To me, theater was more impressive in 2011 than classical music offerings...save recordings. See Part One. (I admit, shame-faced, I saw too little of the other arts to write with much authority. Though good things came on television. I'll write about it later. My one New Year's resolution is to remedy that negligence in 2012.) Giant among tall people, Sir Derek Jacobi brought his legendary King Lear to Brooklyn Academy of Music. 'Legendary' as definition not exaggeration. This was acting as highest art. What you missed if you did not catch it! From his initial, somewhat senile, arrogance, through his cruel escape into the void of wandering disillusionment, Jacobi effortlessly bound us to him, and we greedily followed, wanting more. He gave it. That psychotic break as he descends into madness, so difficult to manage, was as vital as it was wrenching. He had a marvelous moment when he 'hid' behind imaginary bed curtains so 'the world' could not see him sleep. And oh, that moment of self-awareness brought on by the return of Cordelia...only to lose her. Heart-breaking, as it should be. And with that final, painful loss of his own life to grief, Jacobi proved to be without superiors. Some may be different, and equally wonderful, but none in my experience have been greater. The coup de theatre of the storm scene will surely stay in the mind of all who saw it. But only the greatest could keep from being upstaged by it. Needless to say, Sir Derek was never in doubt of such a thing.
The entire cast was worthy of him. Ron Cook as The Fool was particularly noteworthy, if for no other reason that he made the part work. And the production gave him a great send-off: no longer able to help his beloved king, he left to find life elsewhere, broken in his uselessness. And Paul Jesson made Glouchester a tragic figure of almost the stature of Lear...as he should be, since he is a mirror to Lear: both are blind to their children's villany, one figuratively, one literally (the blinding was horrific and not for the squeamish) a double tragedy of foolish fathers. But each man and woman in every role was superlative--save one uncomfortable young man in a small part. He should learn a bit more before he tries verse again. Surely someone told him.
The entire cast was worthy of him. Ron Cook as The Fool was particularly noteworthy, if for no other reason that he made the part work. And the production gave him a great send-off: no longer able to help his beloved king, he left to find life elsewhere, broken in his uselessness. And Paul Jesson made Glouchester a tragic figure of almost the stature of Lear...as he should be, since he is a mirror to Lear: both are blind to their children's villany, one figuratively, one literally (the blinding was horrific and not for the squeamish) a double tragedy of foolish fathers. But each man and woman in every role was superlative--save one uncomfortable young man in a small part. He should learn a bit more before he tries verse again. Surely someone told him.
In another production from Britain, Mark Rylance dazzled in Jerusalem, a play by Jez Butterworth, that divided those who saw it. Rylance was electric for three hours, off-stage for just a few minutes, never once false or pandering to the audience for cheap laughs. I found the play pretentious, but people I respect felt differently. The only certainty was the play would have never made it across the ocean without him. Rylance's disdain at the Tony Awards and his subsequent ‘gift’ of the actual ‘trophy’ to a man who didn’t want it, just made him look a self-centered prick. But his skill could not be denied. This was also powerful acting. But I would wager everyone who voted for him would have liked to meet him face to face and say "kiss my ass."
A better play, also with exemplary acting, was Other Desert Cities, by Jon Robin Baitz. The cast of five was so impeccable, they all deserve to be mentioned (alphabetically): Stockard Channing, Rachel Griffiths, Stacy Keach, Judith Light, and Mathew Risch. The women had better parts, and they didn’t disappoint. Griffiths was the center around which the others circled, and she was never over-shadowed...which is saying a lot, since Channing and Light were so commanding, spellbinding. What a joy to watch these three women! Keach and Risch were nearly as great with their fewer opportunities, and the time flew by. And that last half-hour was unsuspected, despairing. I doubt anyone could have guessed where it was leading for its climax. The audience was truly shocked. You could feel the energy.
