Mostly Musical Theatre

Seen in a preview performance on March 22, 2014 (the show opens April 10th — an inexplicably long time for a preview period for such a slight show)

There is nothing really wrong with “Bullets Over Broadway” at the St. James Theatre. There is also nothing really right. The entire big-budget affair is commercial Broadway musical theater at its most average.

Woody Allen, working from his own movie script, follows a (very small) story about the development of a Broadway-bound play in the 20’s, complete with neurotic author (Zach Braff — who thought casting him would be a good idea?)…fading star (Marin Mazzie…”don’t speak, don’t speak”)…angry Mobster (Vincent Pastore)…his talent-free want-to-be-an-actress doll (Helene York)…and a handful of other assorted stereotypes that work well in his small-budget movie but don’t work so well on a big Broadway stage.

Woody Allen movie-regular Santo Loquasto wraps it all in a very bleak scenic design that thrusts the stage out 8 feet beyond its normal proscenium boundaries and creates blocked sightlines for all people in house right and house left. Its all dark and lifeless, even the moving chaser lights seem to be dulled. William Ivy Long has created serviceable (at best) costumes, and some are downright unflattering.

So mediocrity, begin your role call:

The script, one of Woody Allen’s smaller works, probably isn’t the main problem here. Its funny where it needs to be, but it also borders on crass — his movie was never crass, it was funny…

The direction by Susan Stroman is flat, and seems to borrow from every other major blockbuster she has directed — you can predict where each actor is going to move, and what they are going to do, and how they are going to gesticulate once they get there. And you can be assured that there will be too much choreography (and there is). There isn’t anything “wrong” with it — there is just too much direction and not enough originality.

Zach Braff is unfunny. Seriously. For a guy who made a career of being very funny on Scrubs, here he just falls flat. He’s not bad — he’s pretty good, actually….but he’s given nothing much to work with, and at times he just looks like that big goofy college kid stuck in a role he isn’t comfortable with.

Marin Mazzie and Karen Ziemba prove that they are troopers no matter how outlandish the blocking given to them. Both turn in very good performances.

Helene Yorke does the best she can as moll Olive stuck under a horrible blond wig, but at least it lets her hide in her character and she does a good job doing so. She brings some of the few sparks of life to the show — albeit so predictable you know where its going all along.

The standout here is Nick Cordero as Cheech (gangster turned playwright). He’s charismatic, always fun to watch, and seems to be enjoying himself (the same can not be said of many of the others on stage). His “big number” that turns into a full male-cast mobster tap number is the show’s highlight.

The second musical highlight is Olive’s “The Hot Dog Song” — its over the top and borders on material stolen from “The Producers”, but its the single funniest scene in the entire 2:45 show. (The run time, by the way, needs to be cut by at least 15 minutes prior to opening or you’re going to kill ’em, Susan…may I suggest cutting “The panic is on” and “She’s funny that way” to start?)

Music — what was once intended to be an original score (and should have been) turned out to be a hodgepodge of old 20’s trunk songs — none of which have any real impact and while sounding pleasantly jazzy throughout have little energy and little life to them. The additional lyrics written for them show some promise, but overall it all falls flat.

But the crowing achievement of mediocrity is the entire finale sequence…take the ending from Anything Goes, and throw in the song “Yes, we have no bananas” (seriously) and you have the ending here. Its horribly conventional and, well, um, just odd.

You won’t hate Bullets Over Broadway. But you won’t walk out thinking its great either. The audience reaction at intermission was sort of a stunned non-reaction. I saw Susan Stroman duck out toward the end of intermission. Apparently even she had better things to do for the rest of the night.

Not recommended.

Seen in preview March 22, 2014 – the production opens officially on 3/31.

Much in the way Kinky Boots won me over last year over all the larger budget musicals I had seen last spring, Heathers, the musical, now previewing at New World Stages off-Broadway won me over as this spring’s favorite new musical.

