Dead Man Walking

Ghost the Musical at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater

           If you’ve seen the 1990 film Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg, you’ll know something about the West End’s most recent contribution to the Great White Way, Ghost the Musical, a gaudy affair with a book by Ghost’s screenwriter, Bruce Joel Rubin, and music and lyrics by Dave Stewart, one half of the British pop duo the Eurythmics, and “Man in the Mirror” songwriter Glen Ballard.  Both Ghosts have flat and uninteresting story lines, employ flamboyant yet lackluster special effects, and only caught my interest in the scenes employing Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg did it in the movie), a con-woman who poses as a psychic until discovering—to her dismay—that she actually is one.
           If you haven’t seen either Ghost, perhaps a quick orientation to the musical is in order.  Banker Sam Wheat (Richard Fleeshman) is living his dream, fully equipped with a high-paying job, loving girlfriend, Molly (Caissie Levy), and supportive best friend and assistant, Carl (Bryce Pinkham).  Just when everything seems to be going his way, Sam is shot by vigilante Willie Lopez (Michael Balderrama).  However, instead of passing on naturally, Sam is trapped between worlds as a ghost, unable to touch or affect the world around him, and unheard and unseen by regular humans.  In his new ethereal form he learns that, thanks to Lopez, Molly too is in grave danger.  Desperate to communicate with her, he invokes psychic Oda Mae Brown, who can hear but not see him. In a race against time, Sam and Oda Mae rush to keep Molly out of danger and bring Sam’s killer to justice. It’s a story delivered by performers who, somewhat like the dead, are patently uninteresting; people whose side you would disincline to be on even if, among the chaos, it were clear whose side you should be on.
           Not that, if you go to see Ghost the Musical on Broadway, you’ll necessarily notice the plot. That’s because the team that staged Ghost couldn’t get past the fact that it is based on a movie, even if it is a movie that is nearly devoid of embellishments. The result is a musical that is painfully flashy, loud, and equipped with so many lights, explosions, and unnecessary luminosities as to blind the audience. Screens replace set pieces, stage depth, and even dancers.  (Yes, as the ensemble trots behind the main characters, colored outlines do the same dance moves on the monitors behind them, which is excruciatingly redundant. What is the point? Are the show's British producers hoping, like factory owners turning to robot workers, to eventually entirely replace their dancers with images on a display?)
           As if that weren’t enough, the score is so derivative; the lyrics so uninspired that if you listen closely enough, they sound the same number after number.  Even Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s entertaining performance as Brown couldn’t match the soul-numbing repetitiveness and stupidity of her song “I’m Outta Here,” in which she celebrates the acquisition of ten million dollars with such vapid lines as “I’m outta here! I’m off to the Bahamas / I’m outta here! So pack my pink pajamas.”

           Would that something could be done to awaken Ghost the Musical.  Its case is simply hopeless.  It’s a puzzling olio of mostly maladroit actors and actresses and a creative team with no clear compass.  My guess is that, like Sam Wheat, the musical will soon expire, but unlike him, it will not wake up again, supernaturally or otherwise.

Practice, Practice, Practice Improves on Perfection

One night of The Mikado at Carnegie Hall            

            There is not much to say about Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado that has not already been said.  Suffice it to say that there are few teams alive today, or any who have lived during this or the previous century, who had comparable brains, ability, or talent.  W.S. Gilbert was one of the most brilliant librettists ever to walk this earth, and Arthur Sullivan was his perfect complement, a cheery, beautiful composer who note by note unites an orchestra into a living, breathing being designed to output their masterworks.  The Mikado, being one of their later works (in fact, the one that saved their partnership from ruin), was a thinly veiled comment on the incompetence of the English government disguised as a farce set in Japan.

            This idea came to Gilbert’s always-fertile mind when a Japanese sword fell off his wall.  He and Sullivan had disagreed over the premise of their next opera—Gilbert wanted to do fantasy, a tale of a “magic lozenge,” while Sullivan was inclined to write only for the sorts of pieces he and his partner had already written. But with the fateful fall of the sword Gilbert had discovered the solution to their problem.  He could write of ridiculous, fanciful happenings, and justify them by claiming that such goings-on are regular in Japan, while Sullivan could write for a work of realistic fiction, one that plausibly could (in a topsy-turvy world) happen.