Alas, one of my favorite plays—Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia—was all but destroyed by an excrutiating performance by a poorly directed, screeching young actress. The discovery of her sad demise after the last scene of the play seemed useless. If I could have had my way, she would have died after the first! On the plus side, the play was revived, far from a given, and the rest of the actors were a powerful team. Raul Esparza, Billy Crudup, and Lia Williams were particularly fine. Satisfyingly, an understudy for one of the major characters went on for the first time (the other actors clapped for him at the curtain call) and gave a powerful, humorous, and finally, sad performance of a marvelous creation by Stoppard. His name was Jack Cutmore-Scott. If you see his name on something, go watch it. I hope his career is long and rewarding.
Not everything was on Broadway. I also enjoyed a smart, ‘well made’ play—in the best sense—performed by a talented young cast and produced by a small but mighty theater group: Exit Carolyn by Jennie Berman Eng, produced by Sans A Productions. The fine young actors were Lauren Blumenfeld, Jake Loewenthal, Anna O’Donoghue, and Laura Ramadei. It played at The Drilling Company, an intimate though useful theater space. Given the exit of so many similar groups, its survival was cheering. Hopefully, fewer companies will drop by the wayside, and more will start up. I can dream.
Star turns made Anything Goes and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying enticing but not enough for me to part with my money. Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's Follies was a show for the ages. A brilliant work about loss and regret, age as a cruel truth-teller, this was theater at its best. I don’t exaggerate. It was one of the greatest things I have seen on Broadway. Period.
Sondheim had a great year. 2011 began with the final performances of the revival of A Little Night Music with a matchless Bernadette Peters ruining Send In The Clowns for everyone else. No one will touch its power. Sorry folks. And the second, final, half of his book containing his private ideas about his--and other's-- lyrics, all printed for a great read, came out to wild acclaim. Like its predecessor, it is witty, bitchy, wise, honest, and unflinching. Boy, they're just unmissable! Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat. The subtitles alone make you want to read them. (I won't tell you what they say, just so you'll have to check them out.) Go get them if you don't have them! And, of course, the production of Follies and a cast recording as fine as any for a Sondheim show.
A confession as digression: I became obsessed by Follies unlike anything I can remember, save a few operas. A few! I have loved many shows, seeing them a second time with pleasure. I remember them, think on them, enjoy them...but in some kind of moderation. But this Follies is different. I had to see it again. I could have gone back ten times. I've listened to the cast recording four or five times by now, and I only got it in December. And I already have multiple recordings of the score! I can sing most of it. But hearing it again is like new. I finally realize how all those people I have laughed at could rewatch multiple performances of a Broadway show within a short period of time. At least I did get to see it a second time. But since it's closing on Sunday, and no one is just going to hand me $80 for a half-price ticket, twice is all I will get. But I saw it twice!
Follies is the story of ghosts, literally and figuratively. The time is 1971, the place a dilapidated theater, the occasion, a party that becomes a wake for the lost optimism of the first half of the 20th Century as defined by popular entertainment. It becomes a Follies of sorts, like those of Florenz Ziegfeld, as character after character performs old numbers, the still vivid memories the sign of their lost dreams. They remember them, mostly word and note perfect, many with regret. The plot involves four main characters and their younger selves, but the 'old' numbers give everything a surprising depth. To hear how brilliantly Sondheim has written each piece as a symbol of the performer's fallen dreams, is to understand why he is a genius...and know why casual attention to his work is foolish. (He will never have the performance numbers of Lloyd Webber. But he is the superior in every way. He is superior to most composers who write for the stage. Or the lyricists. Sorry, but it's true. And after all this time, no one needs me to say so. I jujst like saying it) With a smart, odd, original book, the whole becomes a harsh microcosm for the lack of optimism...still with us, alas.
The work should have aged past its sell-by date. It talks of things from almost a century ago. The fact that it is so relevant reflects cruelly on the reality of life on Earth right now. Or has it always been such?
Not a number failed to go over. Some stopped the show. Broadway Baby, Who’s That Woman? otherwise known as The Mirror Song, I’m Still Here, Could I Leave You? brought the audience to wild ovations. Wild ovations. Great among equals, Elaine Page filled I’m Still Here with a sense of rage at the rollercoaster ride of her life. After the music stopped, she stood on the stage, a character who has to calm down to regain her equilibrium, as the place went nuts. Shit, this was great! All of these numbers!