Working from the original movie script, writers Kevin Murphy (Reefer Madness) and Laurence O’Keefe (Legally Blonde, Bat Boy) have crafted a hilarious new musical theater work that takes edgy material yet presents it in a very traditionally musical theater way.

Outsider Veronica Sawyer (an uncannily talented Barrett Wilbert Weed) meets bad boy JD (Ryan McCartan) who begins open season on bitch-girls the Heathers (Jessica Keenan Wynn, Elle McLemore, and Alice Lee) and football players Ram (Jon Eidson) and Kurt (Evan Todd). This core of young actors is probably the strongest ensemble cast you are likely to see in NYC this spring. They are supported by an excellent ensemble that play multiple roles. The “Heathers” are theater-naturals — and the ladies here make the most of those juicy roles — Alice Lee does things with her eyes I’ve never seen anywhere, its almost worth the price of admission just to see her facial expressions. Barrett is a triple-threat: singing, acting, dancing, and she exudes charisma from her first scene to the last.

The score is tuneful and has at least one certifiable hit in “Seventeen”. The songs all skew toward humor, with a particular highlight being Dan Cooney and Anthony Crivello’s “My Dead Gay Son”. Direction by Andy Fickman and choreographty by Marguerite Derricks is fast-paced and solid, yet also very focused for a musical of this kind — they direct your eye directly where it needs to go, and there isn’t a misplaced step in the entire show. For a musical that still has a week of previews, its pretty much ready to go.

I expect this to be a big hit in NYC — and hopefully it will lead to a Broadway transfer, where it solidly belongs. But its an easy one-block walk across 8th Avenue to the New World Stages theater “multiplex” (remember when this used to be our newest neighborhood movie theater?)

The crowd at today’s performance was enthusiastic and ate up the humor. It should be noted that this is a big, competently done musical theater work, not a small off-Broadway spoof of the movie — its a solid, well-crafted, and well-polished piece.

Timothy R. Mackabee has created a nice set, and Jason Lyons lighting design is sharp, colorful, and works well throughout — even creating an explosion effect in the final sequence. Very nice.

If I had the time, I would go back and see this again tonight (alas, Bullets Over Broadway becons on my last evening in NYC), and then I would get tickets for myself and friends for next weekend…and probably the one after that as well. This show is that good.

Very Highly Recommended.

At my favorite theatre in New York (the Richard Rodgers), and seen in preview on 3/21 (the show opens 3/30), Brian Yorkey and Tim Kitt’s new musical (next to normal), “If/Then” is providing Idina Menzel with a shriek-worthy score and not much to support it.

The show is in trouble from its very first sentence — a self-absorbed New York woman nearing-40 has divorced her husband with whom she has moved to Arizona for the past decade and returned to NYC to start anew. Right there, you already have a problem — the audience is asked to care about a woman who has divorced her husband because she felt bored and wanted “more out of life”. Who cares?

What follows is the show’s high concept (playing out on a gorgeous 10 million dollar multi-level set by Mark Wendland, beautifully lit by Kenneth Posner) — Elizabeth imagines two scenarios — one as Liz, and one as Beth, if she had made different choices (not in the past, mind you, where the audience already knows she’s bad at making good decisions) but in a make-believe present day. In one, she goes with a friend to a coffee shop and her life takes a fateful turn toward romance — in the other, she goes along with another friend to a different event and it sets in spin a great career in NYC.

Spoilers Follow: what happens next is so inconsequential it reflects the Raiders of the Lost Ark Syndrome (Thank you Big Bang Theory!) — it doesn’t matter what storyline you convolutedly follow, the ending is the same! With or without Nazi chase scenes, the ark is still opened and destroys everyone. With or without the “two choices” the show reveals the SAME eventual ending….

