38. ELF (seen November 21, 2024)

Two and a half hours is kind of long for a glorified children’s show, even one with a few adult words and innuendoes. However, the Marquis Theatre’s revival of Elf, the spirited musical comedy adaptation of the 2003 Christmas movie of that name, which starred Will Ferrell, whizzes by as fast as Santa in his supercharged sleigh on Christmas Eve. Partly, it’s because of the glowingly hilarious presence of the multitalented Grey Henson in the title role, and partly it’s because of the persistent joyfulness of the show itself, spreading holiday cheer about like the snow storm that blankets the auditorium at the end.

Sean Astin. All photos: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.

Elf, which premiered on Broadway in 2010, and returned for the Christmas season of 2012, has also had several London productions, in addition to lots of touring. The current revival recreates the West End staging of 2015, as sparklingly directed by Philip Wm. McKinley and vigorously choreographed b Liam Steel. Perfectly cast, and performed with overflowing charm and good humor, it will not only make you laugh, clap, and tap but may also bring tears of sentimental happiness to your eyes (as it did to mine).

 

Grey Henson.

Elf, in case you’ve never seen the movie, is the story of Buddy Hobbs (Henson), an orphan accidentally taken to the North Pole by Santa Claus when, after the baby’s unwed mother died, he crawled into Santa’s toy sack. Raised among Santa’s helper elves, Buddy grows up to tower over them, but only as a 30-year-old does he overhear that he’s not an elf but human. He also learns that his father, Walter Hobbs (Michael Hayden), is a publishing executive working for a company in the Empire State Building.

 

Grey Henson, Sean Astin.

With the blessing of Santa (Sean Astin), who periodically shows up in an easy chair to narrate the tale from a huge book, Buddy travels by foot to New York, finds his grumpy father (on Santa’s “naughty” list because he doesn’t believe in Santa), charms everyone he meets, wins the affection and support of Walter’s wife, Emily (Ashely Brown), and his pre-teen stepbrother, Michael (Kai Edgar), and has an ultimately successful romance with Jovie (Kayla Davion), a pretty fellow worker in Macy’s toy department, where he gets a job as a Christmas elf.

 

Grey Henson, Kayla Davion, and company.

His biggest task is to win his reluctant, hardheaded father’s acceptance, and to convince him that Santa does exist. Of course, these missions are successfully accomplished, especially after Santa’s sleigh is forced to land in Central Park when New York City’s lack of Christmas spirit diminishes its power. But Buddy steps in, of course, in a scene reminding me of Peter Pan when Peter, to save Tinker Bell, asks the audience if they believe in fairies. Buddy never does ask us if we believe in Santa, but the thought is there as he convinces the city to sing out with Christmas cheer.

 

Jennifer Sanchez, Sean Astin, Grey Henson, Michael Hayden, Ashley Brown, and company.

Santa, his nonelectric sleigh now charged by the holiday spirit, takes off successfully (no reindeer, by the way, because of PETA’s objections), and, in a memorably spectacular Broadway moment, flies out over the Marquis orchestra as a veritable blizzard spreads tiny flakes on one and all.

 

Kalen Allen, Grey Henson, and company.

Elf is a traditional feel-good show, with cartoon characters acted, sung, and danced with enough conviction to suspend your disbelief, and with a consistently clever book by Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin filled with funny lines, some of them just this side of naughtiness (there are several references, for example, to going to bed with someone). Although you may not walk out singing any song in particular, there’s not one among the 13 by Matthew Sklar (music) and Chad Beguelin (lyrics) that isn’t worth a listen, from “Happy All the Time,” to “Never Fall in Love (With an Elf).”

 

Grey Henson and company.

A buoyant spirit keeps the show bubbling, even during scenes when characters are angry or frustrated, largely because of the optimistic, happy-go-lucky naivete of Buddy the elf, played with adorable panache by the irrepressible Grey Henson. He captures Buddy’s farcical innocence, nails his more poignant moments, and displays considerable chops as a song and dance man.  

 

Kai Edgar, Grey Henson.