            The one-night Collegiate Chorale production of The Mikado at Carnegie Hall, which took place on the night of April the 10^th, is one of the more enjoyable evenings I have spent at the theater in recent memory.  At the end of the performance I could hardly believe what I had just experienced.  Coupled with the unmatched genius of Gilbert and Sullivan was the performance of a cast and chorus of a kind unlikely to meet in one place ever again, a performance that floored me, to say the least, by its unwelcome end.  The cast read their lines from binders, frequently stood at incorrect podiums, and giggled in the middle of lines, and it is hard to find anything I could care less about.  What a mind-blowing and potent combination of the lyrics of an uber-genius and a cast so perfectly matched to their roles as to blow all Hollywood’s casting directors out of the water of their generously heated pools.

            You, of course, know the story of The Mikado (for who doesn’t?), but if I may I will reiterate—the Emperor of Japan’s runaway son, Nanki-Poo (Jason Danieley, Next to Normal) arrives at the small town of Titipu to claim his love, Yum-Yum (Kelli O’Hara, of South Pacific and on leave from Nice Work if You Can Get It), whose intended husband, Ko-Ko (the enormously, fantastically talented Christopher Fitzgerald, who rightly earned a Tony for his turn as Og in Finian’s Rainbow), he had thought had been beheaded for flirting.  However, the townspeople of Titipu thought this rule unfair and so found a loophole in making the man next scheduled to be beheaded, which happened to be Ko-Ko, the new Lord High Executioner.  They reasoned that Ko-Ko could execute no one else until he killed himself.  Therefore, Ko-Ko is still scheduled to marry Yum-Yum but offers her up to Nanki-Poo as a wife for one month if, at the end of that month, he will agree to be executed in Ko-Ko’s place.  All seems to be going according to plan, but, as they inevitably do, complications ensue when Nanki-Poo’s father, the Mikado himself (Chuck Cooper), arrives and insists Nanki-Poo marry his betrothed, a hideous old woman (Victoria Clark) who had claimed him back at the Mikado’s court.  Secrets are kept, mistakes are made and then unsuccessfully rectified with hilarious results, and we hear some of the best songs ever written, including “A wand’ring minstel I,” “Three little maids from school are we,” "Here's a how-de-do," “A more humane Mikado” (from which originally springs the adage “Let the punishment fit the crime”), and, most memorably, a rewritten version of the ingenious “As someday it may happen,” which condemns Twitter, the Kardashians, quoters of early Sondheim, and, especially, Gilbert fans who complain when his lyrics are altered. Mr. Fitzgerald, who sings it, outshone even Broadway’s brightest up on the acoustically perfect Carnegie stage with a rendition of Ko-Ko that (dare I say?) Groucho Marx might find hard to contend with.  

            Meanwhile, Ms. O'Hara maintained her incredible talent with a genuine star turn as Yum-Yum, belting in all the right places.  Chuck Cooper played a nice, very jolly Mikado, and of course you could never write off two very funny if less prominent gentlemen, Steve Rosen, who played the noble Lord Pish-Tush, and Jonathan Freeman, a magnificent Poo-Bah (who holds so many positions that there is no room here to name them all).  The two, along with Fitzgerald's Ko-Ko, deliver exceedingly well in the excellent number, "I Am So Proud," famous for its superb tongue twister referring to the feeling of awaiting execution: "To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock, awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block."  Say that fast five times.

            All in all a better time could not have been had by any in New York that night, if such a thing is possible, and there is surely nowhere else I would have rather been.  After all, if there is a perfect night on Broadway, everything will go right, as it did, and if there is a heaven, Gilbert and Sullivan’s greatest work is playing over the loudspeakers.