But the evening rises or falls with the four leads and they were superlative. Some of the best performances in any kind of theater, much less singing and dancing in a musical. Like I said, superlative. How often can a person say that and mean it so definitively? Yet, here I've seen many examples in 2011. And now, four more. How superb they all were! Jan Maxwell as Phyllis, Ron Raines as Ben, her husband, Danny Burstein as Buddy, Sally's husband...and the peerless Sondheim interpreter, Bernadette Peters (again) as Sally. Like Jacobi, Rylance, etc., she is inimitable. This whole blog has been about great acting, and she proved to anyone who cared to really watch and listen, that she was as good as any of them. As the delusional Sally, she begins the evening...and ends it. The symmetry was apt. No, she didn't have the funny one-liners: they were (chiefly) the possession of the perfect Jan Maxwell as Phyllis. Every person in the room loved her, every moment she was onstage. But Peters didn't need them. Sally came in looking to be that young showgirl again; part of the power of the work is the audience knows it cannot happen. Every time she revisited a moment from the past: coming down the stairs one last time, as she had thirty years prior, or singing and dancing in that unmatched Mirror Song--she was so fiercely trying to rekindle the magic you wanted to look away (but couldn't.) Sally was doing everything 'for real', not a happy, let's-run-through-this-for fun that the rest of the guests were doing. She sang In Buddy’s Eyes with a pathetic, unconvincing optimism, sadly touching in its emphatic delusions. That defeated second half--just after we've seen her memory of the 'losing' the love of the young Ben--was desperate self-delusion sung sotto voce. You could probably count on one hand the actresses that could make that work, much less move the audience so. The rapturous Too Many Mornings brought thrills and a sense of smashing surp-rise, especially when an also perfectly cast Danny Burstein as Sally's husband, Buddy, was there to witness it. Hearing Peters’ Sally and a masterful Ron Raines' Ben deceive themselves into thinking they have always been in love was unlike anything I have seen in a musical. The number is haunted by their younger selves. In fact, each 'older' character starts off in an imagainary embrace of the 'memory' person, then moves to the 'real' version of each other, as blind wish fulfillment overtakes everything. I've known what happens from reading the script and watching some blurry videos of past productions, but the moment is burned into my memory...not the only moment in the show to do that.
And then the show cracks in half (!) and we have the ‘Follies’ numbers, soul-bearing songs from each of the four protagonists. Buddy’s God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Oh-You-Do-I’ll-See-You-Later Blues is baggy-pants comic as man trapped in a no win situation: a mistress who loves him that he does not love, and a wife that is just the opposite. It was manic and funny…and painful. Spot on. And then Sally came out. This has to rank with the greatest of my ‘I was there’ moments. Peters just broke every heart with the self-destructive Losing My Mind. It kicked you in the gut, hard. Wrenching and painful to watch, but unforgettable. A good reason to see the show twice: the first time Sally was already broken, tragic. The second, she was so desperate in her pain, she seemed to break in the middle of the song. In fact, Peters was so overcome, the conductor had to wait for her to collect herself enough to finish. I’ve seen nothing like it. Comparable only to greats like Jacobi at his finest. The difference in performance—the obvious talent to be completely ‘in the moment’, though it be different every night—is a testament to her myriad abilities. What 'Method' acting should be. (Like any great actor, there are some fools who always want her to do it however they deem 'correct', however someone else did it or would do it, instead of the way Peters does. Remember what the saying to Mark Rylance should be?)
