A Tale of Three Shows

Well, I feel like I should call this the reunion posting or something. It's been way too long since I've had the chance to sit down and get my thoughts out in a public forum. Oh, the fun of being back in class. Speaking of class, I've got my reservations for my Anaheim colloquium made for the end of December, and I've heard that Max went back to LA after finishing in Grease so maybe there's hope yet for a personal encounter. If not Max, I've also got my sights set on Jensen Ackles from Supernatural, nothing would make me happier than a personal hotel room visit from the leading man on the best show on TV. Seriously, where's his Emmy?

Anyways, personal fantasies aside, this has been a busy few weeks outside of having started clas again. Two weeks ago I saw Jersey Boys and I can now officially say that The Drowsy Chaperone should have won the Tony for Best Musical two years ago. Jersey Boys is definitely entertaining but that's about it. There's no deeper meaning to the story, it's just their biography played out on stage to their music. We had "limited view" seats in the dress circle area, which meant that we could see all of the floor of the stage, but we couldn't see any of the LCD signs that came down from the ceiling every so often to provide mood scenery, and we could only see from about waist down on the actors who went up to the second level of the stage and walked around. Fortuntately, not much took place up there that fully needed to be seen. It was worth it for $60, I'd rather miss a few facial expressions and signs than pay $150 for main floor seats. The music is pretty much what you get on the cast recording and everyone did a good job. However, what really turned me off to this show was when I was looking through the playbill at intermission, I saw a name that looked familiar. I kind of chuckled at the coincidence but then read the bio and it actually was someone I had gone to High School with and absolutely HATED. This guy was so needy for attention, obnoxious, show-offy, arrogant, and just a general ass, I felt a huge surge of disgust with the world that someone so undeserving has my fabulous showbiz life. However, I then remembered that he always had a penchant for self-aggrandizement and reading between the lines in his bio, I realize that his life must pretty much suck. While he is an Equity member, his bio listed three other shows in addition to Jersey Boys in the almost 15 years since we graduated High School, and they were: the touring production of Mamma Mia (and who hasn't been in that ), the touring production of Joseph. . .(and who hasn't done that) and the touring production of My Fair Lady (and who hasn't done that). Obviously he's the local cast component that Equity touring contracts require producers to use, and he still hasn't been able to get into anything good, no Wicked, no Chicago, no Cabaret, no Avenue Q, not even The Color Purple, nothing of any artistic or national significance, and no local productions, not Porchlight, not BoHo, not Lookingglass, much less Steppenwolf or Goodman. Plus, he was the very last cast member mentioned and the first one to come out and take a bow, so he's obviously very low on the Jersey Boys totem pole. I didn't even recognize him in the first act and it was only because I had seen his name and picture in the playbill during intermission that I recognized him in the first place. Time has not been good to him at all (and that's not just my sour grapes gloating, his headshot looked awful), and that may be due in large part to his pot habit that he developed senior year and ended up getting him kicked out of all of his activities (to my great delight) 6 weeks before graduation. That might also explain his lack of professional advancement, after all a pothead's motto is tomorrow I will (in this case, audition, practice, etc.), today I'm going to eat chips, and he's obviously had a lot of chips. So, while Jersey Boys was entertaining, I didn't feel that it was anything more special than Buddy or Ella or any of the other regional musical bio-shows around. Plus, the it really wasn't even a musical. The vast majority of music was all actually part of the show, they were performing the songs to audiences, and while the songs that were picked added emotional resonance to the scenes, particularly in the better second act, no one just burst into song while walking down the street. The only time the music came from outside the story was at the very end of the first act when Tommy gets busted for gambling and the other guys surround him and just sing out the one line "Walk like a man," and that was as jarring as Jennifer Hudson (speaking of, I am so ecstatic that her CD is getting panned and after a decent debut on the record charts is dropping like a stone), suddenly singing to Beyonce and the other girl halfway through Dreamgirls when all the music up to that point has also been performances as part of the story. Just because there's music in the story does not automatically make it a musical, and for that reason alone, I would say that The Drowsy Chaperone is a much better musical, not to mention that Drowsy had much more entertaining and relevant story that actually means something.

