BROADWAY UNBOUND

So I have spent several hours in the Apple store trying to recover what is left of my sanity that can re-collect in a world dominated by technology, heartened by the presence of one of the truly fine hotel managers of the world, Frank Bowling, who was for many years Himself for the Hotel Bel-Air, when it was one of the Greaties.  Ah, those were the days.  
   Anyway Frank was in my I-phone class at 10 AM this morning, impeccable as always, unbelievably elegant tie and coordinated pocket kerchief, serene as always in spite of life's unrelenting complexities, intensified by all this electronic madness.  The tutorial from the very pleasant teacher was infinite, as are the possibilities of the iPhone but you have to have that kind of brain and I don't.  To make things worse, I had to renew this blog, when I am not in New York to Blog for Broadway, and it costs plenty, and I have no idea if anyone reads it, and everything I saw when in New York was disappointing to say the least.  Have returned to LA to work on my musical, SYLVIA WHO? which may or may not be realized in my lifetime, or indeed anyone else's.
    And if all that were not disturbing enough, I received a bulletin that they are bringing The Bridges of Madison County, one of the arch arches of our time, to Broadway as a musical.  Is there no mercy from the universe?
   Yesterday I had the unexpected fun of running into Sylvester Stallone-- it is Hollywood, after all-- and being able to comment on the musical of ROCKY which is coming to Broadway via Germany, where everybody was ecstatic about it Or Else.  But in all good faith, which I have to have, because the book is by Tom Meehan, one of the darling souls on the planet, a man of infinite generosity with a wife who has my same birthday and is beautiful besides, so I have to root for him, which it is impossible not to do (he also wrote the musical of The Producers with Mel Brooks who remains the funniest man alive but still needs help with structure.) Anyway I was able to tell M. Stallone that I understood they went wild for Rocky in Munich, and Sly, which I did not have the temerity to call him and wouldn't even if he asked me to, said he understood not a word besides 'YO' but wept anyway.  I have to say with all due respect that I saw the movie of Rocky a few weeks ago while still in New York, and it really holds up remarkably, seeming even better now than it did when I first saw it, maybe because I have become less cynical except perhaps about The Bridges of Madison County.  
    Anyway, I am sad and frustrated because nothing was accomplished today except I did connect with my darling friend Olivia-- the name alone lends some indication of her elegance-- PR for the Peninsula in Hong Kong, and just to hear that accent makes me feel more intelligent and accomplished, so the day has not been wasted.  Her little doggie, Tuki, went missing and never returned (she has as many as 9,) but she sounded the most beloved.  The hills around Olivia's place in Hong Kong are filled with enormous wild pigs, which of course the hills here are, too, except here they are in clothes, and often run agencies.  (Only kidding, anyone who wants to represent a new old author.)  It is Olivia's hope that Tuki, about whom she "fears the worst," a phrase that is most moving and Bronte-ish in that accent, met with a serpent, because that would have been quickest.  The parallel does go on, doesn't it?  I mean, there is Shakespeare and all, how sharper than a serpent's tooth, etc. but I will not go on about my children.
    Oh, I hope it was worth $178.00 to do this damned blog.  I hope there is something worth blogging about on Broadway.  I hope, if there is a Heaven, and Tuki is there, remembering what a loved life she had in exotic Hong Kong, with exotic Olivia, she will speak in her doggie tongue to the Powers to give me the strength and the skill to carry this through to a joyful finale, or, even better, a joyful continuance.  Or at least put some dynamite under the bridges of You Know Where.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS

Well, it's all right to go back to LA. 
      Last night I went to the theatre and saw what was rumored and spoken aloud of in alleyways(mostly the Shubert one)as the great show of the season, PIPPIN.  As my friends know, I came back to this unrelentingly gray(as it was for an elongated winter) metropolis because I have lingering (and occasionally passionate) hopes of getting my musical, SYLVIA WHO? on.  Because Pippin was purported to be so wonderful, I thought there might be no selfless exigency in mounting my (it really is) adorable tale, as there would be something already on the disappointing boards that justified the exorbitant price of tickets, to draw in young audiences besides the revival of ANNIE, BOOK OF MORMON, and the dark (and I hear, off-putting) MATILDA.

     And as the curtain rose, or rather, the lights signaled wonder,there burst open upon the stage the most splendiferous of acrobatics, trapeze artistry, and eye-dazzling display of human pyrotechnics that I have seen this side of a circus, where it would be expected, though not to such a beautifully designed effect.  Then the show began, with its tale of Charlemagne and his son, Pippin, the glamorous second wife who hatched shadowy thoughts of her own son taking over, etc. etc.  And as events, or the curious lack of them, unfolded, my hopes rose and fell with the dangling artists, until, more than midway through Act I, an extraordinary performer, Andrew Martin, as Pippin's Grandma, part yenta(or Yentl) stopped the show dead, or more accurately, live in its tracks, bringing the audience into the palms of her very lively hands, and

more importantly, to its feet.  Then, even more remarkably, she stripped away her middle-aged schmata and revealed an impressive body in sequined splendor and started swinging like a regular trapeze artist.  Even my cynical escort who was quick to explain this wasn't "his kind of show," was impressed.