Michael Hayden is on the mark as Walter, Buddy’s perpetually irritated dad; Ashley Brown brings great warmth and a top-notch voice to Emily; Sean Astin scores smartly as both Santa and Walter’s obnoxious boss; Jennifer Sánchez makes a feisty but warmhearted Latina secretary; Kai Edgar is another of those preternaturally talented Broadway kids; Kayla Davion is a perfect love interest for Buddy, and Kalen Allen stands out as both a hot dog vendor and, especially, a snake-hipped Macy’s store manager.

 

Michael Hayden, Ashley Brown, Kai Edgar, Grey Henson, Kayla Davion.

Video projections by Ian William Galloway and Mesmer Studios, many of them moving, are a major element of Tim Goodchild’s scene design, with its many flying and sliding units, while Patricia Woodroffe’s lighting makes a potent contribution to the holiday ebullience. Goodchild’s cheery costumes are terrific, including those that make the elves, played by full-sized actors on their knees, look to be around three feet tall, and Sam Cox’s wig and hair designs add considerably to the fun.

 

Company of Elf.

Elf will be here only for a limited seasonal engagement. If you want Santa’s sleigh to take off this year, you might want to add some fuel to the Christmas spirit by visiting the Marquis Theatre to see Elf before it flies away for good.

 

Elf

Marquis Theatre

210 W. 46^th Street, NYC

Through January 4

37. BABE (seen November 16, 2024)

 

Marisa Tomei, nearing 60, retains much of the same intelligently feisty girlishness that blasted her to stardom in 1992’s My Cousin Vinny, making her an appealing draw no matter in what she appears. Her latest New York stage venture isn’t on Broadway, though, where she’s done five plays, but Off Broadway at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre. Here, The New Group, celebrating its 30^th anniversary, is offering Jessica Goldberg’s Babe, a wobbly, behind-the-record-label drama about the music industry, originally done by the Echo Theatre Company, Los Angeles.

 

Arliss Howard, Gracie McGraw. All photos: Monique Carboni.

Tomei plays Abby (Abigail), a middle-aged executive who works in the A&R (Artists and Repertoire) division of an unnamed record company. Her dominating, macho boss, for whom she’s worked for 32 years, is the hugely successful Gus (Arliss Howard), in his 60s. A misogynistic, profane martinet who speaks to his female subordinates in rude bro language (his sensitivity sessions be damned!), Gus cares (if not romantically) for Abby; however, he barely gives her credit for her invaluable contributions to their mutual success at finding talent with whom to create grunge and punk hits. 

 

Arliss Howard, Marisa Tomei.

A third character is Katherine (Gracie McGraw), a ruthlessly ambitious new employee anxious to make her mark but whose suggestions meet with bitingly coarse rejections by Gus, whose tastes Katherine considers outdated. A fourth person is Kat Wonder (also played by McGraw), a deceased, self-destructive, punk rocker, discovered by Abby in the 1990s, whose fame stemmed from her take-no-prisoners brand of musical nihilism. Kat appears when Katherine morphs into her in Abby’s memory. These vaguely presented transformations serve more to fog than clarify the narrative.

 

Gracie McGraw, Arliss Howard, Marisa Tomei.

The play, whose occasional time shifting is equally confusing, explores the working relationships of the three prime characters, beginning with Katherine’s uncomfortable interview by Gus for a job in A&R. It’s an encounter that reveals Katherine’s #metoo touchiness about Gus’s defiantly non-apologetic, politically incorrect personality, including his calling women “girls,” or the word that presumably inspired the title, “babe.” The playwright might have done more with this issue, but she has too many other things that need attending to. We get lots of impassionedly pompous blah-blah-blah about what Gus is seeking in potential recording artists. And, if we’re checking off clichés, we can include Goldberg’s preoccupations with potential lesbianism in Abby and Katherine’s personal connection.

 

Marisa Tomei, Gracie McGraw.

This is the kind of play about artistic production where it’s necessary to reveal some semblance of the art with which the characters are dealing. Usually, the result, depicted in words or images, assumes an ersatz quality we’re forced to overlook. Here, for example, we’re asked to accept the characters’ opinions on things like the quality of song lyrics, as when Gus and Abby reject a pairing like “drowning” and “frowning” but swoon over replacing it with “drowning” and “fucking.” Not precisely Sondheim-esque.

 

Arliss Howard, Gracie McGraw.

