As stated to my man at the entrance of the show: “Watching Ibsen is like going to the dentist. No one likes to do it, at its best it is boring and at its worst it is painful, but its very important and in the long run you’ll be glad you went.” This show certainly fits that description. There were some mediocre performances, and some were quite good. I was more interested in learning the play itself, as I had never read or seen it. Also, this was my first trip to the Jean Cocteau Repertory Company. I respect their choices of material. They do a lot of lesser known, very difficult classics. Shows that other companies don’t have the guts to do because they don’t guarantee ticket sales. So props to them for that.

The set was one of the most interesting things about the performance. Robert Klingelhoefer chose to rake the stage up; also to set it on a bizarre angle. So the stage itself was trapezoidal, almost. Using odd angles and tall mirrors, he played with perspective within a bleak emptiness. It was beautiful and simple.

As all Ibsen plays are prone to do, the show ends tragically. I give my respect to actors in a show that the language is rather dated and the situations are overtly dramatic, and still manage to make the characters seem like real people, not antiquated stereotypes.

The best performance in the show was by Erin Scanlon as Hedwig, the daughter. She was fabulous throughout the show. I thought she looked familiar, and when I read the program I learned that we once worked for the same theatre company at the same time. Small world. I also very much enjoyed Angela Madden as Gina, the quiet wife with a secret. The two leading men (Michael Surabian as Hjalmar and Chad A. Suitts as Greggers) played off each other quite well and tackled the complexities of the characters with ease. I hated Greggers’ muttonchops. They looked terribly fake.

For a production of a dour, classic tragedy on a cold rainy night, to an empty house, the show wasn’t half-bad. Good for them.

The Soho Playhouse, March 23rd. Obtained comp tickets through AE. Definitely money well spent. Magic Hands Freddy centers around the title character, aptly nicknamed due to his career as a masseur. His brother, the overachieving veteranarian-turned-art-historian, Freddy’s Italian wife, Maria, and a fourth actor who plays a multitide of characters. The performance I saw featured Matt Servitto as Freddy, who is not the regular actor. He was excellent, as understudies often are. An incredibly well rounded, sensitive and strong performance. I believed he was a real person, which is the ultimate challenge in creating a character. I felt the same way about his wife. Antoinette LaVecchia was also very real as his cold, estranged wife. Her arc is beautifully created as we see her deteriorate from her vibrant, happy past, to her unhappy present. Ed Chemaly plays the funeral home owner, the professor at the University, and a client of Freddy’s. Each character was unique and funny; a good character actor. My issue was with Ralph Macchio, who plays Calvin (the brother). He had some fame in the Eighties with the Karate Kid movies. These films unfortunately never taught him how to act. Furthemore, back then, he could depend on his good looks. He grew up to be pretty average looking. Its not that he was bad, but among the other actors, he definitely stuck out as the weakest link. Not a particularly charismatic or strong actor.

The set was a huge problem. True, this play shares the stage with another play, so the set was designed to be easily moved. However, I couldn’t stop staring at the very phony looking exposed brick wall. It was very distracting.

The writing was good, but there were some moments that were unclear. The tragic moment at the end of the first act comes out of nowhere, and when the house lights come up for intermission, everyone is confused. Also, one of the major character developments happens at the end of the show; we learn two characters were having an affair. However, the playwright (Arje Shaw) never tells us the details (when they got together, when it ended, how they hid it, etc). At the end of a play that has taken such pains to create full relationships and very real characters, I find it odd that such important details were ignored.

The show is worth seeing simply for the good performances. The other elements, sadly, fall flat.

March 16th, first attempt at rejoining the real world after my broken toe incident. Getting all the way up the 70+ steps into the balcony at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey BAM theatre was interesting, but definitely worth it. Based on my extensive viewing of Shakespeare both here and in England, I find that English theatre companies, on the whole, do Shakespeare better. In general they take more risks and are not afraid to throw in new ideas. Here, its more like sacred text that dare not be altered! The Propeller company, clearly, is from England. I am not suggesting that this play was a radically new reinterpretation of Midsummer. It was new, fresh, exciting, energetic, and playful. Tony Pavelka created a visual world that looked like a gay wedding. Sparkles and glitter and white chairs and ladders hoisted up into the sky. The costumes were a nice compliment to the set- visually, all the elements were harmonious. The ensemble cast were all strong, particularly Simon Scardifeld as Puck and Robert Hands as Helena. This might be a good time to mention that it was an all-male cast. True to Shakespeare’s time, men were running around in dresses. However, they played the women with sincerity and truth, and were not “in drag” at all.

