A Comedy (of Sorts) Tonight

Lysistrata Jones at the Walter Kerr Theater

 

            Retellings of the old tales often work just because they aren’t yours.  With something that’s been proven to work—such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—you can mess around with the characters, storyline, and setting without worrying that you’re setting yourself up to fail (a fact of life Laurents, Bernstein, and Sondheim took advantage of with their hit West Side Story).  It’s almost a guarantee that you’ll attract viewers solely based on the following the old story has accrued.  That’s the same reason you can’t list many musicals on Broadway today that aren’t taken from a tale from long (or not so long) ago: think Billy Elliot, Mary Poppins, The Addams Family, War Horse, and especially Godspell.  This must be the reason why writing team Douglas Carter Beane (Sister Act) and Lewis Flinn (The Little Dog Laughed) thought they could succeed with their new musical Lysistrata Jones, based on Aristophanes’s age-old tale of women withholding sex as a means of controlling their disobedient men.  Sadly, they were mistaken.

            Lysistrata Jones is unspeakably average.  Every action performed on the stage screams maximum effort, minimum result.  While I do pity Beane and Flinn for coming close to what legitimately could have been a good show, I’m not inclined to accept something as mundane as this basketball farce.  It wasn’t that it was bad, but that it wasn’t the opposite either.  Jones is the kind of show where you leave the theater indecisive, because it hasn’t given you anything to be excited about.

            And there’s another fault.  Jones has no pull.  There’s no massive, noticeable feature like Daniel Radcliffe in How to Succeed or even a composer descending into a previously unvisited realm that has become newly interesting to the composer’s fans, as was the case with Stephen Schwartz and his passion project Wicked.  Even the concept of the show is wholly uninteresting.  Taking the pacifistic attitudes of the original Lysistrata’s women and reapplying their anger to a college basketball losing streak is forced and unrealistic.  If anything it makes the heroine seem utterly controlling, a puppeteer in the wings so desperate for glory she’ll instill a school-wide dry spell just to see some personal victory.  As if this wasn’t enough, “Lyssie J” installs herself immediately as cheerleading captain, a position that isn’t exactly home to many protagonists in fiction or non.  The result is that both Lyssie and the show are entirely unlikeable, and even song-ending high notes every now and again or an Aretha-like narrator with a toga and feather boa can bring the audience’s attention past the initial disinterest.

            A show’s greatest enemy is clichés, and Jones is chock-full of the kind of oversights that would make a playwright wince in his seat.  The dumb blonde who leads the pack away from conformation and into the light of self-acceptance (Legally Blonde, Clueless, House Bunny), the suave basketball captain whose belief in his solid relationship causes him all kinds of trouble (High School Musical, Pleasantville, Teen Wolf), and of course, the nerd-gets-the-girl theme that for some reason tends to hang out around feel-good comedies like a mosquito at your Fourth of July picnic (I hope I don’t have to name anything for this one).  There’s no shortage of original moments, either, but they’re far out-weighed by painful and grossly self-referential mentions of Siri, the iPhone, SparkNotes, and enough other odd little “techie” outbursts to make one wonder if Beane and Flinn wrote the show as a response to “those darn kids with their machines!”

            I won’t lie, there were one or two places where I laughed.  During a scene in the basketball locker room when the team, the vast majority of which is white, address each other as if at a meeting of the Crips, the team’s only African-American member complains, “Guys, I am the only black man here! Why are you talking this way?” But I didn’t love.  I didn’t feel the Broadway in the air (not surprising, since the show was produced originally in a gym and does its best to make the stage look like one too).  People pay hundreds of dollars to see a Broadway show, and if it’s not good enough, I’m going to tell you it’s not good enough.  And Lyssie and her team are not good enough for me.  Sorry, Lysistrata, but hopefully your writers will live to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” another day.

The Ego and the Id

Freud's Last Session at New World Stages

         Do I expect too much of New World Stages?

            To any experienced in the theater, the preceding sentence may seem odd and misinformed.  New World Stages has no standing on Broadway.  In fact, the seven-theater establishment is housed in what was once an underground movie theater.  But the Stages have good judgment, after picking up revivals of Rent and Avenue Q, or so it would seem.  But when I went to see the longest running show Off-Broadway this season, New World Stages disappointed me.  They put on a play that was long, inane, and monotonous.  The show was wildly rambling and had little point, describing a fictional meeting between C.S. Lewis (Mark H. Dold), the deeply theist author of The Chronicles of Narnia, and Sigmund Freud (Martin Rayner), the atheist psychologist who managed to link sex to innumerable everyday activities.  To call the play well-developed would be similar in nature to calling Elton John a real man’s man.  It makes no sense to me, and lacks any semblance of a plot.  Sure, the play was complicated, and there were moments where I could detect some things that were meant to be humor, but all in all I was nothing if not a man whose time had been wasted. 