So, to get there, you have to suspend belief that anything here is real in any way other than in Elizabeth’s mind as she contemplates two different options — and you have to somehow care about this self-absorbed egotistical woman and her self-absorbed friends. There isn’t a single character on stage that you really care about, and probably wouldn’t have any of these people as your friends in real life. They’re the kind of people I spent 14 years of my life in NYC going out of my way to avoid, not spend 2:40 onstage watching.

Yorkey’s story doesn’t work on any level. His score with Kitt fares better, and there are a few strong tunes, well delivered by the very good cast.

Idina Menzel sings her heart out in every number — and I do mean sings her heart out in every number. Thankfully, she gets a few slower, quieter moments, but for the most part, she “sings her heart out” in “every number”. Clearly, the score is written and shaped directly for her, and every song is greeted by audience shrieks of enjoyment instead of standard applause — a trend that was created in Wicked, and which carries over here with her now older audience groupies.

Anthony Rapp sings and acts well, and has his own audiences shriekers in attendance. LaChanze turns in a fine performance, lacking any nuance, but certainly worthy of her musical skills. Faring best are Jerry Dixon as her boss, helping with her career while conflicted as to his feelings (the resolution of his storyline is the least realistic of any of them in the compact ending), and James Snyder (yes, that tv-star James Snyder) who sings beautifully and is given the woefully underwritten part of Idina’s love interest Josh — its as if every scene that he and Idina are in together was written in such a way that his talent never oversteps the bounds of Idina’s stardom — as a result he looks like he’s hitting his marks and moving along which creates a lack of charisma between the two of them.

There are some beautiful moments in the show, but audience members expecting a thoughtful, meaningful musical follow up to their previous work “next to normal” are going to be sorely disappointed.

There were sniffles toward the end of the show — and I have NO IDEA what they were crying about — there wan’t a single thing in this show that hit me as emotional, or even emotion-filled. But clearly I must not be the target demographic for this show.

The sole thing that this show has going for it is that it is original — in a season where every other musical is based on a movie or pre-existing source material, its nice to see people thinking about and creating something original. The payoff here, though, is not worthy.

Recommended only for musical theatre die-hards, and Idina Menzel fans. Not recommended for casual theater-goers.

You will go home whistling the sets after Rocky the musical. What you won’t go home whistling is any of the tunes. That’s not to say you won’t like the show. In fact, I loved it.

Rocky (a beefed-up excellent Andy Karl) and Adrian (superb Margo Seibert) play out their South Philadelphia love story with the requisite emotion and they both have charisma to spare. Adrian is given the evening’s only memorable songs (the ballad “Raining” and the angry-song ‘I’m Done”), though she and Rocky together have a half-song “Happiness” which barely begins and by the time it reaches its lyrical core is already over. Its underscored numerous times with “Eye of the Tiger” and the “Rocky theme” from the first two movies. Otherwise, Ahrens and Flaherty have written what is their weakest score, and its a shame.

What makes this show a real knockout is Christopher Barreca’s scenic design — I’ll go on the record here to say that it is the best set I have ever seen in a broadway musical — and its matched scene for scene by Christopher Akerlind’s excellent lighting design.

Set pieces slide, glide, lift, rotate, stack, flip. Video is integrated on large moving panels both on stage and above the audience. And you’ve probably heard about the last 20 minutes, where the premium seating patrons are moved on stage and the boxing ring slides out into the audience — no matter what your thoughts might be on the musical overall, the last 20 minutes of this show are a tour-de-force of theater — and the audience was on its feet cheering the fight long before they were urged to stand up by the cast…Video screens with rink lighting lower from the ceiling, and the atmosphere is one of a real fight. Its exciting and electric theater.

The Winter Garden Theatre has a new longtime client — and dare I say this is the show that will be the male equivalent of “Wicked” — I fully envision cool dad’s bringing their sons to the show for an evening of bonding for years to come (okay, mom will get stuck buying the tickets, and I guarantee she won’t be bored, while maybe not understanding why dad and son are so much more enthused than she is about the entire affair).

Recommended.