    So I was happy for the spirit of Bob Fosse, whose production originally this was, and who, I imagined, would be hovering in the wings, since he probably now had them.   I had encountered that great gentleman once in the flesh at Baskin-Robbins next to Dusty's beauty parlor in Beverly Hills, and without even thinking, fell to my knees, causing him to wave his hands and shyly say, "Oh, please."  But we had a fine conversation, and some correspondence that followed, and I always revered him.  So I was glad this Pippin was working.

    And then came Act Two.  I have to assume that if there is an Afterlife, which I hope there is for artists, so they can ameliorate what they have failed to make wondrous in Earth time, Fosse would have certainly worked on structure, since he had clearly already perfected movement.  So he would have had to cut this act to shreds, since it did not slow the action, it obliterated it. Unnecessary farm scenes with pig-clad players at the trough and field hands, etc. working the farm, while Pippin's love(?) affair with a young widow unfolded, sort of, under a quilt, were uninteresting to the point of being deadly.  Lost was the plot of the step-Queen, lobbying in the shadows for her son, momentarily redeemed somewhat by her gifted dancing-- not surprising as she is the daughter of Jacques D'Amboise and so of course can kick high.  But Pippin's love interest, though sweet, was not electric enough to justify her time onstage, much less the loss of the plot.  And not electric at all, though also sweet, was Matthew James Thomas as Pippin. Three names do not a transcending talent make.

     Most of all I sorrowed for the dog, a little black puppy Pippin gives the widow's son to compensate for the death of his duck.  As he bounded onto the stage, jumping, but not high enough, he missed the drum he was supposed to land on, and had to make a second try.  AND WITH EVERYONE WATCHING!  I could feel his mortification, so even though Pippin gave him his treat anyway, what humiliation there had to be in his heart as he went back to his trainer and what he has of friends, who, even if they hadn't seen, would have to know. 

A SEASON WORTH FORGETTING-and now MACBETH/MARY

      Today is Shakespeare's birthday, and in his honor, and in his defense, I am resuming this Blog.
I have been very remiss about blogging for Broadway, as most of the dreams of my youth that made Broadway the biggest dream have been decimated by less than wonderful plays, if plays they are really at all (I was a Shakespeare major.)  So I must begin my apologia with MACBETH, the show-off version, being a one-man display of all Shakespeare's angry brilliance squeezed into one usually super-talented man, to the detriment of both the playwright and the performer.
    When you major in Shakespeare, at what was and I hope always will be one of the great women's colleges, Bryn Mawr, and have a teacher who himself was a student of Kittredge, supposedly the scholar/teacher/editor who made it all accessible, there are some things you hold dear: like poetry, plot and character.  To have the Three Witches wonder when Will We Three Come Again? in the voice of the lunatic performer(the part, not a judgment of the man) in a madhouse, initially casts a spell, though I would warrant not the one the playwright intended.
   I have long been a fan of Alan Cumming, whose versatility extends from Cabaret to the Good Wife, arguably the best show on television, to the recent surprise of seeing him on a re-broadcast of Romy and Michelle go to a High School Reunion or something like that, in which he played Sandy, the rich graduate who comes back in a helicopter and dances with both funny airheaded stars.  The stunning question, for me at least, was how Hollywood had found him at such a young time, since most of the Brits or even Scots have their basic training and additional plumage brushed in theatre on that edge of the sea. He was likely in his early or middle twenties in that movie, so it was an impressive puzzle.
    But to have all of that great play compressed into one man's rendition and depiction was not only unsettling, but unsatisfying.  Especially as his least impressive depiction was that of Lady MacBeth, whom all of us who were hoping that a woman's place was in the theater, held as perhaps the best chance an actress had to show her dark side.  If there is a dark side to Alan Cumming it is only that he bit off more than the most talented of actors can chew, much less spit out.
   I suppose my disappointment is exacerbated by a plethora of unnecessarily naked bodies in this season's parade of less-than spectacles, and that Alan Cumming's was among them, taking a bath that one would be correct in describing as gratuitous, although that word may be too polite.  I had the pleasure of attending a private tribute to the great stage designs of Tony Walton, and could not help thinking how much it would add to the ever-escalating price of sets, to have to have a portion of the stage that one could actually sink into and emerge from covering what are ever-increasingly less-than-private parts.
     To my actual horror, as not only a student of theater but a lover of many hopes and dreams and visions of a spiritual nature, Jesus Christ's mother showed up as turbeulently depicted by Fiona Shaw, in a one woman show called The Testament of Mary, and she, too, took a bath.  Before the opening curtain which there wasn't one of really, she more or less held out her interesting but very tight mouth as though to kiss the vulture she was holding bravely, which, by the way, disappeared and was never a part of the actual overwrought proceedings.  We have all heard of a different kind of bird tease, but never, to my knowledge, a vulture tease.
      On the way to the theater I had overheard someone say "I would go to anything Fiona Shaw was in," and wondered as the evening unfolded along with her clothes if that would include a bathtub. Where are we headed, if anywhere?  I shudder to think what might happen to the statue of Shakespeare that stands so royally in Central Park.  Its legs are really good.  I hope no one tries to investigate what might be the rest of him.