Now, to be fair, there are only two people in the play, and one, Martin Rayner, who usually plays the part of Freud, was absent, leaving dual understudy Tuck Milligan in his place.  Milligan was a boring and unpracticed actor, and the performance seemed to mostly consist of Mark H. Dold attempting to coax Milligan into entering the fun and games of the play’s intensiveness, such as it was.  The actors themselves didn’t seem like they actually liked the work they were performing.  I agree.  The play had all the drama of a fifth grade report on Freud plagiarized from a few of his better books.  Perhaps if I had seen the play with Rayner in the title role, I would have felt differently.  For some reason, though, I don’t think so.

One can’t fault the playwright, Mark St. Germain, for running with an intriguing idea.  In 1939, Freud met with a young professor in his new home of England.  St. Germain was interested in the possibility that this professor could have been C.S. Lewis.  He imagined that “the meeting between these two men [would be] timeless.” The problem with Mr. St. Germain is that he gets so into the idea of religion that he makes the play seem like an amateur debate over the legitimacy of the Catholic Church.  Forgive me for expecting more of two of the most brilliant writers of the twentieth century, but I believe that if Lewis and Freud did meet (unlikely, since Freud was, at the time, in the midst of spiraling into a deep, solitary depression that would cause his purposeful morphine overdose) their conversation would be much more engaging and much more entertaining.  St. Germain wasn’t up for a premise this bold.  Perhaps in the future he should remain in the realm of bedroom farces or, better yet, one-man shows.  St. Germain’s droning rhetoric would be perfect for a graying man reclining in a director’s chair as the audience succumbs to slumber.

In another place, during a different, less enjoyable season, Session would have impressed me further.  It was just that in one of my more respected Off-Broadway theaters, I wanted more than what I was given.  I craved a show that gave Freud all he deserved, and Lewis all the literary self-references he could possibly spout.  If I could sum up the faults of this show in one sentence, it would be this—It wasn’t enough.  Good enough? Maybe.  Not substantive enough? That could be it.  But the key word is enough.  Theater should exceed expectations, astound you in a part of your sub-conscious where before you had only stored dreary reflection.  Freud’s Last Session did not give me that.  It stayed firmly in reality, something the arts are meant to transcend.  Sorry, New World Stages, but one dud ain’t bad.  Maybe next time.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

White Christmas at the Paper Mill Playhouse

           Before the days of “alternative” musicals and their ilk, the geniuses at Tin Pan Alley turned out one hit after another on their lunch breaks, filling the world with what could only be considered brilliant musicals.  There was no such thing as a flop.  It was either good, or it never got written.

            This was in the days of Cole Porter, Rogers and Hammerstein, and, most relevant in this case, Irving Berlin, whose classics such as “Annie Get Your Gun” have lodged him in our memories as one of the greatest composers and lyricists ever born.  Now, at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn through December 24^th, one of his hits is being brought back to the public eye.  “White Christmas,” platform for memorable standards such as the title song and Berlin’s ode to the ivories, “I Love a Piano” (which opens the second act with unbelievable gusto), is a masterwork in any theater or on any screen.  The Paper Mill did it fair and perfect justice.           

            “White Christmas” is a timeless paradigm of the Christmas story—the story enveloped in warmth and gratitude towards all human beings, where lovers whisper to one another beneath the mistletoe and things all turn out all right because it’s Christmas, and it’s snowing.  Berlin set the bar for such musicals and even such stories, with his tale of retired soldiers, now song-and-dance men, who put on a show to save an inn overseen by their former general.  Though less powerful without the display of pure talent that came from Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby in the movie version, the songs remain beautiful and the lyrics achingly perfect.  Before the time of “Sunset Boulevard” and “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” through this we can see that there were once real musicals where the sole purpose was to showcase human talent.  And that’s what White Christmas is, at the Paper Mill or anywhere else, a true barrage of talent.  The storyline really doesn’t matter.  What does is following the individual elements through to their conclusion.  You care less about unrequited love than you do about each lyric and its meaning, and its cooperation with the next lyric.

