This Diva Needs Her Stage, Small Though It May Be

Review: Shows for Days

Caught with his cell phone out during the show, Michael Urie is forced to hide from Patti LuPone's wrath.

Douglas Carter Beane must be quite the charmer. Despite a tenuous grasp of cohesive storytelling technique, the playwright and musical librettist not only continually convinces producers to mount his often undercooked shows, but he also manages to attract some of the industry's top talent to perform it. Beane's last play The Nance starred no less than the great Nathan Lane, and his latest work Shows for Days has the distinction of featuring two-time Tony-winner Patti LuPone in one of the central roles. LuPone does heroic work in a play that doesn't really merit her many talents, even if individual scenes in the piece prove to be side-splittingly hilarious.

This semi-autobiographical comedy about Beane's early days in the theatre follows Car, the idealized author stand-in who stumbles across a small community theatre troupe in Reading, Pennsylvania during the summer of 1973. Initially volunteering as a set painter to kill time, 14-year-old Car finds himself entranced by the allure of this tight-knit group of misfits led by the firebrand producer/director/actress Irene. Irene dreams of a permanent, legitimate theatre company to rival any of the town's established troupes, using her outsized personality to cajole, convince, or outright threaten the city into supporting her cause with funds and free performance space. Car soon becomes a valuable member of the group, eventually commissioned to write their first original play all while trying to find an escape from the small town life that has left him feeling trapped.

John Lee Beatty's set cleverly mimics the organized chaos of any low-budget performance space, with colored tape indicating the outlines of the play's many different settings (this will be instantly familiar to anyone who has ever set foot inside a rehearsal studio). Beane and director Jerry Zaks also use the charming conceit of Car literally setting the stage as he narrates his life, moving chairs, tables, and other pieces of furniture to their various locations as the action shifts from place to place. It all evokes a warm nostalgia for the simplicity of small scale theatre, and reminds you of the magic that can be achieved by a group of actors fully committed to doing their best with whatever is onhand.

Unfortunately, Beane's script is the opposite of simple, so overstuffed with sitcom-style zingers that the intricacies of the plot get lost amid the quest for laughs. While portions of the script are admittedly very funny, all of playwright's dialogue smacks of a need to demonstrate the breadth of his theatrical knowledge and wit. It's acceptable and even admirable to expect your audience to keep pace with your rapid-fire references (Something Rotten is grossing a million dollars a week using precisely that brand of humor), but Beane's writing tries a little too hard to call attention to how clever he's being, with a vague air of judgment should you be unable to keep up. Beane and Zaks also appear uncomfortable with any moment of genuine emotion, bulldozing over the play's more serious beats in a breakneck race towards the next punchline.

As Car, Michael Urie is in no way a convincing teenager (something both the actor and the script acknowledge early on), but he brings an impish, innocent quality to his performance that is innately appealing despite its lack of depth. Urie embodies the play's more negative aspects by shamelessly mugging throughout, even during the few times when Car is required to show some genuine anguish. The actor's undisputable good looks also undermine a key subplot where the object of Car's first crush specifically rejects him for being sexually undesirable, which in a play with so much metahumor registers as a joke until you realize that is actually the root of the pair's relationship issues.

While Urie may be the nominal lead, LuPone is the unquestioned star of the show. Yes, casting the famously temperamental LuPone as an outsized theatrical diva is an obvious choice, but the genius of her performance is she manages to simultaneously surprise while also giving you exactly what you expect. She chews the scenery while delivering many of the play's best lines, highlighting her top notch comic timing in an effortlessly hilarious performance. Yet unlike Urie, LuPone remembers to create a real person underneath Irene's over the top exterior, and when the script presents her with the opportunity to let us see behind that bravura façade she brilliantly capitalizes on it. The few times Irene's shell cracks and we glimpse the wounded woman underneath not only showcase LuPone's versatility, but also ground Irene as recognizably human and someone worth rooting for.

The rest of the cast offers solid support to the two leads, although the script doesn't provide them with much more than broadly drawn outlines. Dale Soules as the lesbian stage manager Sid is the most multi-dimensional, although her more understated moments get lost among the overt hamminess of Urie's mugging. Jordan Dean plays the dumb pretty boy very well, and Zoe Winters is suitably high strung as the needy actress Maria. Understudy Lance Roberts went on in the role of the troupe's gay leading man Clive at the performance I saw, and did a fine job despite the fact that Beane has written him as a caricature rather than an actual human.

