By Irv Bauer
October 30, 2013 – After Midnight – Conceived by Jack Viertel and based on Duke Ellington’s music and Harlem’s famed Cotton Club. Ho, Ho, Ho, ‘tis the season to be jolly. For once, Broadway offers us a special gift for the holidays. Shining brightly on the great white way at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre is a show worthy of its praise, shouting its glittering arrival to one and all. It is a stunning hit out distancing all of the usual hype and marketing of our loud, overbearing age. If there were more superlatives I would heap them on After Midnight.
Based on the music of musical legends of the 1930s and 1940s, we are treated to Duke Ellington’s Black and Tan Fantasy, Cotton Club Stomp, Daybreak Express, and The Mooche, among numerous other Ellington favorites. Mixed in are old standards, On The Sunny Side of The Street, Cab Calloway’s Saz Suh Saz, the steamy Stormy Weather, even Diga Diga Doo, and I Can’t Give You Anything But Love. These gems are all dressed up brand new for our enjoyment by Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars, also one of the show’s producers. Mr. Marsalis’s phenomenal musical inspiration, the big band sound is sensational, can be seen throughout this glorious production.
I must admit that when I first heard of this show I had misgivings. Immediately I thought of my high school days at De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx. Many mornings instead of sitting in class, my pals and I could be found in the balcony of the Paramount Theater on Broadway waiting for the likes of Stan Kenton’s band to blare us awake at the 9 A.M. show. Anyway, here I was waiting for another big band to raise the roof. After Midnight was a fresh and welcome surprise. Aside from Wynton Marsalis’s deft musical handling, the other hero of this dazzling entertainment is Warren Carlyle the director and choreographer. His work is imaginative, versatile, ambitious, just plain terrific from tap to bottom. What I also liked was that they didn’t gook it up with a flimsy sentimental story, the Cotton Club, gangsters, creamy show girls, and the usual blather that passes for story to hang the music on. They set the scene with a lamppost and a phantom gentleman played by the charming Dule Hill who uses excerpts from the poet-writer Langston Hughes to walk us into the Harlem after midnight specialty numbers. He also sings and dances remarkably well and guides us through the wondrous night.
Then there is the cast. I wish there was time and space to feature each and every member of this singing and dancing group of amazing performers. Fantasia Barrino, confidently sexy, sings in a style reminiscent of Harlem’s great ladies, Ethel Watersesque, with a little of Billie Holiday thrown in to remind us; she then sweeps us along with her unique versatility. She is a star in the making. The superb comic interludes by Adriane Lenox, the tap stepping of Virgil “Lil O” Gadson, and Jared Grimes are wonderful to behold. Not dancing but DANCIN’. Smooth Julius “iGlide” Chisolm, earns his glidiness. He doesn’t seem to have a bone in his body as he slithers to and around the beat. That’s just to mention a few. They are all, men and women, singers and dancers, top-notch great. They have been brought together effortlessly as singles, duos, and ensembles by Warren Carlyle to perfection. Isabel Toledo’s costumes add to the luster of the show. All in all a joyful concoction. Perfect for the Holidays. Bring the whole family and pig out.
November 13, 2013 – Big Fish – Script by John August, based on the novel, Big Fish by Daniel Wallace and Columbia Pictures. Playing at the Neil Simon Theatre on Broadway. Music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa. Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman.
Big Fish is one of those almost-but-no cigar shows. It is a funny bird. It has wings but it can’t fly. It has songs but it doesn’t sing. It pretends to be a whopper but it is a minnow with nowhere to go. The individual parts are greater than the whole. They just don’t add up to a satisfying completion of the idea. I know what they wanted to do. A father and son coming to terms with the father’s imminent death and what is real about their relationship. Not easy stuff. The father tells tall stories, or are they so tall? The son doesn’t know what to believe. This is the problem. It is a premise for the imagination with which to play. Fantasy is great for the theater and for the audience to indulge in the great questions of death, reality, the delicacy of a father’s dreams, and a son’s hopes for the future. When you have music in your toolbox it should be easier. Music, lyrics, and the poetry of the theater can take you where words alone fear to tread. In Big Fish, the music and lyrics aren’t good enough. They don’t take us, allow us, to sing, hum along with the ideas. Andrew Lippa’s words and music don’t take us anywhere but to the obvious. You can orchestrate ordinariness and make it sound grand but if there is no magic, then there is no magic. I found myself wanting Big Fish to be better. It is clearly visible that everyone worked so hard, was working so hard, but it just wasn’t happening.