            But I make it sound deep and intense.  In fact, White Christmas is light, easy entertainment, quick on its feet and loud in its devotion.  The Paper Mill cares more than many other theaters because it doesn’t really have anything to lose.  It’s a large, popular theater that showcases the best New Jersey can offer, and it’s almost Broadway, but it’s not.  So it doesn’t have angry producers looming over it, and it can do whatever it likes, and what it likes is usually what the public will like.  That’s admirable.

            But there are more stars in this show than just the theater it’s debuting in.  Lorna Luft, half-sister to Liza Minnelli and daughter to Judy Garland, appears as Martha “Megaphone” Watson, a former Broadway actress who claims Ethel Merman once told her, “You are loud!” She seems much happier and gentler than her sister, whose intimidating stage presence and literal megaphone voice can sometimes frighten an audience.  Luft plays her role laudably and with a carefree feel.  White Christmas is comfortable for her and us.

            So as you settle in this holiday season, why not choose White Christmas to keep you warm? It’s just as large, encompassing, and cozy as your draped blanket, and just as delicious and pleasant as your hot cocoa.  On Christmas Eve this year, there’s no better journey than back to 1954 to enjoy the beauty and the pure sagacity behind this show.  It’ll knock your Yuletide stockings off.

It's Time to Raise the Curtain

Jim Henson's Fantastic World at the Museum of the Moving Image

           The past generation was raised on The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock. My own was raised on Sesame Street. The characters are instantly recognizable in any form.  Just their parody, Avenue Q, has been running seven years in New York City and won the Tony for Best Musical the year it began.  Their creator has been nominated for Oscars and is the father of the proudest and most famed puppet family ever to exist on the planet Earth.  I think it’s pretty clear we’re talking about someone with a great deal of talent—and power.

           The holder of all this power was, of course, the great Jim Henson, the eccentric puppeteer/graphic designer/writer/director who founded an empire of animation and family-style tradition.  He’s the subject of the newest exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image, Jim Henson’s Fantastic World.  The museum itself is filled with interesting old gadgets from the early days of cinema, but shares space through January with artifacts from Henson’s life, including some of his puppets.  (Miss Piggy in her wedding dress stands, serenely, midway through the exhibit.) It’s thorough and absorbing, but it is a little sparse and not very well organized.  The information is without a doubt fascinating, but it’s hard to follow the exhibit when there isn’t enough information, and when there is, it’s not positioned well.

           But the layout, obviously, is not Jim Henson’s fault, and that’s who you come to see.  Trust me, when it comes to Henson’s work, you will not be disappointed.  The exhibition features the filmmaker’s award-winning short film Time Pieceplaying on a loop, as well as props from many of his original works and some intricately sculpted objects used on the set of The Dark Crystal, Henson’s 1982 work, and Labyrinth, of 1986.  It’s enthralling to wander through the world of this visual genius, to think how he thought, to see what he saw, in the drawings and works of art he left behind.

           What is even more diverting ,is to follow Jim Henson’s trail from the beginning, to see how he got his start.  Henson began in graphic design for the covers of school plays and events, eventually beginning his own graphic arts company and leaving posters around campus.  Soon enough, once Henson was out of college, companies began to contact him (and he began to contact companies) about creating commercials for their products.  He, of course, gravitated to puppets.  He created the La Choy dragon, who cooked beans in “dragon fire” and knocked over an entire supermarket in hopes of selling his product; Wilkins and Wontkins, selling Wilkins coffee as Wilkins blew Wontkins to smithereens over and over for choosing the cheap brand, and even some of what would become Muppets—the Wheel-Stealer, who stole the delicious Wheel cookies, became Cookie Monster.  No matter what he did, Henson managed to parody commercialism in his commercials while still successfully selling products.  (During his reign with Wilkins coffee, the drink became ten times more popular.)

           Jim Henson had always wanted to create some kind of variety show centered around his puppets, and after years of trying, he finally achieved greatness—The Muppet Show, which paved the way for Fraggle Rock and, eventually, Sesame Street.  Henson was asked by one of the show’s creators, Joan Ganz Cooney, to populate her educational “street” with Muppets.  Henson was glad to.  The rest is history.

           The greatest thing about this exhibit is nostalgia.  No one of my age or older could exit without a smile on his or her face.  There’s nothing more fulfilling than looking back for a while.

Over the Moon

Rent at New World Stages

           There’s a surprise or two in everything.           