So, moving from Jersey Boys, as we all know, the creators of that show are now premiering their second musical, which is also a jukebox musical, at the Goodman, called Turn of the Century, and directed by Tommy Tune. After weeks of badgering my companion, we went to see that last weekend, which gave me a good opportunity to compare and contrast the two efforts. Century is definitely the better show, although still not what I would consider Broadway-calliber. It's a great regional show and could have a good life off-Broadway, but it's still too insignificant and small-scale to really work on a Broadway stage. However, once the show got started, up until about 5 minutes before the end, I really enjoyed it. It's only 100 minutes long, no intermission. The stage is gorgeous, it's got a circle-shaped procscenium made up to look like a clock, which cuts down on the visible stage space which may be part of what keeps it feeling small, both for better and worse, and the stage is completely white. The sets are minimal, but it works well, allowing our imaginations to fill in the blanks and working well with the Goodman's limited space so that the stage never seemed overcrowded, which very easily could have happened. Jeff Daniels is a passable singer and excellent actor, and Rachel York, as I expected, was FABULOUS. There was much more of a story, which as we all know by this point concerns two never-been lounge performers who at midnight on December 31, 1999, get transported back 100 years to 1900 rather than forward into 2000. They become huge stars by "writing" the great songs of Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Helen Reddy (in the best segment of the show), and most importantly to the plot, Irving Berlin. Most of the show consists of them performing these songs, but they do sing some of them to each other and to other outside of the performances, making it a true, if slight, musical, unlike Jersey Boys. However, I was not fond at all of the Moulin Rouge-esque opening number in which the entire cast sang Prince's 1999, it was completely cringe-inducing and needs to seriously be rethought (and I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Moulin Rouge; not a good movie, REALLY not a good movie), and I wanted more of a resolution than the How I Met Your Mother styled ending (kids, did I ever tell you about the time your mother and I got sent back in time and created musical history?). The first half of the story seemed as if it was going to set up an Alan Ayckborn Communicating Doors-style story as the duo's rivals become more and more desparate to figure out how they write such great songs so quickly, but then that story got dropped once the real Irving Berlin, at that point 12 years old, showed up and then it became more of a melodrama between Jeff Daniels and Rachel York, although it did give us the second best moment of the show as they belted out Anyplace I Hang My Hat is Home, and then as Rachel became overwhelemed with guilt and ran off, it descended into a Bette Davis Dangerous style story line before resolving in a How I Met Your Mother storyline ending. The story definitely needs to be tightened a bit a given more of a focus, trimming about 10 minutes off to take it down to a flat 90 would help a lot, but there's a lot of potential. I'd definitely recommend Turn over Jersey Boys. Hopefully we'll get a cast recording out of it someday, although we're still waiting for The Visit recording going on 7 years later. At least we got Bounce, although I have a feeling we're going to get gouged for a new recording once it opens as Road Show in New York in a few weeks. Still, for Michael Cerveris and Alexander Gemignani, I think I'd shell out the bucks.

However, despite the dualing Brickman and Elice shows, the best entertainment value for the dollar right now is north of the city at Northlight Theatre in Skokie where they are doing a sharp, fantastic, chilling production of a new play version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (and note I said new play, it's not the Frank Wildhorn Jekyll and Hyde musical). We saw that last night and I am still in awe 12 hours later. It's the best dramatized version of the story I've seen, with the possible exception of BBC America's Jekyll mini-series last summer, although that one went off on a lot of sci-fi-ish tangents making it a terrific overall story, while this one stuck to the original. It's short, only 1 hour and 50 minutes including a 15 minute intermission, but it covers a lot of ground and is truly engaging. The whole cast does a great job (and I don't want to give any of the originality away, so I can't go into too much detail), and I had a much more enjoyable time at that than either of the previous musicals. You've got another week or so, go catch it.

Coming up this afternoon I've got the Pearl Fishers at the Lyric, which I'm not that excited about, but half naked men may help keep my interest, tomorrow I've got Duffy at the Vic (which I'm a little pissed about, she was originally supposed to be at the Riviera which is only about 3 blocks away from where I live, but then a couple weeks ago they decided to move it to the Vic for unknown reasons, which necessitates a ride on the el and more time to get there and back), and then one week from tonight is Madonna, which I'm very excited about, buzz on the show is excellent. I'm hoping that we can go to Candide at Porchlight on Saturday night, stay tuned.

Speaking of future plans, there is a slim chance I may get to New York Halloween weekend (in 2 weeks). Hopefully we can finally catch South Pacific as well as work in August: Osage County (although I think Estelle Parsons just left, but it should still be good), and Equus, although I think getting tickets for that is going to be about as difficult as it was for South Pacific back in June. We'll see. Regardless of what happens, I am determined to go back in February. It was just announced that Noel Coward's play Blythe Spirit is going to be revived, and while I would prefer a revival of the musicalized version, High Spirits, the cast is going to consist of Rupert Everett, Christine Ebersole (as Elvira, the dead wife), and Angela Lansbury (as Madame Arcati, the role I actually think she could nail in a revival of the musical). Nothing is going to keep me from that dream cast.

Lastly, I know this has also been a couple weeks, but the world lost one of it's finest actors and best people a couple weeks ago with Paul Newman's passing. He was a legend, and rightly so. He will be missed.