Yonkers Tribune

Eye On Theatre: Pipe Dream By JOHN SIMON

Do musicals’ books have to make sense? Not necessarily. Do they need a good love story? You bet. Can this story be stretched to two hours? Preferably, but good songs and enthusiastic acting and dancing can make up for nearly everything.

Eye On Theatre Shapeshifters By JOHN SIMON

Fairly close on the heels of the “Godspell” revival comes the revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice “Jesus Christ Superstar, which may or may not confirm belief in resurrection. If “Godspell” turns the New Testament into a clown show, “Superstar, in a hugely acclaimed version coming to us from Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival, turns it into a glossy musical revue.

I say revue, because its mood or mode changes as often as that of a revue, which does not have the consistency of a book musical. The renowned director DesMcAnuff has somewhat reimagined this show, written 41 years ago and at first slow to reach the stage, but since then mounted all over the world and quite often in churches, proving that nothing allays religious scruples more surely than a theatrical hit. Its calling itself a rock opera—an oxymoron if ever there was one—may add to its prestige.

Eye on Theatre: Laughter to the Rafters By JOHN SIMON

 

 

Ken Ludwig’s farce, “Lend Me a Tenor, “ has just been revived at the White Plains Performing Arts Center—a very laudable move. Hitherto limited to musicals, this marks a branching out into straight plays to savory effect.

Under Jeremy Quinn’s snappy direction, the farce was played at the proper breakneck tempo, in a fine set by Jaye Beetem, snazzy costumes by Samantha Irons, and felicitous lighting by Andrew Gmoser. Some lesser performances were nicely compensated for by several excellent ones.              

Eye on Theatre: A Sondheim Problem Musical By JOHN SIMON

Interesting how Stephen Sondheim’s problem musical, “Merrily We Roll Along,” grows on you. As a boy, I hated spinach; now I love it. Although I did lambaste “Merrily” in my review of its Broadway premiere in 1981, I have come, upon several reseeings, not exactly to love it, but evince a healthy respect for its better aspects.

Eye on Theatre: Betty Buckley Triumphant By JOHN SIMON

Cover of Betty Buckley

Appearing at Feinstein’s at the Hotel Regency, one of our best night clubs, is Betty Buckley, one of our best chanteuses. You would only be able to catch her this week, which may be impossible, but make a mental note to catch her the next time she appears, there or anywhere else.

Of course, “chanteuse” does not do justice to everything she is. She is one of our finest musical comedy actresses, but no slouch either in straight plays. This talented Texan has been in show business for a good many years, becoming better with every passing year. She has been on Broadway and in other theaters many times, has also done some fine movie acting, but musical comedy and cabaret are her meat and potatoes.

Eye On Theatre: Three One-“acters” By JOHN SIMON

Americans love quantity. They prefer novels to short stories, symphonic to chamber music, feature films to short subjects. They put up with today’s, economics-induced favorite theatrical format, the 90-minute, intermission less play, only because that is mostly what there is.

Well, now there is “Relatively Speaking,” a bill of three one-“acters.” The one-act play, never very popular, makes, when three are packaged together, a full-length evening. Moreover, this trio comes from respected sources.

Eye on Theatre Who Exactly Lives Here? By JOHN SIMON

The cast of We Live Here. Photo by and courtesy of Joan Marcus.>>>

Is there any topic the New York stage has been more steadily bombarded with than the dysfunctional family? Or, more precisely, the dysfunctional Jewish family? Well, here they seem to be again in Zoe Kazan’s “We Live Here.” The only reason I think they may be Jewish is that so much art, academicism and culture in a family bespeaks Judaism to me, but perhaps I’m being unduly philo-Semitic.

Eye on Theatre: Actors in Command By JOHN SIMON

Virginia Kull as Carol Penn, Frank Langella as Gregor Antonescu and Adam Driver as Basil Anthony in Man and Boy. Photo credit: Joan Marcus.>>>

The gifted British dramatist Terence Rattigan, author of several memorable plays, thought that “Man and Boy” (1963) would be his magnum opus, to be remembered even fifty years later. He was partly right. The current revival comes 48 years later, but the play was forgotten for 47 since its poor showing in London and outright flop in New York. This despite the lead, the shady Romanian magnate Gregor Antonescu, being played by one of the great stage and screen charmers, Charles Boyer.