DEAD ACCOUNTS, I'LL SAY

So I had the great seeming privilege of seeing what has to be the hot ticket of the current coming season, the recently ex-Mrs. Tom Cruise in Dead Accounts which I thought was going to be about dead accountants.  As it was, it was about a jammed night in the theater, because apparently there is great curiosity about seeing her in the pretty flesh, or many people know that Norbert Leo Butz, her co-star, or as should be correctly heralded, the one who carries any show he's in, so whoever else is in it doesn't matter, even if she was married to Tom Cruise.  The play is a less than a slight comedy with a premise that turns out to be ingenious but is revealed too late, set in a wonderful kitchen with a roof that recedes and has slats in it and lights up in brilliant ways in-between scenes.  But none of it is substantial enough to make up for the price of the ticket, even when, as in my case, it was free, as I was invited by Rex Reed.  He was, from all appearances, slightly more infuriated than I by the events, or lack of them, onstage.  

   But we were both enchanted by Norbert Leo Butz who tears through and up anything he's in, a marvel of charm and multilayered gifts, though we were both concerned about his health as he eats about six pints of ice cream in the first scene and even if it's yogurt he has to be in trouble unless he goes offstage and throws up or it's Activia in which case he'd have the runs.  He also swills several cans of Coke it looks like (I had a very good seat since I was with Rex) in which case he would have to be up all night from the caffeine.

   All of this compulsive behavior happens immediately, so one is so caught up in the frenzy that the presence of the sweet(I have to assume she is) Katie Holmes seems very much beside the point, as it probably was to Tom Cruise.  She is slender and solicitous, as her voice is, so one strains for a note of specialness, that doesn't really make itself evident until just before the curtain call, when she lets down her hair in a Rapunzelian moment, as if to tell us what there is/was of special femininity that got her into such an elevated(in terms of US magazine) position, Hollywoodmarriagewise.  The play itself is even more fragile than she is, and it is not until the second young woman, as the recent ex-wife of Norbert appears, with an even reedier voice that Katie sort of holds her own.

    One has to wonder, in this era of multi-million dollar losses, global tragedies, and the recent devastation in this once great city, why anyone would put up several million, which even the flimsiest of productions costs on Broadway, for what could be at best a modest success.  There is a wisp of wit in what is revealed, at too long last, as Norbert's folly, a clever crime for which we do not know the results or ramifications by the final curtain, and remains a puzzle as theatergoers who have never seen each other before are brought into a kind of camaraderie as they leave, asking what were until that moment complete strangers, "Did you understand the ending?"

    Jack O'Brien, usually a very clever director, maybe understood.  Theresa Rebeck who wrote the thing, is, according to my host, a great favorite of critics.  So perhaps one of them will be moved to explain it.  Meanwhile, the woman who played Norbert's mother, Jayne Houdyshell, was valiant, and Josh Hamilton, a touching Cincinnati pal of everyone in that terrific kitchen, got to kiss Katie, which seemed a source of great relief to the audience, all of whom were probably wondering the same thing.  Huh?

HOT TICKETS, ALLEGEDLY

The most fascinating thing about Catch Me if You Can is why all those gifted people would want to make it into a musical. The movie on which it is based was an episodic caper about a charming young con man, played by Leonardo di Caprio, and was redeemed by the idiosyncratic Christopher Walken as his father and the always weighty imprimatur of Steven Spielberg. But a musical needs to unfold, not be explained.

The gargantuan comedic talents of Norbert Leo Butz as the pursuer of the young culprit, are here squished into an uncomfortable wrinkled suit and a scowling demeanor. The bad boy himself, Aaron Tveit, is cute but nothing to build a show around. His 'takes' as he gets yet another darkly bright idea make one long for the original production of How to Succeed and the inimitable Bobby Morse. Mark Shaiman is a gifted composer and arranger, but nothing here shines except for his autobiographical program notes, which are wittier than anything in the show.