Making the show an even more fully realized piece of work, there was original music that the cast sang in 3 or 4 spots in the show, usually in 3 part harmony. Haunting melodies helped us delve even further into the dreamland they created.

There were 2 moments in the show that stood out above the rest. One, the angry/confusion scene with the 4 lovers. The intentions they used were such that I had never even thought of before, making their characters, often thought of to be flat, destinctively unique. Two, the Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-the-play was some of the best slapstick I’ve ever seen. The plastic dog being wheeled around was ridiculous and laugh-out-loud funny. I wish that the rest of the performance had included more silly moments like that. The performance on a whole was intensely physical, but it is only in the last 15 minutes of the show that you realize these men are physical comedy geniuses.

My only real complaint with the show is with their choice to exclude women in the process. The male cast played the female roles wonderfully. However, there are so few good roles for women in Shakespeare and in every other kind of theatre. And there are so many good female actresses in the world looking for work, probably 10 times as many as there are good male actors. This is just fact. I find their choice to exclude wome to be unfair and sexist. Its hard enough for us, and the more all-male companies that crop up, the harder it will be.

Yay audience extras! I had been looking forward to seeing Aunt Dan and Lemon (good reviews, good cast, good playwright) but hadn’t gotten around to it. It popped up on Audience Extras yesterday and we snagged those tickets. Second row, all the way on the side. Not great seats, but as a membership to AE costs $80 for a year, and these tickets were $50 a piece, it is most definitely worth joining.

The playwright, Wallace Shawn, is equally respected as an actor and a playwright (the “inconceivable” guy from “the princess bride”) and his dark political theories are not necessarily easy to hear, but worth a listen. Nobody likes hearing the ugly truth. In fact, several groups of people walked angrily out of the show at various points of the performance. Lili Taylor plays (beautifully and subtly) a frail, sickly, English girl named Lemon. Her father was angry and violent, her mother was weak, so naturally she became enamored with their mutual friend, Dan (Danielle), played excellently by Kristen Johnson. Johnson is best known for her role on “Third Rock from the Sun,” or perhaps as “Ivana Humpalot” from Austin Powers. She is one of the most comfortable, natural stage actors I’ve ever seen. Its such a complicated role and she nailed it. Lemon recounts her memories of Aunt Dan, which largely involve her political theories and ideals. The woman’s idol is Henry Kissinger, and she defends him tooth and nail for his decisions. She pities him for the massive amounts of pressure being put on him. She believes that everything he does is for the good of the people, and finds it disgusting that people criticise him (people like Lemon’s mother). Lemon, an impressionable child, takes away some very valuable, albeit cold-hearted lessons from Aunt Dan. At the end of the play, after Aunt Dan had died, Lemon comes to the end of the stage and shares all that she has learned. Meanwhile, the house lights come up, so she can talk to us as people. As hateful, nazi-sympathizing people. Let me explain. Lemon comes to the conclusion that througout history, there have been groups of people that have been forced to defend their way of life. Whenever there is a threat to their way of life, they’ve had to defend themselves the only way they knew how. She never says that the Nazi’s were right, she just explains that they were in no way, unique. Which is the truth.

But we don’t want to hear it.

It is clear why this play was chosen to be revived in NY in this day and age. Aunt Dan makes direct references to Sept. 11th, even though the show was written 18 years ago. She says, if Kissinger didn’t do his job, planes would fall out of the sky and it would be chaos. You could look at the show as a pro-war (pro-Bush) statement. But its not. It just explains the truth within that argument. And although I don’t agree with the argument, I agree that there is a degree of rationality in it. If there weren’t, it wouln’t be worth arguing about.

The other characters, mostly Dan’s friends, were supplementary and present mostly to set the scene of 1960’s swinging London (and its dark side). Bill Sage as the hateful, overworked Father, was real, scary, but sadly, very brief. Another actor worth noting was Catherine Curtain as the compassionate but powerless mother Her friendship with Dan ends when Dan concludes that her idea that people actually have true compassion is a fallicy. And Lemon feels this at the end. She says that she would like to travel the world and ask every single person if they’ve ever felt compassion, why, in what context, and what did it feel like? Because she doubts that it truly exists.