Eye on Theatre Autobiography, Good and Bad By JOHN SIMON

I hope the world is beginning to realize that the late Lanford Wilson was—is—a major playwright, and that his talents vastly exceed the two or three best-known efforts. So it is that the Keen Company is to be congratulated for reviving his 1970 play, “Lemon Sky.”

This relatively early work concerns how Alan (read Lanford), at age 17, left his good mother in Omaha to join his father, Douglas, who abandoned them when Alan was five to live with Ronnie--his mistress, now wife--in San Diego. Alan, now 30, narrates, but periodically steps back into the action as he recalls it, although there are scenes he did not actually witness.

Eye on Theatre: The Shoptalk and the Shopworn By JOHN SIMON

“Completeness,” by Itamar Moses, is about the bumpy love affair between Molly, a molecular biologist—note the anaphora in “Mol” and “mol”—and Elliot, a computer scientist (why not Conrad, for symmetry?), as endless palaver about proteins in yeast and algorithms on computers supposedly supply the orchestration for an age-old song.

The Bitter and The Sweet By JOHN SIMON

It is good that Noel Coward spelled what is ordinarily one word as two in the title of his 1929 operetta, Bitter Sweet. That way, for a production at the Bard College SummerScape, I feel more justified in separating the few sweet things from the more numerous bitter ones. It is a shame that, at Bard, such a worthy but rarely seen show should have so many of the latter. 

It has been updated to 1969 and 1920, and starts with a young woman, Dolly, about to be lovelessly married. The widowed Lady Shayne, at a party of whose the story begins, recalls for Dolly, drawn to the pianist Vincent, her own similar tale half a century earlier with the Austrian composer-pianist, Carl Linden, her music teacher.

Eye on Theatre: Youth Will Be Served By JOHN SIMON

<<< The Company of RENT performs "La Vie Boheme." Photo by Joan Marcus.

John Simon. >>>

This is no review for young people; no one under 50 or even 60 need read it. It is about Rent, which I have been repeatedly lukewarm about, back only three years after its long run closed. It is revived to cater to the cravings of the newly young, the young in mentality, and the addictedly nostalgic.

Eye on Theatre: Not Up To Gold Standard By JOHN SIMON

<<The Silver Tassie by Sean O Casey, Photos by and courtesy of Stephanie Berger

As the old joke has it, what do you get when you crossbreed a Mafioso and a semiologist? An offer you cannot understand. That’s what I felt at Ireland’s Druid Theatre Company’s offering of Sean O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival. The Hibernian brogue is thick enough to be cut with a buzzsaw, and my brain couldn’t negotiate more than ten percent of it. This despite the fact that I reread the play a couple of days before.

Eye on Theatre: Not So Grim Reaper By JOHN SIMON

<<< Death Takes a Holiday poster.Photography and idea by Geof Kern;
Creative Direction by Drew Hodges, Vinny Sainato

in 1934, when the Hollywood movie Death Takes a Holiday opened, the New York Times critic, Mordaunt Hall (a playwright himself), called it “a really intelligent fantasy.” It was based on a 1928 Italian play by Alberto Casella (not known for anything else), and was successful despite the word “death” in its title, supposed to be anathema at the box office. That it wasn’t in this case was due, Hall speculated, to the close proximity of “holiday.”

The new musical on the same material still has both words in its title, and the words will have to battle it out once again. Never mind the title, though; what really matters are the music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, and the book by Thomas Meehan and Peter Stone; the latter, alas, victim of death not having taken a holiday.

Eye on Theatre: Star Gazing By JOHN SIMON

Broadway’s Rising Stars—now in it’s fifth year as part of Town Hall’s Summer Series—just gets better and better. It’s a showcase for young performers to sing a number from a musical as a rung on the ladder to becoming better known as musical-comedy performers. This year, Town Hall’s artistic director Lawrence Zucker and creator/writer/host Scott Siegel along with Barbara Siegel and stage director Scott Coulter found young talent from Australia
Korea and (yes) Brooklyn!