It takes some time during the 85-minute, intermission-less play, directed with a minimum of dramatic impact by Scott Elliott, before its chief issue emerges. This happens when Katherine, whose Gen-Z disgust with the toxic, sexist environment Gus represents, makes a full-frontal attack on him reflective of the slash and burn ferocity of Kat Wonder. And, if we’re looking for another dramaturgic box to check off, we need only look at Abby, whose own suppressed ambitions for industry recognition have become apparent. She suffers not only the indignity of being professionally ignored but the curse of breast cancer, a tired device seemingly present to underline her worries about the loss of her womanly assets. We thus have yet another play requiring hospital scenes, here indicated simply by having Abby slouch in a leather, living room chair listening to music through headphones worn over a wool cap. (A few moments pass before you realize the scene has moved to a hospital.)

 

Marisa Tomei, Gracie McGraw.

Derek McLane’s set shows what’s supposed to be a sharp difference between Gus’s ostentatious apartment and Abby’s nice but less extravagant one. But both rooms use exactly the same furniture, only their rear walls being different. Gus’s is filled with industry awards, Abby’s with countless LP albums, both lit at moody, low intensity by Cha See. Jeff Mashie’s costumes, which, boringly, never change, capably identify their wearers, although a sharper distinction would be helpful for distinguishing between Katherine and Kat. 

The actors do their best to shore up the play’s rocky structure, but their characters are not very likable and their performances remain this side of memorable. Under Elliott’s direction, the temperature rises a bit whenever the characters shout at each other, a regular occurrence. For the most part, though, the emotional heat fluttering across the footlights is rarely more than tepid.

 

It’s a pleasure to see Marisa Tomei on stage (her mom was my college classmate), but I hope she chooses something more affecting her next time out.

 

Babe

Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre/Pershing Square Signature Center

480 W. 42^nd Street, NYC

Through December 22

 

 

 

 

36. TAMMY FAYE (seen November 17, 2024)

 

 

Even if not technically a jukebox musical, Tammy Faye, which opened on Broadway last week, often seems like one. This is the show that, after its London premiere in late 2022, was chosen to open the newly renovated Palace Theatre (retained within a new hotel structure); most of its British creative team, including director Rupert Goold and title role star Katie Brayben, are still in place. Playing Tammy Faye’s husband, Jim Bakker, however, Broadway veteran Christian Borle replaces Andrew Rannells, forced to step down because of contractual issues. 

Mark Evans and company. All photos: Matthew Murphy.

In a remarkable engineering feat, the interior of the Palace, vaudeville’s storied, onetime mecca, has been raised 30 feet, otherwise remaining much the same. Its peripheral features—marquee (moved a bit down 47^th Street from Broadway), entranceway (escalators added), lobby, and bathrooms—have been attractively modernized. The new features bear no architectural resemblance whatsoever to the auditorium’s traditional, now off-white, décor. Despite the bathrooms being spiffily up-to-date, their capacity still breeds endless lines, while the orchestra’s closely packed seats remain knee crunchers.

 

Katie Brayben, Christian Borle. All photos: Matthew Murphy.

The show itself, for all its newness, has similarly old-fashioned features, like its resemblance to a jukebox musical. Tammy Faye, unsurprisingly, is a biographical account of Tammy Faye Bakker (Kate Brayben), the late televangelist, whose life was also the subject of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a major 2021 film that snared the Oscar for Jessica Chastain. Tammy, of course, was as famous for her heavily made-up eyes—which must have helped keep the mascara industry in the black—as for the extremely successful cable TV ministry she and her minister husband, Jim Bakker, created, ruled over, and earned a fortune from before it all came tumbling down in scandal, shame, and prison.

 

Katie Brayben, Christian Borle.

Just as numerous jukebox musicals, like the recently-opened A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical, typically shove decades of a musical celebrity’s life into a show running a couple of hours long, so does the two and a half-hour Tammy Faye, book by James Graham, cover the high- and lowlights of its heroine’s densely crammed biography. However, while the score in conventional biographical jukebox shows is typically associated with the person being dramatized, the one for Tammy Faye is original, with its music by pop icon and Broadway composer Elton John (The Lion King, Billy Elliot, Aida), and lyrics by Jake Shears (lead singer of the Scissor Sisters band).

 

Katie Brayben.