Then to top her show-stopping Could I Leave You?,Jan Maxwell returned to stop it again with a sensational song and dance, The Story of Lucy and Jessie. And I mean dance. Phyllis is the Tony winning role. She has the best lines and two wonderful, powerful numbers. And she alone comes through the ordeal wiser and happier in herself. I predict Maxwell will win the Tony for this lay-‘em-in-the-aisles turn, though Peters had the most difficult role and was inimitable. Many actors have been great as Phyllis: it’s a great role How many have been so hopeful, raw, desperate, crumbled, defeated, and heartbreaking as Sally? This must be one of Peters’ greatest triumphs. Throughout, she was thrilling, but her final scene was even more, just too painful to watch unmoved. As she exited, inconsolable, broken, so did you a few minnutes later.
Another sign of the overall greatness? 40 plus people on the stage and not a one superfluous, weak, or uninteresting. Even great opera performances rarely get that much right! Of course, none of this would have been possible without a great musical director. James Moore did everyone proud. Production values were exceedingly high, adding yet more glory. The costumes for just the showgirls were an eyeful. But skillful as they all were- lighting, costumes, sets, dances, musical staging--they were just icing. No, the show was not holiday ‘fun’...to its financial detriment. But it was brilliant. One-of-a-kind. If anyone going in still thought Follies a seriously flawed work, he certainly left the theater convinced otherwise.
To pass over quickly: the requisite flops popped up: Catch Me If You Can thrilled no one, though Norbert Leo Butz won another Tony. Sister Act was so light in its pleasures, it all but evaporated. Yes, it was funny, and the score was better than one might expect. And the cast put it over with consummate skill. But had I not seen it at a discount price, I would have been gravely disappointed. Too much was rote. At least two songs could (should?) have been cut without harming it. It already looked like it was on tour. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was just the movie onstage. Anything Goes only went when Sutton Foster was onstage. This show has passed its sell-by date. Cut to just its musical numbers, it would be as satisfactory. Enough said. No one will remember any of them ten years from now. Follies will be talked about in fifty.
Still, I have high hopes for theater in 2012. And music. And art. And photography. And dance. (I promise to see more of all of them.) And television. Nothing as wonderful as Follies, but that is understandable. I have high hopes for every year. But as the years pass, I have more apprehension about life outside it.
Alas, one of my favorite plays—Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia—was all but destroyed by an excrutiating performance by a poorly directed, screeching young actress. The discovery of her sad demise after the last scene of the play seemed useless. If I could have had my way, she would have died after the first! On the plus side, the play was revived, far from a given, and the rest of the actors were a powerful team. Raul Esparza, Billy Crudup, and Lia Williams were particularly fine. Satisfyingly, an understudy for one of the major characters went on for the first time (the other actors clapped for him at the curtain call) and gave a powerful, humorous, and finally, sad performance of a marvelous creation by Stoppard. His name was Jack Cutmore-Scott. If you see his name on something, go watch it. I hope his career is long and rewarding.
Not everything was on Broadway. I also enjoyed a smart, ‘well made’ play—in the best sense—performed by a talented young cast and produced by a small but mighty theater group: Exit Carolyn by Jennie Berman Eng, produced by Sans A Productions. The fine young actors were Lauren Blumenfeld, Jake Loewenthal, Anna O’Donoghue, and Laura Ramadei. It played at The Drilling Company, an intimate though useful theater space. Given the exit of so many similar groups, its survival was cheering. Hopefully, fewer companies will drop by the wayside, and more will start up. I can dream.
Star turns made Anything Goes and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying enticing but not enough for me to part with my money. Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's Follies was a show for the ages. A brilliant work about loss and regret, age as a cruel truth-teller, this was theater at its best. I don’t exaggerate. It was one of the greatest things I have seen on Broadway. Period.
Sondheim had a great year. 2011 began with the final performances of the revival of A Little Night Music with a matchless Bernadette Peters ruining Send In The Clowns for everyone else. No one will touch its power. Sorry folks. And the second, final, half of his book containing his private ideas about his--and other's-- lyrics, all printed for a great read, came out to wild acclaim. Like its predecessor, it is witty, bitchy, wise, honest, and unflinching. Boy, they're just unmissable! Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat. The subtitles alone make you want to read them. (I won't tell you what they say, just so you'll have to check them out.) Go get them if you don't have them! And, of course, the production of Follies and a cast recording as fine as any for a Sondheim show.