Life is a Highway

John Chamberlain: Choices at the Guggenheim Museum

            John Chamberlain, a revolutionary, definition-skirting sculptor who lived and worked on Shelter Island, and the Guggenheim Museum have a special relationship.  For one, in 1966 and 1977 Chamberlain received a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship from the same foundation that funds the family’s numerous art museums.  But the bond is more than direct connection.  Chamberlain’s works seem to have been made for the blinding white walls of the turning, sloping halls of the Guggenheim, and vice versa.  Each writhing medusa of scrap metal Chamberlain has molded into a non-representative visual boasts its own alcove, and each bursts from within like a flower designed to be planted just where it is.  Even if not all of Chamberlain’s sculptures are perfect, or even beautiful per se, their oneness with the Guggenheim more than makes up for it.

            John Chamberlain has described work on his sculptures to be similar to “handling toilet paper,” and the final product to be something akin to “bed sheets after a night of raucous sex.”  Well, however you may choose to look at his work, the truth of it is that the sculptures are nothing more than what they’re made of—discarded, junkyard cars.  Chamberlain takes exclusively the garbage, the dregs of societal life, and crafts them into something exclusively different and indefinable.  There’s something about these explosions of chrome, and also something very familiar; most likely because in one way they are pop art from the boundaries of what pop art really means, and at the same time the purest expression of Americana.  (After all, there are few things Americans love more than cars.) This is what makes them so interesting to look at, because aesthetically they don’t fall into any one category.

            But as the lights reflect marvelously off their multifaceted surfaces they develop a category of their own, one Chamberlain has created for himself.  My personal favorites were the arcing tubes of aluminum foil braided together and curling in unusual and somehow profound positions, balancing on one or two outcrops as the rest aim up to the Guggenheim’s majestic skylight.  A good example is the colossal silver beauty in the museum entryway, which must point up four floors.  However, not all of Chamberlain’s choices turn out for the better.  Early on in his career came a series of compressed garbage cubes containing anchovy packets and cigarette boxes pressed into a frame-thin composition.  These pale in comparison to the three-dimensional efforts of later in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, which the open alcoves of the museum provide ample opportunity to walk all the way around and consider from all angles.

            The pieces themselves aren’t the only art.  To name his pieces Chamberlain often wrote unrelated words and phrases on index cards and shuffled them, using the often humorous results to name his pieces.  Often they have little to do with what the work looks like or even means (which, Chamberlain has tried to emphasize, is always nothing, just expressionism), but they are entertaining, and they contribute to Chamberlain’s artsy and mysterious persona.

            Sadly, Chamberlain isn’t with us to promote that persona and wasn’t even there to view the culmination of his life’s work on display at the Guggenheim.  He died of natural causes at 84 in December.  However, I’m sure he’d be proud of the justice the museum did to him in setting up an exhibition as purely enjoyable as this one was, and one that showed him to be as creative and dynamic as he was.  His work, though not impeccable (but is anyone’s, really?) is excellent, and it made my afternoon brighter to watch the midday sun bounce off his tinfoil and steel creations.

Bread and Circuses

Nanni Moretti's We Have a Pope

            We Have a Pope (opening April 6th), director/writer Nanni Moretti’s new film about an elected pontiff (Michael Piccoli) who has a panic attack and refuses to present himself on the balcony of the Vatican, is the work of an admitted “non-believer.” It contains no Catholic caricatures, no references to priest sex scandals, and is as little critical toward the Church as any movie could be.  Even Vatican Radio endorsed it.  That’s all very well, but the movie is rambling, odd, without any obvious point or plot, and is—if I can be blunt—bad.  Catholics are welcomed to see it and would not be offended by its portrayal of cardinals, Vatican spokespeople, or Il Papa himself, but if they’ve ever seen a good movie before and have any powers of comparison, I’d advise them to stay home.