Nice shows don’t win ball games. There is an expression that a fish is rotten from the head down. The problem with this fish is conceptual. There was no core. The fantasy made for nice pictures but where you should have cared, you didn’t. It was all a let down and so much of it is good that you wonder why they didn’t fix it. Inevitably it all goes back to the script writer, in this case, John August.
You even had a major asset. The lead actor playing the father and big time storyteller is Norbet Leo Butz. He is a genuine, 100% true blue, one of a kind, STAR. A performer par excellence. A unique magician of the stage. A singer, dancer, actor, who can do anything and will do it in his own individual way; and I’m sure, never the same way twice. He’s a Broadway guy. They come along once every so often to amaze and astound us with their dexterity, originality, and brilliance. I would go and will go to see him in anything. Yet despite the power of his performance, he cannot carry Big Fish. It is just not there for him, to try as he does, carry it on his shoulders.
Big Fish features Susan Stroman’s direction, staging, and choreography, which is masterful. Her imagination is fully at play as she fuses the costumes and scenery, weaving them into dance patterns that excite our senses. The ensemble work is true American musical comedy. The singer/dancers, Broadway’s best, do it better than anyone in the world. When the show is dancing it is terrific. The production design by Julian Crouch is colorful and charming. Yellow flowers grow and fish do fly. There is a friendly giant and tall tales galore; trees actually dance the way dreams do. The costumer, William Ivey Long, joins in the fun as sets, costumes, and dance flow together for our enjoyment. So why am I not happy? There was a young girl about eight in the seat in front of me. During intermission, her Mom leaned over and asked her what she thought so far. The little girl hesitated than looked up and said, “Interesting.” Out of the mouths of babes. “Interesting,” the kiss of death. It’s too bad but it should have been better.
November 6,2013 – The Jacksonian by Beth Henley; directed by Robert Falls and presented by The New Group, with Ed Harris, Glenne Headly, Amy Madigan, Bill Pullman, and Juliet Brett at the Acorn Theater Off Broadway on Theater Row.
In Christmas tradition of course there has to be a chunk of black coal in the proverbial sock. For this holiday season it comes in the form of The Jacksonian, a play of dark decay, deep deceit, decadence, and dizziness by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Beth Henley. The play was originally performed at The Geffen Playhouse in L.A. in 2011. It had the same stellar cast of Ed Harris, his wife in real time, Amy Madigan, Glenne Headley, and Bill Pullman in leading roles. The cast is brought in tact plus the debut performance of talented 16-year-old Juliet Brett who holds her own. They are each and every one terrific. They are one of a kind actors who take the stage, rattle and roll, and take us along for the ride. I’ve long said that actors are the gift of the theatre. They light up our stages and brighten our lives.
This crew is up there with the best of them and we are lucky to have them with us. Add to the mix Robert Falls, the outstanding director, Artistic Director of the famed Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Ms. Henley’s sermon on southern hospitality gone astray, is meant as an entertainment of some sort. So just what are we presented with? Ed Harris, a wonderful actor, plays a dentist too close to his anger. A verbose patient talks too much racial nonsense so he pulls out all his teeth. Closer to home, he beats his wife, played by Amy Madigan. She throws him out which is why he is at The Jacksonian Motel at Christmas time. She gives vent to a whole range of actorly turns. The wife is nuts which must be fun to play. It also makes for a wonderful duet. Then we have the sexed up motel house keeper, a racist who will do anything to get married, to have that little ring on her finger.
She is played, no holds barred, by Glenne Headley. The guy she wants to marry is the Elvis-haired bartender, a creepy Bill Pullman. He is a pervert and a murderer. No matter to the housekeeper as long as she gets that ring on her finger. By the way, it’s the ring the pervert/murderer took off of his victim. Then there is the 16-year-old precocious, lyrical (think Member of the Wedding) daughter who seems to know what’s going on but wants her parents to stay together anyway or maybe she’ll go away with the pervert/murderer bartender. As I said, she really knows what’s going on. Throw in a murder and you have the basis for this horrific play. What’s it all about Bethy? If it is a who-done-it, I don’t care who or what he or she done did. I wasn’t titillated, or curious or interested. It’s all purple pulp.