Ironically, as any number of YouTube clips remind us, Tammy Faye was herself an accomplished recording artist of Christian pop, although it’s doubtful a Broadway audience potentially paying over $300 apiece for premium seats would want to sit through a playlist of “Don’t Give Up, You’re on the Brink of a Miracle,” “He’s Done It Before, He Can Do It Again,” or “The Sun Will Shine Again.” On the other hand, for their target audience, such numbers are not that far behind a less-than-prime Elton John score that, given the show’s subject, includes an abundance of lively songs with spiritually uplifting messages. I can even imagine Tammy herself singing some of them.

 

Christian Borle, Katie Brayben, and company.

Tammy Faye’s narrative is bookended by the eponymous heroine’s examination by a gay proctologist (Max Gordon Moore) who finds she’s mortally ill with cancer. Thus, as so often in such shows, Tammy’s personal life and career come to us via one long flashback. In what’s probably the show’s funniest bit, Tammy tells the homosexual proctologist she chose him because, given the lack of females in the field, and her innate prudishness, she felt, “Gosh darn it, Tammy, that’s as close as you’re gonna get!”

 

Michael Cerveris (foreground), Christian Borle, Katie Brayben (rear).

The joke also sets us up to appreciate that, despite the ultraconservatism of the evangelical movement that defined much of her life, Tammy was unusually liberal in her relationship to the LGBT community, which supported her in turn. This was true especially after she shocked the movement’s leaders by showing compassion for victims of AIDS.

 

Katie Brayben.

Regardless of the excesses for which she and Jim were accused, the show treats her with great affection and respect, demonstrating why, with her bigger- than-life personality, she became so popular not only with her co-religionists, but even with the population at large, who grew familiar with her via her appearances on mainstream talk shows.

 

Still, Tammy Faye covers so much territory that its point of view is often shaky, ranging from clownish satire to sentimental mush, from political assault to religious takedown, from blissful matrimony to marital destruction, from top-of-the-world riches to three years in jail (for Jim). (Oddly, the book never mentions Tammy’s post-Bakker marriage to Roe Messner.)

 

The cast of characters includes such born-again leaders as Billy Graham (Mark Evans), Jimmy Swaggart (Ian Lassiter), Jerry Falwell (Michael Cerveris), Oral Roberts (Daniel Torres), Marvin Gorman (Max Gordon Moore), and others. These head the so-called Electric Church, which rakes in huge profits through televised sermons reaching millions of believers.  

 

Tammy meets and marries the traveling preacher Jim Bakker, whose controversial preaching attracts congregants by using puppets. In the early days of cable TV, they convince Ted Turner (Andy Taylor) to establish a satellite TV network called PTL (Praise the Lord), where their upbeat, entertaining, and provocatively informative ministry—even erectile dysfunction can be talked about—dominates the field. Tammy’s colorfully flamboyant look and buoyant personality captures wide attention. This stirs resentment from their more downbeat competitors, especially the power-hungry Falwell.

 

Trouble in paradise erupts as the Bakkers’ self-inflicted problems pile up, including Jim’s flimflam money raising, the couple’s over-the-top lifestyle, their shadily financed housing project cum theme park called Heritage USA, Jim’s notorious sex scandal with church secretary Jessica Hahn (Alana Pollard), and nasty criticism of Tammy’s hugging a grateful AIDS victim on her TV talk show.

 

Falwell, who seeks political power by putting “God in the White House,” proves a potent adversary, and the house that Tammy and Jim built cannot resist the tides rising against it. Falwell’s conservative views are seconded by a variety of peripheral historical figures, including tongue-in-cheek portrayals of Ronald Reagan (Ian Lassiter), the Archbishop of Canterbury (also Lassiter), Pope John Paul II (Andy Taylor), and others. Such persons often pop up in one of the over 40 TV-like boxes that comprise the upstage wall (set design by Bunny Christie), everything lit (by Neil Austin) and painted to suggest the kind of pastels familiar from 1970s-style TV.  

 

Katrina Lindsay’s vivid costumes capture the period feeling, Tammy’s in particular; she gets one special outfit that allows for a startling, before-your-eyes transformation. Of equal value are the wigs and hair styles created by Luc Verschueren for Campbell Young Associates. If you’re familiar with Tammy Faye’s big hair styling, you’ll appreciate what he’s done to recreate it.