Ultimately, Shows for Days proves to be an enjoyable if slightly frustrating experience as LuPone and company struggle to find the right balance between the play's farcical leanings and its brief flirtations with more dramatic material. Playwright Beane's insistence on making almost every line a laugh line proves exhausting for both the cast and the audience, a relentlessness that is only highlighted by Zaks' by the numbers staging. Yet Beane has an obvious and sincere affection for both this period of his life and small-scale theatre in general, lending the play just enough emotional honesty that it cannot be dismissed completely out of hand. Patti LuPone once again proves she is a theatrical force to be reckoned with, and if nothing else, Shows provides its audience with the chance to watch this legendary diva work her magic.

A Triumphant Return for Broadway's Greatest Funnyman

Review:  The Nance

Nathan Lane commands the stage in his latest tour de force performance, as the title character in Douglas Carter Beane's The Nance.

 

After several forays into the world of musical theatre bookwriting, Douglas Carter Beane returns to his roots as a serio-comedic playwright with The Nance, his latest Broadway venture that is recently finished up its run at the Lyceum Theatre (and will be recorded for broadcast on PBS).  And while the play is certainly a more accomplished work than any of his musical outings, it remains a frustratingly conflicted piece that attempts a variety of things without fully succeeding at any of them.  The play wants to be a probing character study but fails to really explore the motivations of its protagonist.  It wants to make an admittedly topical political statement but ends up feeling preachy and pedantic rather than relevant and illuminating.  It wants to be both a serious drama and a low-brow comedy, but rather than complimenting one another each of these disparate elements continually undercuts the effectiveness of the other.

But at the play’s center is a Herculean performance so electric, so accomplished in its specificity and authenticity that it almost succeeds in elevating the play to the lofty realms which it so obviously aspires to.  Nathan Lane’s work as protagonist Chauncey Mills is nothing short of extraordinary, reasserting his status as one of the most accomplished stage actors of his generation.  With no disrespect meant to his very talented costars, Lane acts circles around everyone else onstage, and actually manages to make the play’s disparate tones seem organic and even necessary. 

The plot centers on Lane’s Chauncey Mills character, a man who has made a name for himself doing burlesque skits in Depression Era New York City.  Mills’ signature role is that of the overtly effeminate stock character dubbed “The Nance,” a professional choice made infinitely more complex by the fact that Mills is himself gay.  After years of anonymous sex with strangers, Mills seduces a young man named Ned who is just coming to grips with his own sexuality, and to the surprise of both men they find themselves entering a long-term relationship together.  Meanwhile, Mills’ burlesque theatre and his act in particular are coming under increasing pressure from city officials taking a stance against indecency, forcing the outspoken Mills to make a choice between being himself and suppressing his true nature to fit in.

It cannot be overstated how brilliant Nathan Lane is in the central role. From the opening moments of the show until the final curtain, Lane dominates the stage and exhibits such mastery of his craft that even his accomplished costars look like amateurs in comparison.  The play gives him ample opportunity to demonstrate his dramatic chops, while simultaneously providing him with an unending string of zingers and comic bits that utilize his unparalleled sense of comedic timing.  Throughout the play we are treated to excerpts from Mills’ stage act, and Lane absolutely kills in these scenes of perfectly reconstructed vaudeville comedy.  Where a normal actor would earn one laugh Lane manages to get three, often by using little more than a cock of the eyebrow or a sideways glance at the audience.  More miraculous still is Lane’s ability to make such carefully calculated choices feel utterly spontaneous, leaving the audience with the impression that this virtuosic performance is being created from scratch each night.

And while none of his costars are operating on Lane’s level (there are few actors in the world that could match such inspired lunacy), the rest of the cast turns in fine performances in their own right.  In his Broadway debut, Jonny Orsini charts a beautifully realized journey of self-acceptance as Mills’ lover Ned, and watching him realize that his sexuality doesn’t automatically prevent him from enjoying the perks of a domesticated life is particularly poignant in this time when marriage equality is on the forefront of the national debate.  If there is one criticism of Orsini’s performance it’s that he plays the character rather dumb, which at times comes into direct conflict with the highly literate dialogue playwright Beane has provided all of the characters.

Lewis J. Stadlen plays the lovably gruff Efram with aplomb, and makes an excellent foil for Lane during the burlesque skits that are the show’s highlight.  In a lesser actor’s hands Efram’s discomfort with Mills’ sexuality would make him the clear villain of the piece, but Stadlen tempers his performance with enough begrudging respect to make it clear that Efram isn’t a bad person.  As the trio of burlesque dancers that work at the same theatre, Cady Huffman, Jenni Barber and Andrea Burns make for excellent support, although the writing doesn’t do enough to differentiate their three characters.  Huffman (reunited with Lane after they both won Tonys for The Producers a decade ago) makes the strongest impression, although she is unfortunately saddled with the most overtly political and unnecessarily knowing dialogue.

