Cursing Fate

“The Other Josh Cohen” at the Paper Mill Playhouse

The Other Josh Cohen at Paper Mill Playhouse; Photo by Billy Bustamante; From left to right: Ken Triwush, Kate Wetherhead, Hannah Elless, David Rossmer, Vadim Feichtner, Steve Rosen, and Cathryn Salamone.

            “The Other Josh Cohen,” a generally flat and listless musical running at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn through March 16, is narrated by its two writers, David Rossmer and Steve Rosen, who play two versions of the title character.  Rosen is the schlubby, mustachioed, present version of luckless slacker Josh Cohen, and Rossmer is the future--taller, more confident, minus fifteen pounds, and, frankly, annoyingly smug about it.  The two communicate, break the fourth wall, and sing less-than-interesting duets, clearly much to their own amusement but not so much the audience’s.

            This fruitless conceit is an interesting and accurate metaphor for the flow of “Josh Cohen,” which seems to have been written with the intrinsic belief that it is a musical indie masterpiece, rather than a brief and unmemorable entertainment.  The real shame is the waste of material on the clearly capable actors.  But for Rossmer and Rosen, the seven-person cast displays impressive talents both musically (those not acting play backup in a five-piece rock band) and dramatically--especially Vadim Feichtner and Hannah Elles, who belong in a much better show than this one.  (Mr. Feichtner is also the evidently able musical director.)  This show is a vanity project for the two Cohens, whose private obsessions don’t make for very good theater.

            “Josh Cohen” isn’t entirely unentertaining.  It’s sporadically funny (Mr. Feichtner as Cohen’s father, leaving an addled answering machine message, is, indeed, hysterical) and one or two of the numbers, including the essentially standalone comic song “Neil Life,” espousing the virtues of a certain Diamond, are passably fun.  But most are boring, and often too loud to understand, and they’re rife with forced rhymes while lacking any kind of cohesive tone, or even a reason to exist.  (“Samuel Cohen’s Family Tree,” for example, is a number that appears about halfway through the show to list, apropos of nothing and in semi-rhythmic klezmer time, some of the title character’s relatives.  These relatives do not come up again.)  None hold any of the lyrical virtuosity or pure stick-in-your-head catchiness demonstrated by a Paper Mill show from earlier this season, “Honeymoon in Vegas.”

            “Vegas” had a better premise, too.  In “The Other Josh Cohen,” a romantically unlucky Lower East Sider, after having all his belongings stolen in a catastrophic B & E, finds a letter in the mail addressed to him and at his address, containing a check for $56,000.  Josh agonizes over whether to cash the check himself or call the woman who seems to have sent it.  Throughout, Josh stomps about angrily and complains that the world is out to get him.  After the ninety-ninth gimmicky non-joke, I felt somewhat the same way.

            It’s certainly not the worst show ever to originate Off-Broadway (the Fringe Festival offers up juicy contenders for that title every August), but it’s not the caliber of show one would expect to see at the Paper Mill, even mid-season.  Though endearing, it’s painful pretty much from start to finish; though well-cast, it has a lot to learn about utilizing actors; and though a fair jumping-off point for beginners, it seems far beneath a pair of actor-composers who’re sixteen years into their stage careers, as Rossmer and Rosen are.
           Give them this, if nothing else--the ending of the show is unapologetically sweet and optimistic about love, which is actually pretty nice.  But sometimes leaving the audience something to remember isn’t just about intention.  The implementation has to be memorable, too.  Alas, like their main character, Rossmer and Rosen have the right idea, but, evidently, rotten luck, not to mention a disappointing lack of creativity.

The Appearance of Illusion

The Glass Menagerie at the Booth Theater

L-R: Zachary Quinto, Cherry Jones, Brian J. Smith and Celia Keenan-Bolger in The Glass Menagerie.

            It is altogether right and good that the new production of The Glass Menagerie ends on February 23^rd.  It is a blessing in a thick and impenetrable disguise.  It may be incomprehensible that the closing of a show so masterful, so enjoyable, and so, so well-acted might be a blessing, but indeed, after the five-minute standing ovation that followed a mid-January performance of this phenomenon, it was the primary thought in my head.

            This production of The Glass Menagerie is too good for us.  We do not deserve it.  We dirty it, besmirch it, through our very existence.  Every time someone in the world speaks, it is an affront, a slap in the face, to the air of genius that infects every syllable of Tennessee Williams’ script.  Every time a stage set is designed, somewhere in the world, it will be a disgrace to the memory of Bob Crowley’s perfect scenic design.  Every time someone in the world reads a page aloud, or even thinks of acting, it will be tantamount to sacrilege as compared to the godly performances of Cherry Jones, Zachary Quinto, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Brian J. Smith.  And anyone who puts on a play between now and February 23^rd must feel nothing but shame at their efforts.