 

The two dozen talented performers sing and dance to the forgettable choreography of Lynne Page, with many playing two or more roles. Two-time Olivier Award winner Katie Brayben makes a notable Broadway debut, but it’s all she can do to keep the show alive. She gets a classic 11 o’clock number, “If You Came to See Me Cry,” and almost rivals Nicole Scherzinger’s Sunset Blvd. blastoff histrionics to put it over. 

 

Unhappily, it’s all for naught as news came in a little while ago that Tammy Faye (which my adult daughter greatly loved!) is closing December 8. (Numerous empty seats were apparent when I went this past Sunday,) Folks, in all honesty, Tammy Faye, for all its flaws, is more mediocre than bad; many far worse shows have survived much longer. It deserves to have stuck around for a while, if only because more theatregoers should see Katie Brayben’s outstanding performance. But Broadway is a cruel taskmaster, and few shows can outlast the deluge of Debbie Downer reviews this one received. I suspect some may be thinking the election played a role in its rejection, what with its story about the power wielded by the kind of zealots many believe contributed to the results.

 

At any rate, Christian Borle, one of Broadway’s most versatile actor-singer-dancers, never clicks as Jim Bakker, especially if you recall the man himself, played in the movie by Andrew Garfield. Try as he may, he lacks Bakker’s boyish, almost impish quality, which one can easily imagine being present in Andrew Rannell’s London performance.  Michael Cerveris, unrecognizable as Jerry Falwell, is quite good as the repellant preacher, but, for many, Falwell’s presence leaves a bad taste.

Tammy Faye ends with Tammy Faye’s death, as we watch her depart Purgatory for heaven in a theatrical epiphany. It’s sad that the show itself must remain in Purgatory for another two and a half weeks before it moves to its own next destination. Caine’s Warehouse, I guess, as they used to say.

 

Tammy Faye

Palace Theatre

1564 Broadway

Closing December 8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEITER LOOKS AT BOOKS (36th edition): Andrew Norlen. WHEN THE LIGHTS ARE BRIGHT AGAIN

 

For my review of Richard Nelson's A Diary of War & Theatre please click on THEATER PIZZAZZ.

35. OKUNI: THE WOMAN WHO CREATED KABUKI (seen November 10, 2024)

 

For my review of Okuni: The Woman Who Created Kabuki please click on THEATER PIZZAZZ.

34. A WONDERFUL WORLD: THE LOUIS ARMSTRONG MUSICAL (seen November 9, 2024)

 

A Wonderful World couldn’t have come at a better time, even if you’re forced to take its title with a grain of salt. Following a week of crushingly disappointing news, this juke-box bio-musical—which premiered at Miami New Drama in 2020—is about Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (1901-1971), the genial jazz icon, trumpet player, sometime movie actor, and gravelly-voiced singer. It brings a redhot  blast of enthusiastic joy—a loaded word these days—to Broadway’s Studio 54, under Roundabout Theatre auspices.

 

Gavin Gregory (rear). All photos: Jeremy Daniel.

Not that the story of Armstrong’s life doesn’t carry with it plenty of sour notes about just how less than wonderful his world really was; the show, however, which, fortunately, supports his story with the actual songs that boosted his success—rip-roaringly arranged by Branford Marsalis, with additional input from Daryl Waters—reminds us of why Armstrong remained such a beloved showman for so many years. And, with a dazzling portrayal of him by the gifted James Monroe Iglehart—whose Tony-winning Genie in Aladdin was a Broadway landmark of the last decade—A Wonderful World is, despite its obvious warts, a delightful, even wonderful, musical.

 

James Monroe Iglehart.

Like so many other bio-musicals, this one attempts to squeeze a lifetime of creative achievement and personal ups and downs into a couple of hours of stage time. It requires extreme condensation by book writer Aurin Squire to pack in as much biography as possible, while finding excuses for 28 songs (plus a few reprises). Midway through the second act, the book’s chain of biographical sketches begins to flounder, but the music usually manages to plug the leaks and keep the show afloat.