A confession as digression: I became obsessed by Follies unlike anything I can remember, save a few operas. A few! I have loved many shows, seeing them a second time with pleasure. I remember them, think on them, enjoy them...but in some kind of moderation. But this Follies is different. I had to see it again. I could have gone back ten times. I've listened to the cast recording four or five times by now, and I only got it in December. And I already have multiple recordings of the score! I can sing most of it. But hearing it again is like new. I finally realize how all those people I have laughed at could rewatch multiple performances of a Broadway show within a short period of time. At least I did get to see it a second time. But since it's closing on Sunday, and no one is just going to hand me $80 for a half-price ticket, twice is all I will get. But I saw it twice!
Follies is the story of ghosts, literally and figuratively. The time is 1971, the place a dilapidated theater, the occasion, a party that becomes a wake for the lost optimism of the first half of the 20th Century as defined by popular entertainment. It becomes a Follies of sorts, like those of Florenz Ziegfeld, as character after character performs old numbers, the still vivid memories the sign of their lost dreams. They remember them, mostly word and note perfect, many with regret. The plot involves four main characters and their younger selves, but the 'old' numbers give everything a surprising depth. To hear how brilliantly Sondheim has written each piece as a symbol of the performer's fallen dreams, is to understand why he is a genius...and know why casual attention to his work is foolish. (He will never have the performance numbers of Lloyd Webber. But he is the superior in every way. He is superior to most composers who write for the stage. Or the lyricists. Sorry, but it's true. And after all this time, no one needs me to say so. I jujst like saying it) With a smart, odd, original book, the whole becomes a harsh microcosm for the lack of optimism...still with us, alas.
The work should have aged past its sell-by date. It talks of things from almost a century ago. The fact that it is so relevant reflects cruelly on the reality of life on Earth right now. Or has it always been such?
Not a number failed to go over. Some stopped the show. Broadway Baby, Who’s That Woman? otherwise known as The Mirror Song, I’m Still Here, Could I Leave You? brought the audience to wild ovations. Wild ovations. Great among equals, Elaine Page filled I’m Still Here with a sense of rage at the rollercoaster ride of her life. After the music stopped, she stood on the stage, a character who has to calm down to regain her equilibrium, as the place went nuts. Shit, this was great! All of these numbers!
But the evening rises or falls with the four leads and they were superlative. Some of the best performances in any kind of theater, much less singing and dancing in a musical. Like I said, superlative. How often can a person say that and mean it so definitively? Yet, here I've seen many examples in 2011. And now, four more. How superb they all were! Jan Maxwell as Phyllis, Ron Raines as Ben, her husband, Danny Burstein as Buddy, Sally's husband...and the peerless Sondheim interpreter, Bernadette Peters (again) as Sally. Like Jacobi, Rylance, etc., she is inimitable. This whole blog has been about great acting, and she proved to anyone who cared to really watch and listen, that she was as good as any of them. As the delusional Sally, she begins the evening...and ends it. The symmetry was apt. No, she didn't have the funny one-liners: they were (chiefly) the possession of the perfect Jan Maxwell as Phyllis. Every person in the room loved her, every moment she was onstage. But Peters didn't need them. Sally came in looking to be that young showgirl again; part of the power of the work is the audience knows it cannot happen. Every time she revisited a moment from the past: coming down the stairs one last time, as she had thirty years prior, or singing and dancing in that unmatched Mirror Song--she was so fiercely trying to rekindle the magic you wanted to look away (but couldn't.) Sally was doing everything 'for real', not a happy, let's-run-through-this-for fun that the rest of the guests were doing. She sang In Buddy’s Eyes with a pathetic, unconvincing optimism, sadly touching in its emphatic delusions. That defeated second half--just after we've seen her memory of the 'losing' the love of the young Ben--was desperate self-delusion sung sotto voce. You could probably count on one hand the actresses that could make that work, much less move the audience so. The rapturous Too Many Mornings brought thrills and a sense of smashing surp-rise, especially when an also perfectly cast Danny Burstein as Sally's husband, Buddy, was there to witness it. Hearing Peters’ Sally and a masterful Ron Raines' Ben deceive themselves into thinking they have always been in love was unlike anything I have seen in a musical. The number is haunted by their younger selves. In fact, each 'older' character starts off in an imagainary embrace of the 'memory' person, then moves to the 'real' version of each other, as blind wish fulfillment overtakes everything. I've known what happens from reading the script and watching some blurry videos of past productions, but the moment is burned into my memory...not the only moment in the show to do that.
