Mostly Musical Theatre

Dry Season March 30, 2013

Wow — we’ve hit a dry spell here in SE Michigan — nothing to report on musical theater wise for the past two weeks.

Croswell Opera House has done their casting — you can checkout Croswell.org for their summer season casts (some of which look mighty young this year to me)…

Otherwise — nothing to report until next week, when Memphis hits the Fisher Theater — I’m not seeing this tour — I’ve seen it a half dozen times now on Broadway and on tour, but its highly recommended for those who haven’t seen it.

For those who want to save some money, the DVD of the Broadway cast is available for download from iTunes and Netflix, and for purchase wherever DVDs are sold. It features the original cast in a dynamite live HD recording.

Kinky Boots on Broadway is abso-friggin-fantabulous (review) March 23, 2013

Take one part Hairspray and one part The Full Monty. Mix together and add in generous helpings of Priscilla, La Cage, and sprinkle it all with tasty performances and shiny design work. Finally, douse it all in a superior score by Cyndi Lauper and strong script by Harvey Fierstein. Season to taste with Jerry Mitchell’s fabulous direction and choreography.  What you get is one abso-friggin-fantabulous concoction at the Hirschfield theatre.

An energetic and excellent cast leads you through a strong book musical concerning the rescue of a men’s shoe factory after four generations by the son Charlie Price (Stark Sands in another standout roll) by converting its product to kinky boots made especially for drag queens. Enter Tony-worthy Billy Porter as Lola and the stage is set.

The production numbers here soar, especially the Act One closer  ”Everybody Say Yeah” choreographed using moving conveyor belts. But where the show also shines is in the more intimate moments — there is a lot of heart beneath the glitz, and it all feels natural.

Ultimately the show finds its voice in the theme of “accept who you are” but it comes from the most unexpected of places — and the audience tears come quickly, followed by a big Hairspray-like final number that had the audience cheering. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an audience have this kind of ecstatic reaction throughout a show.

In a year when Matilda will most likely draw the most Tony wins due to its sheer scope and family-friendliness, I’ll be rooting for Kinky Boots. With the best score I’ve heard in a Broadway show in years, Cyndi Lauper should go ahead and write her acceptance speech right now.

Spooky (Hilarious) Mormon Hell Dream…The Book of Mormon (Detroit) tour review March 13, 2013

I won’t go much into the show itself, since there is little one can add to “review” the musical THE BOOK OF MORMON, continuing its tour now in Detroit, except to say that the production is superb, the cast excellent, and the humor as raunchy as ever. Sending our cast of naive white-boy Mormon missionaries off into warlord-torn Uganda, little needs to be said about the plot and developments that hasn’t already either been said, or shown (see YouTube). If you don’t know much about the show and are seeing it soon, the better for you — the jokes play far better if you don’t already know whats coming around the bend, so I won’t say more.

I’ve reviewed the show before when seen on Broadway: http://a2view.com/2011/07/31/the-book-of-mormon-catch-me-if-you-can-sister-act-broadway-reviews/

The show arrives at the Fisher Theater to two weeks of sold-out performances — and for good reason. Appealing to a wide-audience, the Best Musical Tony-winner ramps up the humor but keeps a lot of heart intact. South Park fans will find a lot to love in this very unconventional musical, while musical theater fans will find a lot to love in the excellent execution of it all. 

British actor Mark Evans plays a spirited and energetic Elder Price (I am assuming this was some type of trade for Gavin Creel heading off to London to do the part there), but the special kudos for this tour production have to go to the sublime roly-poly Christopher John O’Neill as his sidekick Elder Arnold Cunningham. His facial expressions alone are enough to slay them in the aisles, but he’s a great singer and dancer to boot. A bit more reserved than Josh Gad in the role, he brings amazing charisma and a star-making turn to his role.

The tour is identical to the Broadway show — down to the set and costumes, and if you didn’t get a chance to see it in NYC, see it on tour (it might be easier to get tickets on Broadway these days, the tour seems to sell every single seat within hours of tickets going on sale — check for house seat releases or cancellations a few days before each performance).