 

James Monroe Iglehart and company,

Born into poverty in New Orleans, young Louis was, for a time, nurtured by a Jewish family. When he matured and gained attention for his cornet (and then trumpet) skills, he was forced to confront racists and gangsters. His early career took off in a jazz band led by King Joe Oliver (Gavin Gregory), with whom he moved to Chicago. He eventually parted from Oliver—with friction—to go out on his own. He was beckoned by Hollywood, where he befriended the enormously successful Black comedian and former vaudevillian Lincoln Perry (DeWitt Fleming, Jr.), better known as Stepin Fetchit, and comically characterized as “the laziest man in the world.” Unlike Perry, movie stardom was not in the stars for Satchmo—a nickname whose derivation is never explained--at a time when notable Black artists barely existed in mainstream movies. In the 1950s he struggled to overcome blowback for criticizing Pres. Eisenhower regarding civil rights, but, in his final decade, Armstrong returned to popular grace with blockbuster recordings of songs like “Hello, Dolly” and the title number.

 

James Monroe Iglehart and Gavin Gregory.

Armstrong, a serial philanderer, married four women, his marriages providing the book’s chief narrative milestones. He moves from the switchblade-wielding New Orleans prostitute, Daisy Parker (Dionne Figgins), to the slickly sophisticated, business-wise musician Lil Hardin (Jennie Harney Fleming), to the materialistic Alpha Smith (Kim Exum), to Cotton Club singer Lucille Wilson (Darlesia Cearcy), who finally manages to stop his adulteries and provide him with a stable homelife.

 

Jennie Harney-Fleming and James Monroe Iglehart.

Each wife is played by an outstanding singer-actress who gets one or more knockout numbers (sometimes shared), including Daisy’s “Kiss of Fire,” Lil’s “A Kiss to Build a Dream On” and “Heebie Jeebies,” Lil and Daisy’s “Some of These Days” (sung as a warning to Louis for what he’ll suffer when they’re gone), and Alpha’s “Big Butter and Egg Man” and “Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears.”

James Monroe Iglehart.

All the songs but one (I believe)—“Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears”—were recorded by Armstrong, even those others sing. The narrative uses their lyrics and feelings to move things along, although the words don’t always fit the events precisely. But for all the extraordinary singing of these great (mostly) standards, the voice you want to hear is Iglehart’s, whose instrument so effectively captures Satchmo’s sandpaper sound—its cause is too quickly glossed over—you worry he’ll somehow strain it. 

Audiences may not be familiar with every song in the show, but the joint jumps with joy when—sometimes joined by others, including audience singalongs—Louis launches into “Avalon,” “Dinah,” “Tiger Rag,” “Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In,” “When You’re Smiling” (cue the discovery of his trademark smile), “Cheek to Cheek,” “St. James Infirmary,” and more.  

 

DeWitt Fleming, Jr., and company..

Christopher Renshaw is credited as the director, while Iglehart and Christina Sajous are credited as codirectors, whatever that eccentric arrangement entails. As Armstrong, Iglehart is a beaming, one-man charm factory, handkerchief in hand to wipe his horn, mouth, and brow, choppers bright as headlights, a N’Orleans accent saying “foist” for “first” and “goils” for “girls.” Larger in size, in each direction, than the original, Iglehart—as they say of big dancers—is light on his feet, in complete control of his physical, histrionic, and musical chores.

 

Darlesia Cearcy.

I’m not certain about his trumpet playing, though. An online article on a reputable site claims he learned to play, but no one can simply learn to play as well as Louis Armstrong. During the performance I saw, there was a timing slip when the trumpet was heard a second before the mouthpiece hit the actor’s lips, which those near me also noted. So I’ll wait for clarification from anyone who knows. At any rate, if someone else is playing the trumpet, it’s probably one of the trumpeters in the nine-piece onstage band, Alphonso Horne and Bruce Harris.

 

James Monoe Iglehart and Darlesia Cearcy.

Much as Iglehart can wiggle a light-footed tootsie or two, there’s a heart-thumping ensemble (the show has 26 performers) around him to do the heavy lifting required by Ricky Tripp’s good, old-fashioned showbiz choreography and musical staging. Tripp takes us from the sexily jazzy dancers of New Orleans in the 1910s to the vaudeville style chorus lines of Chicago in the 1920s to the tap-dancing routines of Stepin Fetchit in 1930s Hollywood and beyond. Everyone looks sensational in Toni-Leslie James’s period-spanning costumes on Adam Koch and Steven Royal’s complex set of catwalks, flying backgrounds, and moving units, perfectly lit by Cory Pattak.  