            Moretti, in interviews, is defiantly proud of his film and won’t hear a word against it.  Perhaps this is because he thinks he did something with it that he affirmatively did not.  There were two ways Moretti could have taken We Have a Pope, that is to say comically or dramatically.  The film has endless potential for comedy, concerning a cardinal, referred to only by his last name, Melville, who, when elected Pope as a dark horse candidate, has a panic attack, insisting he can’t do it and then escaping his Vatican retainers and disappearing into Rome.  Moretti could have taken this to the extreme, turning Father Melville into a Mel Brooks-type character, who wanders through the city getting up to mischief a Pope usually skirts.  But there’s potential for drama, too.  Soon after Melville’s difficulties, the Vatican brings in a world-renowned psychoanalyst, Professor Brezzi (Moretti).  Moretti (as a writer, not as Brezzi) could also have leaned toward a King’s Speech-style relationship, a very dramatic and serious situation which ended with an overcoming of Melville’s fears.  The problem, I think, is that the proud Nanni Moretti refused to look to the work of his predecessors and insisted on making a film that had no clear definition, and hovered somewhere in between drama and comedy.  In the right hands this can lead to something great, but in Moretti’s it seems indecisive and strange, and the audience can’t get behind the decisions the characters make.

            For one, Melville says the reason he can’t take the job is because he “can’t remember anything.” I’m no Brezzi, but that doesn’t seem like a valid plot point, considering Melville can remember everything—he doesn’t have amnesia (if he had, the film would have made infinitely more sense) and he spouts information from his past constantly, including some tales that spark a useless story detour wherein he becomes obsessed with a community theater production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull.  And that’s not the only deviation from the storyline.  Characters veer back and forth from the three-act method constantly, starting up volleyball tournaments to keep the cardinals, trapped in conclave, occupied, sending out search parties for Melville and then immediately giving up on them, installing a Swiss guard in the papal apartments to fool the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, and various other nonsensical pursuits.  These ridiculous and useless diversions mean nothing to the actual storyline.  As a result they end up detracting from any actual progress, to say nothing of where the story is going, which—spoiler alert—is nowhere.

            I could say that We Have a Pope tried to be funny or dramatic, but it didn’t even make an attempt.  The content creators for the film appeared to wait by the sidelines as Brezzi did in the volleyball games he created, and just stand by to see where it went.  Sorry, Moretti—looks like you bet on the wrong team.

More Realistic Dates for That Space Odyssey

Beyond Planet Earth at the American Museum of Natural History

            There’s a certain enigmatic appeal that comes with deep space—the complete uncertainty of what could possibly be out there beyond the atmosphere, or solar system, or galaxy.  But the reality is space is a very simple thing; and that’s everything else, or, to put it more simply, everything beyond us.  Still, that everything is unbelievably, shockingly vast, and that’s why I’ve always had a special admiration for the people at the world’s space programs.  They are cartographers and explorers not unlike Magellan or Verrazano, instructed to discover and map things no human being can boast to describe in their entirety—the infinite emptiness that is outer space.  How they do it and what their plans are is on display at the beautifully staged and surprisingly in-depth Museum of Natural History Exhibition, Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration, running through August.

            Beyond Planet Earth lays bare the details of why our space program is so very necessary.  From the rocky plains of the moon, which, I can accurately report after testing out a blast of its stench from a “Smell the Moon!” booth, smell not unlike pungent cigarette smoke, to the simulated red, rolling hills of Mars, where manikins in skintight space-suits bounce x-rays off the rocks, the future of NASA and its sister organizations around the world is explored.  The space race, the exhibit insists, is not yet over.  There are milestones yet unreached, and we may be the first to reach them. 

            The past is documented as well, and our arrival on the moon is primary among the clear, interesting information laid out near the entrance to the exhibit.  The theme of national triumph, however, continues throughout, inspired by exhibition curator Michael Shara, also a pioneer of the plans for a lunar elevator (which is exactly what it sounds like).  He surely gets his point across.  There is innovation everywhere when it comes to space travel, as this exhibit, in itself innovative, explains quite nicely, and to halt the process of innovation is an intellectual crime.

