My Top 10 Theatre Experiences: Part 1

Ever since Playbill.com started publishing "Their Favorite Things," in which notable Broadway talent lists the 10 Broadway performances that most affected them as audience members, I have toyed with the notion of doing a similar feature on this blog.  But every time I've gone to write it, I've shied away, since making lists of my "favorite" or "the best" theatre is not something I do lightly.  It takes time to fully process the best theatre, and to ensure that your enjoyment was of the piece as a whole and not just a particularly flashy performance or technical element.  There are many productions I enjoyed immensely at the time that I have trouble remembering now, and while those types of shows are certainly valuable experiences they are not ones I feel belong on a "best of" list.

But after a lot of careful consideration, I have (I think) come up with a list that represents the 10 shows that have had the greatest effect on me as person.  These are the shows that made me feel, that made me laugh out loud, fight back tears, and stare in wonder at the sheer amount of talent on display.  I want to be clear:  this is NOT a list of what I consider the 10 Best Shows of All Time.  There are several shows that I adore as pieces of writing that I've never seen a wholly satisfactory production of, and though my theatrical knowledge is broad I don't consider it broad enough to make such sweeping proclamations.

No, this list was created with a pretty specific list of caveats.  It is confined entirely to productions I have personally experienced, and the specific casts I saw in those productions.  Also, I have borrowed Playbill.com's convention of limiting the list to Broadway productions, as it provides a narrower field to choose from (and has honestly been the home of almost all of the best theatre I've seen).  And in making my picks, I focused on productions that were outstanding as a whole, which has led to the exclusion of some of my favorite individual performances because the vehicles they starred in were flawed in some way.  Perhaps one day I'll make a companion list that is performer-based, but for now, a stellar production overrules a singular star turn.

Oh, and one last note: the shows are in alphabetical order, because attempting to rank them from 1 to 10 simply proved too difficult.  At this level, separating number 1 from number 2 or number 9 from number 10 would be splitting hairs.

Here's the start of the list:

August: Osage County

Perfection personified.  The acting ensemble for August: Osage County was everything!

  

On my first trip to New York after college, I bought a seat in the back of the balcony to August: Osage County based entirely on the ecstatic word of mouth from my friends.  The following three-and-a-half hours were some of the most thrillingly theatrical I've ever experienced, as playwright Tracy Letts and the astound ensemble of actors hurled the Great American Drama into the 21st century.  A deftly written dark comedy at turns hilarious and chilling, this Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece was riveting, and I left with a renewed sense of excitement about the possibilities of theatre as an artistic medium. 

The cast, all of whom transferred with the play from its world premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, was uniformly astounding, forming a tightly-knit ensemble that truly felt as if they had known each other their entire lives.  They were the Weston clan, and the extended second act dinner scene was one of the greatest master classes in acting that I've ever seen.  And while everyone was phenomenal, I must give special mention to Amy Morton as the eldest Weston daughter, Barbara.  Her slow unraveling under the psychological torture of her monstrous mother was mesmerizing, and her bellowed declaration of "I'm running things now!" at the end of Act II was perhaps the most electrifying curtain line in any play ever.  I would gladly have watched three more hours of such astonishing acting, and to this day August remains one of the finest dramas I've ever experienced.

Avenue Q

Puppets, humans, and Gary Coleman all live in happy harmony down on Avenue Q.

A smartly written, expertly executed examination of the struggles of early twenty-somethings in the new millennium, Avenue Q will forever be remembered as the show that beat megahit Wicked for the 2004 Best Musical Tony.  Having seen both productions just before said award was handed out, I must say that I wholeheartedly agree with the Tony voters' choice.  Avenue Q went far beyond its gimmicky-sounding Sesame-Street-meets-South-Park premise to become the perfect distillation of early-2000s pop culture, and in my opinion had a heart far bigger than the giant set-pieces on display at the Gershwin Theatre.  The show had me *howling* with laughter, even though I knew all of the songs by heart long before I made a trip to the Golden Theatre to actually see the show that contained them.

And while that was in no small part due to the writing, the insanely talented ensemble took the show over the edge as far as quality was concerned.  Most shows have two or three stand-out numbers; in the hands of that original cast, Avenue Q had 8 or 9.  John Tartaglia's and Stephanie D'Abruzzo's dual roles helped show me what true musical theatre acting looks like; when Kate Monster had her confrontation with Lucy the Slut I thought little of it until I realized D'Abruzzo played both characters, at which point my jaw dropped.  And I will never understand how Ann Harada failed to even be nominated for her career-defining work as Christmas Eve; a supremely talented comedienne, Harada had me rolling in the aisles and then blew me away with her powerhouse vocals on "The More You Ruv Someone."  10 years later I can still clearly remember large swaths of this show, and those memories never fail to bring a smile to my face.


That's all for now.  Check back soon for the next 4 shows in my top 10, including the show I'm fairly certain is my favorite theatrical experience of all time.

A Fairytale Fractured Beyond All Repair

Review:  Cinderella

 

Hello, Young Lovers:  Santino Fontana and Laura Osnes enjoy a waltz is the Broadway revival of Cinderella

When the lights come up on Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, we are treated to a silent tableau of the titular heroine gathering food in an idyllic, storybook forest.  A minute later, the Prince (here named Topher for reasons neither apparent nor consequential) and his footmen are slaying a tree giant, and the juxtaposition of those two images tells you everything you need to know about this rendition of the classic fairy tale.  Heavily rewritten in an attempt to be more hip, modern, and equally accessible to boys and girls, this new version of Cinderella completely eschews the old-fashioned charm that has allowed the property to endure for more than fifty years.