 

Foreground: Jimmy Smagula, Darlesia Cearcy, James Monroe Iglehart, Jason Forbach.

A Wonderful World has a seriously imperfect book, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. Don’t go looking for a serious examination of Louis Armstrong’s position in the history of jazz, for a penetrating portrayal of a complicated man whose private life was masked by a lovable persona, or for a sizzling x-ray of the racism that pervaded American entertainment in the last century. 

Just consider the flimsy biographical material a necessary premise to bring Armstrong’s music back to the stage—even when others are singing it. A Wonderful World has a polished company, a charismatic star, rousing choreography, eye-catching costumes, and all the other accoutrements of an entertaining Broadway musical. In view of what’s happening outside, the wonderful world on stage at Studio 54 does just fine.

A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical

Studio 54

254 W. 54^th Street, NYC

Open run

33. ORSON'S SHADOW (seen November 8, 2024)

 

Twenty-four years ago, all-around-man-of-theatre Austin Pendleton wrote a well-received play called Orson’s Shadow that had its world premiere in an admired production directed by David Cromer for Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. Since then, numerous companies, here and abroad, have produced it, its successful New York premiere, again directed by Cromer, coming in 2005. The current revival at the East Village’s Theatre for the New City, codirected by Pendleton and David Schweizer, was seen there this past spring, under just Pendleton's direction, with the same cast but one: Cady McClain replaces Kim Taff as Joan Plowright.

 

Patrick Hamilton, Luke Hofmaier. All photos: Russ Rowland.

This play’s casting requirements are daunting. The chief characters—seen as they were in 1960—are Orson Welles (Brad Fryman), the controversial, overweight, American actor-director, best known for his 1940 film Citizen Kane; Sir Laurence Olivier (Ryan Tramont), whom many believe to have shared with John Gielgud the honor of being Britain’s foremost 20^th-century actor; Vivien Leigh (Natalie Menna), Olivier’s mentally ill, soon-to-be divorced wife, whose most famous role was Scarlett O’Hara in the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind; and Joan Plowright, a rising actress who would marry Olivier a year later, and is still alive today at 95. Each would be instantly recognizable to any theatre and film lover of a certain age. A character less familiar to many would be the great British critic, Kenneth Tynan. In 1960, Welles was 45, Oliver 53, Leigh also 53, Plowright 21, and Tynan 33.

 

Patrick Hamilton, Brad Fryman.

The current revival suffers considerably from the inevitable disparity between the ages, looks, and personalities of its actors and the iconic people they’re playing; those less familiar with the originals—probably 95% of Gen Z—may not mind so much. Others will find the casting a major deterrent to acceptance.

 

Pendleton has attempted to craft a comedy-drama based on the circumstances surrounding Welles’s notorious 1960 Royal Court Theatre staging of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, an exemplar of the Theatre of the Absurd, starring Olivier in the everyman role of Berenger. It’s the part played a year later on Broadway by Eli Wallach. Olivier, soon after demonstrating that he was not limited to classical drama by giving a brilliant performance in John Osborne’s The Entertainer, hoped to show his modernist side in Ionesco’s avant-garde play. It was Zero Mostel, by the way, who stole the Broadway production in the bravura role of John, a man who, like everyone else but Berenger, succumbs to totalitarian pressures by turning into a rhinoceros. This past week demonstrated that Ionesco may have had a point.

 

Patrick Hamilton, Ryan Tramont.

Written in three acts compressed into two, with an intermission, the over two-hour play begins with Tynan visiting Welles at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre, where he’s performing his “Falstaff” adaptation, The Chimes of Midnight, to empty houses. Tynan wants to get Welles to direct Olivier’s upcoming Rhinoceros—a play Welles dislikes—as a way of getting Olivier to hire Tynan in some capacity at the newly gestating National Theatre, which Olivier will head. Welles thinks that if he can get Olivier to do the play, he’ll be able to acquire funding for a film of his Falstaff play. The action then shifts to the play’s rehearsal process, where we meet the high-strung, petulant Larry, the over 20-years-younger Joan, Welles’s raging bull of a director, and the disturbed Vivien, whose marriage to Olivier is on the rocks. Sean (Luke Hofmaier), the young stage manager from Dublin, is somehow there as well.