A few blocks away is The Book of Mormon. I was successful in getting a ticket last week, a cause for congratulations from all I knew, since it is unquestionably the biggest hit in eons. But except for one song that moved me, the show seemed what I would have to characterize as 'Ka Ka' humor.

The biggest surprise on the Great (and expensive) White Way is Sister Act. The musical adaptation of the Whoopi Goldberg movie, I went expecting nothing. To my astonishment it is riddled with wonderful songs by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, a dynamite and dazzling leading lady in Patina Miller, who rocks and discos with the best of them -- maybe even better than the best, and the pure and touching soprano of Victoria Clark as the Mother Superior. For those who missed the movie, Patina plays a singer who saw a murder and is hiding out in a convent. The device and its movie past aside, this is flat-out entertainment at its sequined best. Exhausted at having been so disappointed with what people were saying was good, I, like the woman at the center of the show, was redeemed.

HOT TICKETS, ALLEGEDLY

The most fascinating thing about Catch Me if You Can is why all those gifted people would want to make it into a musical. The movie on which it is based was an episodic caper about a charming young con man, played by Leonardo di Caprio, and was redeemed by the idiosyncratic Christopher Walken as his father and the always weighty imprimatur of Steven Spielberg. But a musical needs to unfold, not be explained.

The gargantuan comedic talents of Norbert Leo Butz as the pursuer of the young culprit, are here squished into an uncomfortable wrinkled suit and a scowling demeanor. The bad boy himself, Aaron Tveit, is cute but nothing to build a show around. His 'takes' as he gets yet another darkly bright idea make one long for the original production of How to Succeed and the inimitable Bobby Morse. Mark Shaiman is a gifted composer and arranger, but nothing here shines except for his autobiographical program notes, which are wittier than anything in the show.

A few blocks away is The Book of Mormon. I was successful in getting a ticket last week, a cause for congratulations from all I knew, since it is unquestionably the biggest hit in eons. But except for one song that moved me, the show seemed what I would have to characterize as 'Ka Ka' humor.

The biggest surprise on the Great (and expensive) White Way is Sister Act. The musical adaptation of the Whoopi Goldberg movie, I went expecting nothing. To my astonishment it is riddled with wonderful songs by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, a dynamite and dazzling leading lady in Patina Miller, who rocks and discos with the best of them -- maybe even better than the best, and the pure and touching soprano of Victoria Clark as the Mother Superior. For those who missed the movie, Patina plays a singer who saw a murder and is hiding out in a convent. The device and its movie past aside, this is flat-out entertainment at its sequined best. Exhausted at having been so disappointed with what people were saying was good, I, like the woman at the center of the show, was redeemed.

SPIDERFREUDE

As one whose childhood was brightened by what seemed the great original American art form, my heart lifted by the brilliant lyrics of Frank Loesser, Yip Harburg and Cole Porter, my soul tintinabulated by a sense of personal destiny because I had the same birthday as Irving Berlin, I have watched and listened with great dismay to the devolution of the musical comedy. When Lincoln Center had its brilliant revival of South Pacific, I wept all through the overture: hearing real songs, feeling true sentiments, not just squishy things, but a modicum of wit that made you smile, and occasioned bursts of true joy. So it was with some alarm that I experienced Phantom, and the mawkish music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and grieved for what was doubtless going to be downhill from Lerner & Loewe.
But I had NO idea. Only as a vague sense of terror descended on me with the mounting cost of musicals, and the success of mirthless unfrolics like Spring Awakening, as my ears strained for real music, did I begin to feel what I loved was lost forever. So when the announcements started coming about Spiderman- Turn Off the Dark, that a theater was to be renovated to make room for the areial acrobatic, and a show was to cost $65 million i threw in my spiritual musical towel.
Having lived many years in Hollywood, the capital of Schaadenfreude, where one is mostly sustained by the failure of others, it is with a heart full of song that
I read today Ben Brantley's wittily negatived and admittedly early(although in terms of original scheduling, late) review of Spiderman, Turn Off the Dark. Any bad advance feelings I had towards the show had been exacerbated by the positive enthusiasm lately exhibited by the hysteric Glenn Beck, who endorsed it as if it were the musicalized philosophy of Sarah Palin. So to have a genuine theater critic from The New York Times see it at last, and express his tasteful disdain gave
a lilt to the day. The Gershwins hummed in my ears. Jerome Kern flooded my veins. I think the song he played was "Look for the Silver Lining."
Is it possible in this horribly confusing world where daily the values we once clung to are swept away, that virtue can still triumph? That Good-- that is to say not the comic book victory of masked hero over masked villain, but something of actual value, like a melody you can actually hum and words you can understand-- can prevail? Oh, God, I hope so. Are You there? Are You watching this? Or are you just trying to get out of the way before some more scenery falls?