            While this production, indeed, while this show, exists, how can anyone think of artistic achievement?  How can anyone hope to write a poem, paint a picture, smile at something they optimistically call their art?  While the curtain rises, eight times a week, on the three hours of theatrical paradise that director John Tiffany has crafted, how can pencil or brush or word be put to paper?  It is difficult to think how society manages to function by comparison to this ideal, let alone art.

            From the moment Tom Wingfield (Quinto) steps onto the stage, telling us of magic and memory, ‘til the moment he leaves it for the last time, bemoaning what he does remember, there is not a single thing wrong with this production of what advertising refers to, rightly, as “the greatest American play.”  One cannot help but be transfixed by Mr. Quinto’s sharp-eyed, shadowy figure; the hauntingly beautiful movements of Ms. Keenan-Bolger as his sister, Laura; the brash yet sincere ingratiating of Mr. Smith’s Gentleman Caller; and especially the gorgeous performance of Ms. Jones as Amanda, the matriarch of a dying family.  Ms. Jones shades her portrayal of the ultimate Williams mother with an acting ability developed over years as a paragon of her profession.  Like the play, there is not a wrong note in her rendering.  It could well change one’s perception of family, ambition, and that flighty characteristic we hesitate to call “sincerity.”

            The Wingfield apartment, where the play is set, is done in three hexagons of varying sizes, sparsely furnished and dimly lit, set among a stage flooded with an inky black liquid—the ocean of the world, in which the Wingfields, on their island, are suspended.  On this island we are treated to those most dichotomous of human emotions, love and hatred, shaded not too subtly and not too overstatedly by four people who, upon leaving the theater, I came to realize were some of the greatest actors I had ever shared a room with.  The stationary lives of the Wingfields, coming to a head upon the arrival of a gentleman caller with a mysterious background, become more than characters on a page—they are Old Master paintings, Frost poems, all that is melancholic and transcendent, all that art can achieve.  It is for this reason that, until the end of February, artists all around the world must cease in their tribulations.  For, next to perfection, what’s the point?

Venom and You

“The Power of Poison” at the American Museum of Natural History

The skull of an Eastern rattlesnake is one of the items on display at "The Power of Poison."

            Don’t go outside.  Don’t venture off the beaten path.  Or, at the very least, don’t go to Colombia.

            These are the life lessons with which one leaves the American Museum of Natural History’s new exhibit, “The Power of Poison,” which runs through August of 2014.  In this highly informative and multifaceted exhibit, the uses and applications of nature’s many poisons are pinpointed, but it’s difficult to escape the images of the creepy-crawlies in the natural world (especially those in the Chocó region of Colombia, a focus of the exhibition) whose very bite or sting could cause unimaginable pain or even kill.

            But from an intimidating, three-times life-size reproduction of a colony of bullet ants—whose stings cause such all-consuming pain that they have been compared to being shot; thus the name—the exhibition winds onward, through thousands of years of study and the perception of poison by humans.  Macbeth’s three witches are invoked, as well as Medea and Hercules in Greek myth.  Throughout, what becomes clear is the human race’s fascination with venom, and how often it has become interchangeable with the idea of magic in the public eye.  As a result, it’s only natural we’ve come to associate spiders and snakes with the same kind of ethereal fear we reserved for warlocks and sorcerers in earlier centuries.  Both had the theoretical, generalized power to kill.  The museum seeks to ensure we are more educated about our demons than our ancestors were about theirs.

            And if one chooses to understand their fear of poisoning, if not to overcome it, one couldn’t choose a better outing than a day at “The Power of Poison.”  In the dark, winding halls of the museum’s special exhibition space are displayed not only reproductions of poisonous animals but also, behind glass, some of the animals themselves.  (Some blindingly yellow poison dart frogs are particularly interesting.)  All is well-organized if more sparse in nature than some of the museum’s past exhibitions in the same space.

            Certainly it is organized uniquely, which was clearly the goal of the curator, Dr. Mark Siddall, from the museum’s department of Invertebrate Zoology.  His intent, obviously, was to create an exhibition less in the vein of, say, a “Beyond Planet Earth” or a “World’s Largest Dinosaurs” and more of a parallel to AMNH’s 2008 “Mythic Creatures,” that is to say, more engaging on an artistic or a speculative level as opposed to a scientific one.  That worked fairly well with “Mythic Creatures,” but one couldn’t escape the feeling, at that exhibition, that the subject matter was well beyond the scope of what is traditionally defined as “natural history.”  Here, the topic is right—something we all intrinsically fear that ought to be better explained—but its issues are the same issues “Creatures” suffered from.  When you leave the recreation of the Chocó jungle and come upon life-size, off-putting Macbeth witch dummies stirring a pot of nuclear sludge, you’ll inevitably feel that the exhibition ought to have been limited to the first room.

            This is because perception from the perspective of storytelling, while interesting, really can’t come close to the purer natural history in the animal section.  Later, when the exhibit touches on famous historical poisonings, it picks up some steam, but there must have been more poison in nature to discuss than what I saw.