            But it’s not only the facts and figures Beyond Planet Earth dives into, although those provide nothing but delight to the viewer.  It also looks into public perception of space, as in science fiction or doomsday theories.  Chief among reference in the Mars section is Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds: the radio show, the book, and both movies.   War of the Worlds, of course, documents the Earthly visitation of a malevolent Martian race bent on—you guessed it—war.  Why go this route in a purely scientific exhibition? Maybe because the one thing astronomers have wanted more than anything throughout history is to discover life somewhere else but here, to know that we are not alone in the universe.  And indeed, every mission we have undertaken and every venture described in the exhibition has a final product of finding or introducing life on another planet.  Terraforming Mars, scientists hope, would either help us discover some microbe or—dare I say—fungus that grows in the frozen poles, any probe that studies any planet in the universe is only looking for signs of life, and we’ve even sent out satellites with inscribed and recorded greetings from the humans.  Forgive me if I overstep my boundaries, but might the aliens find us a bit desperate if our little gold-plated machine says “Hello” in 55 different languages?

            Scientists don’t just hope for life in space, of course.  Beyond Planet Earth declares that one day we will mine the asteroids and the moon, set up bases on secondary planet after secondary planet, and be self-declared lords of the solar system, and one day, the galaxy.  But the truth is that all the wonderfully organized data and exquisite dioramas set up in the exhibit are only a hope, and are far from reality.  We can only hope that the space program workers are as good at their jobs as the researchers at the museum are at theirs, and, as the show’s slogan encourages, “Look up.  Above you, the universe.” Hopefully somewhere out there is something we can reach, and achieve the great triumph that the majesty of space deserves.

Once on Another Island

Once at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

            The new musical Once, based on the Academy Award-winning film about an Irish musician and a Czech immigrant who bond over music over one week together, is perhaps defined by what’s going on onstage as the audience files into the theater.  Sure, the house lights are on, and people wait patiently for the show to begin just as they would anywhere else, but before the audience’s eyes a full-on jamboree is underway up on the dais.  The actors jump and dance and pluck at stringed instruments in a tight cluster, surrounded by audience members, who are freely allowed to meander up among them.

            Yes, in this show the actors play the instruments, and even the lowliest supporting character lugs a bass as he delivers his lines.  This seems to be because the show’s calling card is bare-bones, less than fancy, simplistic delivery of the story.  Is this a good thing? Maybe not, but it’s given just as well as it can be given what it’s got going for it.

            Guy (Steve Kazee), a depressed Irish musician (although I guess that’s redundant), is considering giving up his music after his mother’s death and his abandonment by his girlfriend.  However, wouldn’t you know it, he’s brought out of his brooding, mysterious sulk by a (supposedly) beautiful Czech immigrant, Girl (Cristin Milioti), who convinces him to fix her broken vacuum cleaner and record what she’s sure will be a hit song in her burly friend Billy (Paul Whitty)’s music shop.  And so it begins.

            It seems like a recipe for an unlikely hit.  There’s one immobile set, which resembles a bar in the musical’s setting of Dublin, functioning as at least three other locations, and backed by the bare, uncovered brick walls of the theater.  It features the traditional Celtic melodies of yore accompanied by little old men playing mandolins, and long, sweeping dances punctuated by unorthodox lighting that leaves the viewer dazed and confused.  Sounds like what I like to call hipster bait.

            But it’s not enough.  There’s something about Once that is cold and uninviting, almost dead.  It’s not as warm or open as the film was, mainly because the film employed cinema verite and accessible actors (Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who also wrote the music and lyrics for the musical adaptation) to bring the audience into the film, while the actors in the musical seem like a haughty clique, too good to let their fans into their world.

            If the cast members were smart they’d see it’s not enough to be great singers and great instrumentalists, which, undoubtedly, they are.  You must employ a dynamic, a pattern, to draw people in to the story and character development, a feat Once comes close to achieving, ironically, only once, when Girl brings Guy to visit her apartment to meet her fellow Czech mother, daughter, and roommates (Anne L. Nathan, Ripley Sobo/Mackayla Twiggs, Will Connolly, Elizabeth A. Davis, and Lucas Papaelias respectively).  They employ a method of portraying those who hail from the Czech Republic effectively—less humor is more.  (A recurring catchphrase of the six is “I’m always serious.  I’m Czech.") When it’s first expressed by Girl it’s a little disconcerting, but when seen as a form of camaraderie by a group of, frankly, quite funny actors, it’s almost hysterical.  However, when their traditional, vibrant Czech song ends it’s back to the grey boredom of Ireland. 