To be fair, the hour-long television musical Rodgers and Hammerstein originally wrote for a young Julie Andrews is too slight a story to be transferred directly to the stage, and padding it out with new plot points and a few of the duo’s trunk songs is not an inherently bad idea.  But surely the producers could have found someone better suited to the task than playwright Douglas Carter Beane, whose relentless snark is in complete opposition to the exceedingly earnest tone Rodgers and Hammerstein are known for.  Making matters worse is the fact that Beane is just god-awful at his job, as anyone who suffered through his odious work on Sister Act and Lysistrata Jones can attest. 

Possessing zero talent for characterization and a rudimentary at best understanding of proper story structure, Beane fills his musical librettos with an unending series of “punch lines” that sound like the improvisations of mildly amusing teenagers.  In Cinderella, this includes having characters exclaim “Seriously?” after being told to execute any unsavory task and commenting on how the placement of certain props makes “zero design sense.”  Beane and director Mark Brokaw have also saddled the show with a blatantly political subplot about bringing democracy to the Prince’s fairytale kingdom, a story thread so clumsily executed that it makes South Pacific’s simplistic observations about race seem like a graduate-level thesis in comparison.  By the time the people of the royal court decide to amuse themselves by trading insults in a game called Ridicule, you can’t help but laugh at how completely Beane has missed the mark, and hope that poor Rodgers and Hammerstein aren’t aware of what’s been done to their show.

It is physically painful to watch genuinely talented performers like Laura Osnes, Victoria Clark and Harriet Harris struggle to make such atrocious material work.  In many ways, Osnes is ideally cast as Cinderella – or Ella, as the show obnoxiously insists upon calling her – and when allowed to embrace the material’s traditionalist leanings she is a veritable delight.  Winsome without descending into blandness, Osnes and her lovely soprano are the perfect embodiment of the fairy tale princess, and watching her struggle to come up with an in-character reaction the sarcasm that permeates this show is almost depressing.  As she continues her ascent to leading lady status, one hopes that Osnes’ next show will finally combine the critical and commercial success this hard working actress so desperately deserves.

As her Prince Charming, Santino Fontana is exactly that, even if Beane’s writing forces him to play up the character’s buffoonish qualities.  Fontana seems appropriately lost as a young man struggling to find himself, and his infatuation with Cinderella is entirely believable.  Victoria Clark is positively enchanting as the Fairy Godmother, and her second act solo “There’s Music in You” is sung in the deeply felt, full-bodied manner befitting a majestic Rodgers and Hammerstein ballad.  (It should be noted that musical adaptor David Chase has flawlessly integrated the trunk songs and extended interludes with the existing score, creating one of the few instances where this production’s additions feeling like a natural extension of the source material.)

The villains of the piece are more problematic, due in no small part to Beane’s inability to decide whether they are meant to be truly menacing or mere comic relief.  As the wicked Stepmother, Tony-winner Harriet Harris spends two thirds of the evening spouting off one liners before being required to suddenly switch to genuine maliciousness and then again to heartfelt repentance, a horribly rushed progression no actress could make convincing.  In fact, given the wretchedness of her material Harris comes off remarkably well, with is more than can be said for Peter Bartlett as the devious royal advisor.  Ann Harada struggles mightily as the less attractive of the two stepsisters, but is let down by the decision to make her partner-in-crime Marla Mindelle noticeably less antagonistic than is usual.  Harada is essentially playing both sides of a comedic duo, and although she has some great moments the performance is ultimately ineffective.

Despite all the changes, there are times when this Cinderella actually begins to resemble the traditional version of the story, and when it does the show comes alive.  Cinderella’s onstage transformation and subsequent carriage ride to the ball is every bit as grand and enchanting as you could want, confirming the suspicion that we could have had a fantastic production if the creative team had merely trusted their source material.  Equally enthralling is the sweeping ballad “Ten Minutes Ago” and its accompanying waltz, which recreates old school Broadway spectacle in a most ravishing fashion.  Unfortunately, every time the show seems to get back on course Beane steers it in the complete opposite direction, to the point where he even changes the one thing literally everyone knows about Cinderella (let’s just say that her famed glass slipper makes a rather circuitous journey into the Prince’s possession).

From a production standpoint, this is definitely the Broadway version of Cinderella, with lavish sets and costumes that strike the proper balance between timelessness and modernity.  William Ivey Long’s costumes are gorgeous, and the multiple onstage transformations he creates are literally jaw-dropping.  Anna Louizos’s set design looks like a storybook illustration come to life, and is expertly highlighted by Kenneth Posner’s rich lighting design.  The twenty-person orchestra sounds just as sumptuous as the rest of the production looks, rounding out the technical excellence on all sides.

Ultimately, there is enough merit to this revamped Cinderella that it cannot be completely written off.  The production is visually striking and features some highly talented performers doing valiant work against insurmountable odds.  But unfortunately Douglas Carter Beane’s book is so inherently wrong, in both conception and execution, that the show cannot overcome it.  The production fails as both an old-fashioned musical romp and as an attempt at a clever reinvention of or commentary on the fairytale genre.  Rarely have I been so desperate for the characters in a musical to shut up and start singing, and if I never have to endure another one of Beane’s terrible librettos it will be too soon.  When this Cinderella vanishes at the stroke of midnight, perhaps we should simply let her leave.