            Still, a Natural History Museum exhibit is what it is—pure, well-researched information—and it makes no apologies.  If the goal of coming to a museum like this one is to learn (and I should hope it is), then an afternoon at “Power of Poison” will not be one wasted.  It also couldn’t possibly hurt to be able to identify a few of the critters the exhibit has to offer, in case you should one day happen to find yourself visiting Chocó—although, given what I have learned from the museum, I wouldn’t recommend it.

A Christmas Show's Many Shades

Oliver! at the Paper Mill Playhouse

Fagin (David Garrison), his boy thieves, and Oliver Twist (Tyler Moran), in Paper Mill Playhouse's Oliver!

            There is always a delicate balance, in any production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver!, between the trite and the zealous, the overenthusiastic and the subtly shaded.  So it is a pleasant surprise when the curtain rises on the Paper Mill Playhouse’s production of the 1960 musical to a well-acted, well-formed, and generally enjoyable experience.

            That’s not to say it’s out of place.  The Paper Mill has an impressive history of working well with children—they launched the career of Anne Hathaway in the mid-‘90s and have produced many excellent child-centric musicals (last year’s The Sound of Music being a key example) without any of the sickeningly sweet posturing that kills many Broadway productions.  But it is quite nice to begin this production (running through December 29th) with such a marvelously staged version of “Food, Glorious Food” that conveys so masterfully the chaos of the London workhouse in which our story begins, and to be gifted, as a sweetener, with the appearance of the very talented Paper Mill perennial John Treacy Egan as Mr. Bumble.  Mr. Egan has a clear, powerful voice and an imposing rotundity that places him at least on equal standing with Sir Harry Secombe in the 1968 film.

            The appearance of Tyler Moran as Oliver Twist may be worrying, as his piercingly high speaking voice and limited acting ability place him a rung or two below some of the other orphans in the workhouse on a likability scale, but these fears are assuaged when we first hear Mr. Moran sing.  It is very difficult to sing “Where is Love?” well, but, in this day and age, it is even more difficult to sing it originally.  Mr. Moran achieves both, and then some.

            In fact, his singing ability matters more, since Mr. Bart’s book often seems to be overshadowed by his superb score.  One can’t help but think Oliver! might have made a better operetta, given how much time is spent on the wonderful songs anyway.

            But of course, as in any stage production and as with the film, this Oliver! becomes infinitely more entertaining upon the appearance of the Artful Dodger, played with a diverting felicity of motion by Ethan Haberfield.  The Dodger takes Oliver Twist off the streets and into a welcoming confederacy of London’s poor, where “there isn’t a lot to spare” but all is shared equally.  It is something of an ideal, and lighter (obviously) than Dickens’ original, rather sour novel, but it’s always a relief to be welcomed to the world of the boy pickpockets, just because it’s so delightfully interesting.

            This version proves no exception.  The young thieves are marvelous dancers, but their master, the morally misguided Fagin, (played by David Garrison, of “Married… With Children” fame), is by a long shot the highlight of the show.  He is certainly the best Fagin I have ever seen.  He has become the character, in his thick makeup and gray beard, and he moves and speaks and dances and even sings as Fagin would.  He embodies the underclass of 1800s British society, the untouchable who does what he can to survive, and yet is hugely fun to watch.

            And this dichotomy itself is the very center of Oliver! as a show.  The dark existence of the poor as written by Charles Dickens is very much its heart, but it is masked in warmth and glow and excellently written songs such that it seems too colorful for complaint.  When matured thief Nancy (Betsy Morgan, fantastic) sings “It’s a Fine Life,” there is a moment when the dancing slows and the cheer drains from the room as she realizes she has denied herself happiness by choosing to involve herself romantically with the abusive crime lord Bill Sikes (Jose Llana, impressively terrifying).  But then it’s back to the dance.

            From there, however, we can sense the characters’ self-denial of everything that’s true about the situation of the poor at this time in London’s East End.  These people have nothing, but they must mask their fear in cheeriness and strive on.  How much must they lie to themselves before it becomes clear that there’s no way out?  (Fagin’s manic number, “Reviewing the Situation,” in the middle of the second act, is a clear representation of this, and, as with everything, Mr. Garrison carries it out without fault.)  It’s this contradiction—the happiness of a faux community vs. the reality of poverty—that is at the heart of every song and every moment in this classic musical, and realizing this (however inadvertent it may have been on the Paper Mill’s part) changes the way one looks at it.  The show’s ambiguous ending seems to neatly tie up all the loose ends, but it’s just a new beginning, one that might end well but might leave our heroes in the lurch again. 

It’s to the credit of this production’s able director, Mark S. Hoebee, that a show of such potential darkness can be made light, but it’s to Lionel Bart’s credit that Oliver! is so, so good, and that’s something we can all be thankful for this year.