 

Cady McClain, Ryan Tramont.

The rehearsals are chaotic, with multiple interruptions, and serve to illustrate the clash of the giant egos involved, Welles and Olivier’s, who disagree on how to play Berenger, revealing that, no matter their status, they’re remarkably insecure. It’s hard to see how this could be of great interest to anyone but theatre nerds; even those who remember these stars well are likely to find this production (widely lauded in the spring) tedious, its humor flat (although an elderly gent in front of my laughed so often I thought he was an investor), its plot gossipy, and its characters’ artificial, regardless of how many grains of truth they’re based on.

 

Brad Fryman, Ryan Tramont, Cady McClain.

Most of what happened in 1960 has been well documented (check the Wikipedia link above), and there have been numerous books about each of the play’s principals that provide additional facts, biographical and otherwise. Pendleton does a good job assimilating many of the established anecdotes into the action but, despite energetic performances, Orson’s Shadow grows increasingly tedious. Pendleton’s use of Tynan—he even serves as the narrator—is a dramatic liberty, since the critic, although embroiled at the time in a journalistic debate about Ionesco’s merits, had nothing to do with the Rhinoceros production.

 

Natalie Menna.

The bare-stage, low-budget set (by codirector David Schweizer), featuring miscellaneous chairs and tables, does little to brighten things. Alexander Bartenieff’s lighting should be noted for a couple of shock effects—coupled with startling sounds from Nick Moore—when “Macbeth” is mentioned among these superstitious actors, who insist on saying “the Scottish play.” Billy Little’s period costumes, in this context, are  perfectly suitable, especially considering the budget's obvious limitations.

Natalie Menna, Brad Fryman.

Brad Fryman, who plays Welles, is a bearded thespian of considerable girth and flowing gray locks, with a decided theatrical edge. Resembling a cross between Zero Mostel and Al Hirschfeld, he makes Welles a passionately animated eccentric who resents being associated principally with Citizen Kane, as if he’s never gone beyond it, and resents the Hollywood butchers he blames for damaging his later films. Fryman, looking a decade older than 45, and having a gravelly voice at distinct odds with Welles’s mellifluous baritone, nevertheless has something worthy of Welles’s authoritarian demeanor; one can even imagine him as Falstaff.

 

Cady McClain, Ryan Tramont, Brad Fryman.

At the other extreme is Ryan Tramont, whose Larry Olivier is a perfect twit, moving about with intense, nervous energy as if uncomfortable in his own skin. Much as this seems written into the script, especially during the rehearsal when Olivier displays neurotic energy when trying to figure out how a line should be read. However, Tramont’s fidgety wimpishness only serves to mock Olivier’s stature and dignity.

 

Natalie Menna’s Vivien Leigh has the unenviable task of evoking one of the world’s great, if fading, beauties, suffering from a mental breakdown, reflective of her oft-cited Blanche in Elia Kazan’s movie of A Streetcar Named Desire, which she’d done on stage with Olivier direction. It drives her to try seducing Sean, the naïve youth who says he wasn’t even born when Citizen Kane was made, to make Larry jealous. The role and its staging is too exaggerated to be convincing, but Menna does the best with what she has.

 

Cady McClain’s Joan Plowright is the most convincing of the leads; crisply spoken and rational, she’s at opposite poles from her future husband’s histrionics. Patrick Hamilton’s Ken Tynan, who holds the same phony cigarette forever, rarely puffing (he’s supposed in to be a chain-smoker), speaks too fast, his faux British accent often making his words into oatmeal. And Luke Hofmaier is acceptably innocent (and ignorant) as Sean, whose presence in both the Dublin and London scenes isn’t very clear.

 

Orson’s Shadow perhaps takes its title from the influence Welles once cast, like a shadow, over those in his artistic world. Maybe it comes from Welles’s once having been the radio voice for the character known as the Shadow. Or perhaps it’s meant to reflect Shakespeare’s use of “shadow” to refer to actors. If that regard, these lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream sum up my reaction: “If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear.” Truer words . . .

 

Orson’s Shadow

Theatre for the New City

155 First Avenue, NYC

 Through December 1