It’s a truly dull place, Dublin, or so the musical leads me to believe, and even when the characters try to counteract it by declaring their love for their “beautiful” city, I don’t buy it.  I’d remind the flat group of people around whom Once revolves in what city they’re performing, and then ask them to compare.  I’m sure they’d be disappointed with the results.

Hell is Other Players

Damn Yankees at the Paper Mill Playhouse

            Whose side is the Devil really on?

            An interesting question.  Certainly Applegate, the Devil’s suave, debonair alter ego (Howard McGillin, who played the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway for over ten years) in Adler and Ross’s Damn Yankees (running through April 1), is on the audience’s good side.  McGillin pours so much sickly-sweet core evil—not to mention incredible talent—into the performance that he becomes the demon in the pinstriped suit the American audience just loves to hate.  But he is on the bad side of the protagonist, Joe Boyd (Joseph Kolinski), whom he swindles into handing over the deed for his soul in exchange for his transformation into “Shoeless” Joe Hardy (Christopher Charles Wood), the slugger who can lead Joe’s team, the Washington Senators, to victory over those damn Yankees.  Applegate’s plan is to bring the hopes of the Senators’ fans unbearably high, only to crush them when he takes possession of Boyd’s soul and makes him throw the pennant-deciding game against New York in late September.  Yes, it’s pretty clear that no matter who may seek to please or displease the silver-haired Applegate, the only team he’s on is his own.

            Damn Yankees has earned its renown for an array of reasons over the course of its many productions, but perhaps most famously for the portrayal of the two Mephistophelean antagonists, Applegate and his personal home-wrecker, Lola, played in this production by Chryssie Whitehead.  Lola, of course, was played in the original 1955 production and 1958 film by Fosse wife #2 Gwen Verdon, then Bebe Neuwirth in 1994, and, most recently, Jane Krakowski of 30 Rock fame in the 2008 Encores! revival.  Perhaps boasting an even more star-studded list, however, is Satan himself, who’s been played by Ray Walston, Vincent Price, Jerry Lewis, and Sean Hayes, in that order.  It’s difficult to put the current Applegate and associate up against their colleagues—if they can even be called that—but McMillan does very well, maintaining a boastful bravado and simmering wickedness that Jack from Will and Grace couldn’t muster even if he tried.  Whitehead is less memorable, mainly due to pure star power—that is to say, lack of.  She tries, but she doesn’t match up to most of the main characters, especially her brimstone-soaked boss and Christopher Charles Wood, a brilliant dancer and singer who acts circles around his chubby counterpart Joseph Kolinski, who dulls “Six Months Out of Every Year” unbearably.

            Not only that, but the adaption of the Faust legend has been warped considerably from its original Broadway plot.  Song locations are shifted and lines like Applegate’s “Don’t you have another version of that thing?” when forced to take the oath in court are cut entirely.  It’s enjoyable; hugely so, but any audience member can tell from the start how much more the Playhouse could have done with it.  Richard Adler and Jerry Ross are also responsible for another epic of musical theater, The Pajama Game, and they deserve better than what the company and director have to offer.

            But don’t let me put you off.  If there’s one reason to go see Damn Yankees before April Fool’s Day—or perhaps it should be two reasons—it’s the leads on both sides of the Force, as it were: Wood and McMillan.  The two are shining stars in their respective roles, talented in all quadrants of the stage actor’s portfolio, and their duels not only represent the battles between good and evil, but are also vastly entertaining.  Look for Wood’s performance in his duet with Lola (although he originally shared it with Applegate), “Two Lost Souls,” and McMillan’s show-stealing, house-collapsing rendition of “Those Were the Good Old Days,” wherein Old Nick recounts the many abominations in human history he’s had a hand in.

            Damn Yankees is a more recent classic than most, written in the mid-fifties when theater had begun to approach its dropping-off point into the quagmires of adaptions from film and Andrew Lloyd Weber, and the history behind it is more than enough justification for becoming absorbed in its love-of-the-game magic.  Baseball is more than a plot point, however, it’s also a motif—an overriding theme that overtakes the audience as they settle into their seats.  The lights dim, the curtain rises… Play ball!