And then the show cracks in half (!) and we have the ‘Follies’ numbers, soul-bearing songs from each of the four protagonists. Buddy’s God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Oh-You-Do-I’ll-See-You-Later Blues is baggy-pants comic as man trapped in a no win situation: a mistress who loves him that he does not love, and a wife that is just the opposite. It was manic and funny…and painful. Spot on. And then Sally came out. This has to rank with the greatest of my ‘I was there’ moments. Peters just broke every heart with the self-destructive Losing My Mind. It kicked you in the gut, hard. Wrenching and painful to watch, but unforgettable. A good reason to see the show twice: the first time Sally was already broken, tragic. The second, she was so desperate in her pain, she seemed to break in the middle of the song. In fact, Peters was so overcome, the conductor had to wait for her to collect herself enough to finish. I’ve seen nothing like it. Comparable only to greats like Jacobi at his finest. The difference in performance—the obvious talent to be completely ‘in the moment’, though it be different every night—is a testament to her myriad abilities. What 'Method' acting should be. (Like any great actor, there are some fools who always want her to do it however they deem 'correct', however someone else did it or would do it, instead of the way Peters does. Remember what the saying to Mark Rylance should be?)
Then to top her show-stopping Could I Leave You?,Jan Maxwell returned to stop it again with a sensational song and dance, The Story of Lucy and Jessie. And I mean dance. Phyllis is the Tony winning role. She has the best lines and two wonderful, powerful numbers. And she alone comes through the ordeal wiser and happier in herself. I predict Maxwell will win the Tony for this lay-‘em-in-the-aisles turn, though Peters had the most difficult role and was inimitable. Many actors have been great as Phyllis: it’s a great role How many have been so hopeful, raw, desperate, crumbled, defeated, and heartbreaking as Sally? This must be one of Peters’ greatest triumphs. Throughout, she was thrilling, but her final scene was even more, just too painful to watch unmoved. As she exited, inconsolable, broken, so did you a few minnutes later.
Another sign of the overall greatness? 40 plus people on the stage and not a one superfluous, weak, or uninteresting. Even great opera performances rarely get that much right! Of course, none of this would have been possible without a great musical director. James Moore did everyone proud. Production values were exceedingly high, adding yet more glory. The costumes for just the showgirls were an eyeful. But skillful as they all were- lighting, costumes, sets, dances, musical staging--they were just icing. No, the show was not holiday ‘fun’...to its financial detriment. But it was brilliant. One-of-a-kind. If anyone going in still thought Follies a seriously flawed work, he certainly left the theater convinced otherwise.
To pass over quickly: the requisite flops popped up: Catch Me If You Can thrilled no one, though Norbert Leo Butz won another Tony. Sister Act was so light in its pleasures, it all but evaporated. Yes, it was funny, and the score was better than one might expect. And the cast put it over with consummate skill. But had I not seen it at a discount price, I would have been gravely disappointed. Too much was rote. At least two songs could (should?) have been cut without harming it. It already looked like it was on tour. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was just the movie onstage. Anything Goes only went when Sutton Foster was onstage. This show has passed its sell-by date. Cut to just its musical numbers, it would be as satisfactory. Enough said. No one will remember any of them ten years from now. Follies will be talked about in fifty.
Still, I have high hopes for theater in 2012. And music. And art. And photography. And dance. (I promise to see more of all of them.) And television. Nothing as wonderful as Follies, but that is understandable. I have high hopes for every year. But as the years pass, I have more apprehension about life outside it.