My favorite Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd, opened at the New York City Opera tonight. I had to be there, and I had to get good seats. I decided to splurge and spend the full ticket price and sit in the first row of the first circle. I arrived at the theatre to discover that in addition to the huge orchestra, there were 5 rings of seats! The theatre was so huge that our “best seats” ended up being hundreds of feet too far away for my taste. In addition, the acoustics were horrible. Because of these factors, I never quite felt the full intensity and power of the incredible score. This was a massive disappointment. However, seeing the show in any capacity was great. Timothy Nolan as Sweeney was frightening and powerful, even at hundreds of feet too far away from his performance. Elaine Paige was disappointing. Her acting was good. She was a very serious, dark Mrs. Lovett. Vocally, although I know it is one of the most difficult roles ever written, she did not even closely match the power of Nolan. It was clearly a case of casting a big star, and not necessarily the best person for the role. Tonna Miller as Johanna was fine. She sang the role beautifully. Unfortunately, the ingenue is not a very interesting role. Judith Blazer as the Beggar Woman I also felt to be just fine. Her acting was good, but again, vocally she fell flat. I know this was not totally due to the acoustics because some of the actors had power, while others didn’t. For example, Keith Jameson as Tobias Ragg was fabulous. Operatic, yet innocent. His rendition of “Not while I’m Around” might be the best I’ve ever heard. Roland Rusinek as the Beadle was mediocre as well. The role has such potential for both evil and comedy, and he never committed to either choice. Andrew Drost as Pirelli was fantastic. One of the hardest tenor roles in theatre, he nailed every high note with power and ease. Scott Hogsed as Antony Hope was an interesting choice. A strong, macho looking man with a deep, heavy operatic baritone, I felt him to be grossly miscast as the young, naive, sometimes cowardly sailor. His voice was far too rich to carry off the light, lullabye-like “Johanna.” Perhaps the worst rendition of that song I’ve ever heard. Yet somehow, technically perfect.

The ensemble was huge, and barely audible at times. Very strange.

I would sum up the performance as a “pretty good” revival of a “stunningly brilliant” piece of theatre.

Finally, I got to see the show that swept the Tonys 2 years ago. The Producers won what seemed like every major award, and when that happens, I usually resent that show for burying other good shows. However, the good reviews were hard to ignore, and when I heard that Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick were coming back to the show for 4 more months, I jumped at the chance to go. After they had left, the buzz completely died, and although I’m sure that Roger Bart and Brad Oscar are terrific in the roles, it is the star quality of Lane and Broderick that kept droves of enthusiastic people in those seats, paying 100 buck a pop. (I actually bit the bullet and did it this time; the most I’ve ever spent on a theatre ticket. Ok, my boyfriend paid. But you know what I mean.) The two leads, although they’ve done the show countless times, made the material seem fresh and fun. Many shows become stale after the first few months, while these guys made it seem like they were doing it for the first time. They have mastered the art of “playing.” Clearly, their roles were hard work, but they made it look effortless and fun. Lane’s comic timing on each laugh line, albeit clearly calculated and planned, was funny every time. Broderick’s dorky character voice was silly and goofy and unexpected. His opening scene where he gets hysterical over his childhood blanket and collapses on the floor was award worthy by itself. The physical comedy, while seamlessly choreographed, came off looking like a bunch of people rolling around and falling over each other. The pinacle of the show is the middle of act two, where we, the audience, gets to see “Springtime for Hitler,” the musical the two producers had developed to flop intentionally for their own profit. Susan Stroman’s direction in that number is fantastic. She uses a giant mirror, so that when the cast breaks off into a swastika-shaped kick line, we (the audience) can view it from above. It is truly something to be seen.

Other notable performances were John Treacy Egan as the crazy nazi playwright, Franz Liebkind. And Angie Schworer as Ulla, the hot, leggy, Swedish blonde, was charming and funny with her over-the-top accent. (Referring to Leo as “Meester Blooooooooooomeh” ever time.)
The Producers made me happy for several reasons. It is a fun, fast, satisfying musical. The music itself isn’t fantastic, but that’s not why the show was written. Leave the complex musicals with depth to Sondheim. The dance numbers were just a lot of fun. “Keep it Gay” with every stereotypically gay stereotype dancing with glee (including all the Village People) was great. And the number at “Old Lady Land” where each cast member was dressed identically as a little old lady and did a dance number with their walkers, was silly and certainly original. What made me the happiest was the fact that there were gay jokes, nazi/Hitler jokes, sex jokes, and other racy (and clearly Mel Brooks-style) types of humor. Because the performances and the material are so good, the offensiveness of the subject matter doesn’t piss off the audience. It makes them happy. Old and young, conservative or not, this show is still funny.