           For one, I had no idea that Jonathan Larson’s Rent was an opera.  Or almost an opera.  The music takes over the stage so powerfully you can barely tell if there are smidgens of dialogue in between numbers.  I also was surprised to find that Adam Chanler-Berat, who plays the filmmaker Mark (who, in this production has lost his scarf and glasses—so ‘90s), was the original Henry in the spectacular musical Next to Normal.  I didn’t know that every song in the show was so overpoweringly good, if a little overwhelming at times, and I didn’t know I’d carry the tunes in my head the next day of songs I’d never known before.  (Turns out Seasons of Love is about 30 seconds long.  Hmm.)

           You don’t need to know anything about the original Rent to love this one, although it helps.  When Angel appears in his red dress at the beginning of Today 4 U, the audience roars, and when Maureen Johnson encourages the onlookers to moo with her, they low appreciatively—and loudly.

           Yet, it’s likely a whole new generation will get to know Rent in a whole new way, and that’s as a historical piece of theater.  When Rent first appeared in 1994, and later on Broadway in ’96, the AIDS epidemic raged around it.  It was happening.  Now, younger viewers can look back at it with horror and  queasiness. The smash hit The Normal Heart was written this way, and Rent,unintentionally, has become the same.

           The great thing about the show, though, is that it doesn’t rely on the epidemic for pitying viewers.  No, it veers from the topic as often as possible (though keeping it in the background as what can be termed the villain of the piece), branching out to romance and solidarity and withdrawal.  This is what draws the audience in now, as it did then—that it can be funny, and loud, and brash, and musically brilliant, without losing the backbone of the performance: that everyone keeps pain within, whether physical or emotional, and that everybody must face up to their own pain in order to survive.

           For those of you who don’t know anything about Rent (how has it been living under that rock for these past 15 years?), it’s a modern rendition of the opera La Boheme, about the early bohemians, who aren’t really that different from the artists who squatted in abandoned lots in Alphabet City in the '90s.  They took part in many of the same activities (as referenced in the powerful, fun number, “La Vie Boheme”).  They each had their problems, and they each solved them in entertaining ways.  I guess we’re lucky they do it in front of us, because somehow the show manages to be very entertaining, despite its dark themes.  There are bright, bouncy songs enough to keep the mood high.  The audience laughs itself into a stupor as it gets ready to cry.  The show explores deep enough themes, too, to keep the audience constantly interested throughout.  And it is deep, too, because there are almost an unlimited amount of levels Rent can evidence.  It is truly a beautiful show, perhaps one of the most beautiful.
           How is the new cast, you ask? It’s hard to imagine, for me, Mark as anyone but Chanler-Berat, his performance is so gratifying.  However the part of Maureen seems righter for Idina Menzel than it does for Annaleigh Ashford, and there are a few other parts it’s easy to imagine played by other characters.  All in all, the cast isn’t overly impressive, but it’s impossible to even consider that a factor in the case of this show, because it would be impossible to make Rent bad.  The best musicals don’t rely on their casts.  Rent, being one of the best, wouldn’t be left out.

           If you were looking for a good time in New York and can’t get Book of Mormon tickets until late 2012, Rent is a desirable and relatively inexpensive alternative.  There’s nothing keeping you—unless of course you’re reading this in some frozen part of the tundra, in which case, sorry about that and good luck finding good theater over there!

Into the Wild Gray Yonder

Tornado Alley

           A storm builds slowly in the distance.  Bill Paxton’s time-weathered voice gropes its way lazily into hearing distance as the dark clouds come ever closer.  Finally, the blue skies overhead turn brown as an enormous twister overtakes you.

What’s going on?

           It may be a drama, you decide.  There’s certainly enough evidence for that.  Our heroes, the researchers of the storm-chasing mission Vortex 2, have all the cheeriness that naturally comes before a horrific but stoic fall from the very behemoths they pursue.  Sean Casey (who also acts as the director and 1st unit cinematographer), building his gargantuan Tornado Intercept Vehicle—a 10-ton Dodge with bulletproof windows and armor plating—accepts his burden bravely, claiming, “This is my life now.” But no, it can’t be.  After all, you can hear Paxton echoing out over the theater like some gritty cowboy’s ghost.  You can hear what’s going on.  This film, approached so clearly like something akin to the beginnings of a Titanic of tornado obsession, is a documentary.

           While visually astounding, Tornado Alley (the film’s title and setting) provides little in the way of information, leaving you instead to watch in amazement as Casey dons a motorcycle helmet and makes his way, with his trusty TIV (short for the mentioned Vehicle), into the abyss.  You must view with great hope the Vortex 2 (or V2) team goes forth to discover new ways to find earlier warning times for cyclones.  However, there is no great, dramatic ending, just repeated disappointment.  V2 never gets up to much of anything at all.  They sit around and hope they’ve captured something useful while far, far away from any danger, but you never find out if they have.  The film ends with hope, hope, hope, cross your fingers for the team, and that’s disappointing for any film, even a nonfiction one.