Director Jack O’Brien keeps the evening moving at a steady pace, and during the show’s final twenty minutes manages to synthesize the disparate bits and repeating motifs into something resembling resonance.  He is aided immensely by John Lee Beaty’s marvel of a rotating set, which allows for virtually seamless transitions from one locale to the next.  Ann Roth clearly had a ball with the period costumes, and her designs for the burlesque outfits in particular possess just the right amount of winking outlandishness.  The lights and sound by Japhy Weideman and Leon Rothenberg get the job done but aren’t particularly memorable, and the original music by Glen Kelly is a nice if unassuming addition to the proceedings.

Ultimately, The Nance’s primary reason for being is to provide Nathan Lane with a showcase for his immense talents, and in that respect it succeeds wholeheartedly.  The comedic genius’ work manages to elevate Douglas Carter Beane’s passable script into something approaching greatness, and everyone involved has graciously taken a backseat while letting the master work his magic.  It is a worthwhile evening for those who are interested, although I do hope that Lane’s next Broadway outing is in a vehicle more worthy of his extraordinary gifts.

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.

Lysistrata Jones Review

Patti Murin (center) and the cast of Lysistrata Jones

Some shows simply aren’t meant for Broadway.  The harsh lights of the Great White Way can expose flaws in works that seem perfectly charming in smaller, more intimate venues.  Lysistrata Jones, the new musical playing through the end of the weekend at the Walter Kerr Theatre, is such a show.

The show is a contemporary update of the Greek comedy The Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens withhold sex from their husbands in order to convince the men to stop fighting the Peloponnesian War.  In Lysistrata Jones, the title character (called Lizzie J by her friends) is a transfer student to Athens University, where the basketball team hasn’t won a game for 33 years.  Lizzie J convinces the rest of the cheerleading squad that they have to stop “giving it up” to their basketball-playing boyfriends until the men win a game (the guys aren’t applying themselves for fear of looking stupid if they actually try and still lose).

This change in premise marks the beginning to Lysistrata Jones’ myriad of problems.  The original play was a political allegory, in which the comedy was used to comment on both war and gender politics.  This redux completely removes any political overtones from the story, and fails to replace them with compelling characters or interesting observation on the way men and women behave.  Also, the refusal to EVER utter the word “sex,” while talking about boners, porn, and whores, creates a clash of tones.  The show alternates between innocence and bawdiness, but the transitions aren’t smooth and neither style really works because it is forced to coexist with the other.

In fact, the entire book for Jones leaves something to be desired.  Douglas Carter Beane has no business writing musicals, as this is the second inept musical libretto he’s foisted upon the Broadway community in as many seasons (the other being Sister Act).  The characters are disastrously underwritten, never evolving beyond the stereotypes they are initially presented as.  Their relationships are ill defined, and Beane glosses over major plot points and character developments that could have made the show really endearing.  The show also thinks it is far cleverer than it actually is, with much of Beane’s post-modern humor and fourth-wall breaking asides falling flat.  Lewis Flinn’s pop-influenced score is marginally better, although none of the songs will stay with you beyond the final curtain.

I would love to report that the fresh-faced young cast helps elevate the material, but this is sadly not the case.  Like the music, there is nothing particularly wrong with this cast; there just also isn’t anything particularly memorable.  As Lizzie J, Patti Murin is suitably spunky and sings well enough, but she does nothing to help hide the character’s poorly written swings from ditz to pseudo-brainiac.  As the captain of the basketball team and Lizzie’s boyfriend, Josh Segarra oscillates from dumb jock to enlightened poet without rhyme or reason, and his second act love scene is one of the worst in the show.  The rest of the supporting cast is unfortunately allowed (encouraged?) to play such ridiculous stereotypes they are borderline offensive, especially the two Hispanic characters.

The only real standout among the cast is Liz Mikel as Hetaira, who doubles as the narrator and the grand madam of the local brothel.  With a big voice and even bigger personality, Mikel scores the evening’s biggest laughs with her sassy attitude and clever one liners.  The scene in Act II where the men go to visit her at the brothel is easily the show’s most entertaining, and also contains the script’s best zinger (“I’m moist like a sponge cake”).  You don’t necessarily wish there was more of Mikel, as she gets plenty of stagetime; rather, you wish the rest of the cast was up to her level.

The show is well-designed, with the set doing an excellent job of evoking a community college gymnasium.  The costumes are nice, particularly a hooker outfit one of the characters buys from “The Ho Depot” and the beautiful Grecian-inspired finale outfits.  In fact, the finale as a whole is surprisingly effective, and gives a glimpse at what the show could be had it undergone a few more rewrites before transferring.  In its current state, Lysistrata Jones is a second-string musical that will likely be forgotten soon after it closes on Sunday.  Which is too bad, because this season is in desperate need of a breakout new musicl.