If you are among the ticket-holders for The Book of Mormon, count yourself lucky — its an excellent tour that will have you laughing (and talking about the show) all the way home. As usual, just a reminder that this is not a show that is family friendly. In fact, its not even pre-teen friendly. Apparently Broadway-in-Detroit did a pretty good job making sure that audiences know its not for kids — its a great night out for open-minded adults. My mom would still walk out. 

ANYTHING GOES and WICKED in San Francisco (Tour update) February 5, 2013

While in San Francisco this past week, I had the opportunity to catch up with two favorite Broadway shows on tour — the first national tours of ANYTHING GOES and WICKED. Good news for the former, not so much for the latter.

Anything Goes (which I originally saw in NYC and then on tour in East Lansing) continues to get tighter as it goes. The entire cast is stronger than the original Broadway cast, and Rachel York is simply superb as Reno Sweeney. Erich Bergen is as smooth as a glass of scotch playing Billy Crocker (catch his cabaret act in whatever town the show is currently playing!). Fred Applegate continues to amaze as Moonface Martin. Alex Finke is lovable as Hope, and Chuck Wagner steady as the Captain. Edward Staudenmayer’s performance as Sir Evelyn has grown and grown, and he is a wonder, especially once the show plunges headlong into “The Gypsy in Me” sequence in Act Two. Overall, the Anything Goes tour is one of the strongest casts you are going to see in this very strong production. Do not hesitate to get tickets.

WICKED, on the other hand, is showing its age. While most of the performances in the current first national tour are first rate, some of the cast members have far outlived their roles. Dee Roscioli continues to play a fine Elphaba, but her counterpart Patti Murin as Glinda is starting to look tired. Cliffton Hall sings a fine Fiyero, but is getting too old to play the part. He’s been doing this for a long time, and where he used to look boyish, he now looks like a man…a 40-year old man (he’s 39). Justin Brill (35) is particularly too old to be playing Boq at this point. 

The cyclorama is water damaged and wrinkled, and it is particularly startling to see this in a Broadway set. When hit with amber or orange light, the wrinkles show from center stage left all the way to upper stage left. You can tell someone has taken the time to try to straighten things out — because the handprints show in large streaks along the edges of the clockface on the cyc. Its unforgivable. Fortunately, the First National tour is still using the fully realized sets, including the bridge, which the other tour companies have now downsized to flats. 

Its a mixed bag overall — but Wicked is in need of some fresh cast members, and some cleaning up and tightening as it continues its journey on its eternal tour. 

An update on review policy September 23, 2012

Thank you readers for your input and thoughts as this blog develops. A2View Mostly Musical Theater has gone through a period of development. Recent personal attacks on an opinion I posted have caused me to re-evaluate the direction of the blog and reviews. Clearly people find it worthwhile, since I’m getting thousands of hits a day when I post new reviews, and hundreds of hits a day when things are kind of slow.

First, let me remind people that I pay for my own tickets for the shows I review: I do not get any freebies from theater companies. My opinions are my own and are not partial to one theater company or another.

Second, I have long posited that I am interested in appropriate shows in appropriate venues. For the most part, that means fully staged proscenium musicals, with full stage design, and full orchestras. I have strayed from this over the past year to give more leeway to some local theaters and studio musicals. I am no longer going to do that — it will save everyone grief.

Finally, as usual, I rarely review community theater. The rare exception to that is those theaters that present something unique or different (Such as Ann Arbor Civic Theater’s Grey Gardens last season) and those well-recognized near-professional theaters (such as Croswell Opera House) that exceed community expectations. That does not mean that I avoid all community theater — but in order to be reviewed, the show needs to be fully staged, of high quality (or expectation) and fully orchestrated.

When dates conflict, Equity shows will always take preference over non-Equity shows. In cases of touring musicals that are non-Equity, that status will be noted in the review.

There is a wealth of local musical theater. Some of it interests me, some of it does not. I am not a newspaper-funded reviewer. I review what I want to see. That does not obligate me to review anyone. There are plenty of media-funded reviewers available to cover those other events.

As a final note, I will never under any circumstances review another production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat or Guys and Dolls. Consider those shows fully-baked in SE Michigan. Put a fork in them, they are done.