           Meanwhile, Casey is planning to get video footage from inside a tornado with the help of a driver/scientist and a Navy medic.  The fact that he’s doing this solely for thrill somehow takes away any connection between you and the filmmaker.  He fails in his mission repeatedly, and when he finally succeeds (anchoring the TIV to the ground and crouching at its skylight with a camera), it’s not very impressive.  The storm he chose was small and passed over him in under a minute.  The footage itself was nowhere near as spectacular as the rest of the film.

           And yes, the film is spectacular, optically, that is.  Because the tornado in itself is so majestic, one is willing to sit in the LeFrak Theater for 45 minutes solely to be taken in by the breathtaking view.  (Tornado Alley is also playing in New Jersey’s Liberty Science Center and other museums around the country—check online for show times near you.)  Occasionally you can watch storms approach in time-lapse, and that’s the most beautiful of all.  To view the clouds advance like a wave,  floating slowly toward the screen is a good time in itself.  No one can fault Sean Casey; he is, after all, a great cinematographer, and he can’t help it if his personal story isn’t significantly filmic.

           All in all, Tornado Alley is not an informative film, simply a mildly enjoyable one if you go by sight.  And while the storm-chasers may not seem to care about the damage the monstrous beings they love do, Casey is compassionate enough to show the aftermath of a horrible squall in a Texas town.  This moment is the one in the film where it is shown that perhaps these characters, appearing so flat and emotionless, are empathetic after all.  And somehow, to the viewer, that is deeply satisfying.

The Big, the Bad, and the Herbivorous

The World's Largest Dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History

           As the special exhibitions at the Museum of Natural History become more and more extravagant, showcasing myths, polar expeditions, and frogs, it’s a relief to see them going back to those which made them famous—impressively enormous extinct lizards.

           In the rotunda, in the halls, the highlight of every poster and every logo, dinosaurs line the halls at AMNH.  It’s impossible to focus on any flashy link, so the museum went classic—big.  And they made the right choice.  The exhibit is well thought out and beautifully organized. 

           At The World's Largest Dinosaurs, a new exhibit at the Museum, size is all that matters.  The question here is how did these animals eat, survive, and function day-to-day without perishing beneath their own weight or restrictions, likely crushing most of the surrounding foliage as they fell? The exhibit goes into this in depth.  

           Diet, weight, length, reproduction, respiration, and circulation are discussed at length along the informative notice boards that line the walls, and all questions that could be asked are answered.  At some points, the subject veers wildly from dinosaurs and changes simply to size, putting water buffalo, crocodiles, giraffes, tapirs, and even an enormous butterfly up for view.  And somehow this makes sense, if only because the elaborate display is planned so thoughtfully.  At the very least, it’s simple.  That’s why, for the viewer who would almost certainly be flattened by the extent of the information the museum is able to deliver, it’s the safest, and accordingly, impossible to dislike.

           Even as you enter, the showcase begins its flamboyant display with a bang.  A long sauropod’s neck cranes in through the wall, gaping at newcomers confusedly as if wondering why this unknown species has intruded upon its privacy.  Continuing to a life-size human skeleton beside a titanic dinosaur’s leg (which almost presses against the ceiling) and a parade of currently living creatures so enormous they would give a prize-fighter pause, but never one of the World’s Largest Dinosaurs, which becomes more evident upon entry to the main arena of the exhibit. 

           Only the fine hand of a talented curator can combine something seemingly complex and elementary at once, and that’s just what The World’s Largest Dinosaurs does.  The exhibition either pictorially or literally represents every fact, like the amount of greens eaten shown in a 5 x 5 tank filled to the brim with ferns and greenery.  Both children and adults will feel perfectly comfortable and unembarrassed to be at the museum’s latest special exhibition because, they will feel at home absorbing any fact showing their own history, or, in this case, that of a wildly different species that lived so long before our own.  Children can become accustomed to the facts through games, or touch, our fossil-digging (all three offered by Dinosaurs), and adults through the relevant literature, but both will inescapably come to the same conclusion.  The world we live in is strange, and, in it, some things appear impossible to keep alive by any odd circumstances, but somehow remain.  And years later, when we find their remains, it is easy to marvel at their stamina and endurance techniques, but easier still to marvel at the institution who so thoughtfully presents them for the good of the public.  Amazement at history is, in itself, an amazing thing.