to assist Arthur in the Chicago shop. As verbose as Arthur is silent, the two spar like a married couple, but care for one another intensely. Franco pushes Arthur to escape from his debilitating shell, and Arthur encourages the budding writer Franco in his craft.
A melting pot of American life, Donuts handles racial issues adeptly and with humor. Letts gives the Polish American Arthur, African American Franco and Russian American Max Tarasov (hilariously played by Yasen Peyankov) plenty of material.
In a Letts play, character development trumps plot, and it's not until the second act that the raison d'etre of Donuts comes to life. And as life can often be, it is heartbreak tinged with hope.
Music Box Theatre, 239 West 45th Street www.donutsonbroadway.com
Jennifer Dixon is a staffer at Harper's Bazaar in New York. She has written for Elle Decor, Money, Self, WebMD, O, The Oprah Magazine, and O at Home, among other publications.
Photography credits:
- Joan Marcus
- Joan Marcus
- Carol Rosegg
- Joan Marcus
- Robert J. Saferstein
|
|
|
|
 |
|
