Maybe Happy Ending

A-

Since it has been running for almost a year and has been recognized by the Tonys for best musical, best book, best original score, best leading actor, best direction and best scenic design, there is very little I can add to the accolades that has not already been said. If there were a Tony for originality, I would have awarded that too. Darren Criss is a wonder as Oliver, an obsolete Helperbot spending his remaining years in a retirement home for robots outside Seoul, blindly optimistic that his friend, i.e. former owner, James (Marcus Choi,) will show up to reclaim him. Oliver has acquired a taste for classic jazz from James, especially for the fictional jazz pianist Gil Brentley (Dez Duron), whose song “Why Love” both opens and ends the show. Twelve years after his arrival, in a scene reminiscent of La Boheme’s first meeting between Mimi and Rodolfo, Oliver answers a knock at the door by Claire (Helen J. Shen), his neighbor across the hall, needing an emergency charge. Unlike La Boheme, it is not love at first sight. Oliver reluctantly lets her into his room and eventually into his life. Although also obsolete, Claire is a newer model Helperbot with greater sophistication and less optimism about human nature. Eventually, the two decide to undertake a trip to Jeju Island, where there is a firefly forest that Claire has longed to see and the place where James moved when he left Oliver behind. Disappointment awaits Oliver at James’s home. Claire and Oliver are each given the opportunity to erase their painful memories from their operating system to find a satisfactory ending. The acting is uniformly excellent, with Criss as the standout. The scenic design by Dane Laffrey is absolutely breathtaking. The blending of neon-bordered shape-changing boxes containing action in many locations with black-and-white projections depicting the bots’ former owners is skillfully done. The scene in the firefly forest is magical. The costumes by Clint Ramos are a delight. Michael Arden’s direction is flawless. Although the story is superficially about robots, its underlying themes delve into aspects of human behavior including the vagaries of love, jealousy, aging and mortality. The play never loses its good humor though and offers lots of laughs.  My only disappointment was that Will Aronson’s music, though completely congruent with the book (by Aronson and Hue Park), offers no “hummers."  I urge you to see the show while Darren Criss is back in the leading role. Running time: one hour 40 minutes; no intermission.

Kyoto

B+

Nine years ago, the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center housed an ambitious play about the behind-the-scenes machinations that resulted in the signing of the Oslo Accords. Now the Newhouse stage is home to another play about the preparations for and shenanigans during an important international conference, this time the one leading to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty that committed industrialized nations to reduce their carbon emissions. Playgoers who, like me, entered expecting something similar to the play Oslo will be quite surprised: Kyoto is far livelier, more involving, and, dare I say, funnier. Scenic designer Miriam Buether has  configured the center of the Newhouse stage as a large round conference table. Some seats at the table are occupied by lucky playgoers. Each audience member is given a delegate badge for one of the participating countries. I was the representative of Togo. The first act deals with the ten years of preparatory meetings that led to the Kyoto conference and the second act covers the conference itself. Playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson came up with the brilliant idea of choosing as their narrator and central character not some advocate of climate change but the man hired by Big Oil to undermine the work of the conference, Republican attorney and ex-government functionary Don Pearlman. For ten years, he uses his many skills to delay, dilute and deter any progress toward an agreement. Lucky for us, he is played by Stephen Kunken, a fine actor I have long wanted to see in a leading role. He does not disappoint; his energetic performance sets the tone for the entire production. Jorge Bosch and Ferdy Roberts are welcome holdovers from the West End staging. Amusingly, Daniel Jenkins and Dariush Kashani both appeared in Oslo at LCT. The large cast of 14 are all fine. I liked Natalie Gold as Pearlman’s long-suffering wife. Kate Burton, as the US delegate, doesn’t get much chance to show her strengths. With so many characters, the play doesn’t have time to give more than a rough sketch of most of them. Directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin keep things moving at a breakneck pace. Occasionally the shouting and gavel pounding became excessive for my taste. I thought the first act could use some judicious trimming while the second act could have been a bit longer to make developments clearer. All in all, I admired the play’s ambition and found it more entertaining than I expected. Running time: two hours 45 minutes including intermission. 

NOTE: At the performance I attended there was an audience member with an emotional support poodle in his lap sitting at the conference table. (See them at the right of the above photo.) At one point in the second act, Kunken as Pearlman explained some esoteric point and then turned toward the man and said “Confused?” After the man nodded his head in the affirmative, Kunken said “I was talking to the dog.”

Broadway Theater Traffic Alert

 If you are planning to attend a Wednesday matinee at one of the many theaters in the 200 block of either W 45th or W 46th Streets, allow yourself at least an extra 15 minutes to get to your theater. There is a large tower under construction on 8th Avenue between those two streets and a flagman is frequently stopping traffic on both streets to allow trucks to enter and exit the site.

Little Bear Ridge Road

 B+

Samuel D. Hunter, the Bard of Boise, is back with another foray into the lives of small-town Idahoans. We meet Sarah, an irascible, fiercely independent woman who has chosen to live in isolation half an hour away from the nearest town, and Ethan, her estranged gay nephew, who has returned to town from Seattle to settle the affairs of his recently deceased meth addict father, whom he had not seen in years. Late one evening in 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, Ethan drops in on Sarah to pick up the deed to his father’s house. Sarah somewhat grudgingly invites him to stay with her while he is in town. The two make tentative attempts to connect. Ethan reveals that his writing career is at a standstill and he has split with his partner in Seattle. Sarah does not reveal that she is seriously ill, a fact that Ethan discovers inadvertently. At the local gay bar, Ethan meets James, a seemingly happy, purposeful astrophysics student. Their budding relationship is either evidence that opposites attract or that there aren’t many choices at gay bars in Idaho. A year later Ethan is still living with Sarah. James’s cheerfulness has seemingly lubricated the relationship between aunt and nephew, but a casual remark James drops provokes a crisis that surfaces Ethan’s long-time grudge against Sarah and revives her need for independence. The final scene provides a ray of hope that Ethan has begun moving forward. As usual, Hunter shows great compassion for his characters. He also brings in a sociocultural context that includes the insanity of our health system, the inanity of our television shows, the delicate balance between loneliness and dependence, the small-town drug crisis, and the chasm between those who have struggled to make ends meet and those who haven’t. We are fortunate that Sarah is played by the magnificent Laurie Metcalf and Ethan, by the excellent Micah Stock, who holds his own with Metcalf. John Drea is fine as James, making the most of a slightly underwritten role. Meighan Gerachis lends warmth to a small role in the final scene. Joe Mantello once again shows why he is one of our finest directors. Scott Pask’s minimalist set has a gray three-seater reclining sofa on a gray carpeted turntable under a revolving fan. Jessica Pabst’s costumes are apt. The title possibly refers to the location of Sarah's home, but has no apparent evocative importance. While I admired the play and loved the performances, I was not as moved as I was by the last Hunter play I saw, A Case for the Existence of God. Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission.

Let's Love!

C-

 

For the fourth time, Atlantic Theater Company artistic director Neil Pepe has presented and directed a collection of one-act plays by Ethan Coen. I had seen two of the earlier programs and had been disappointed twice. I would have skipped the latest one, lamely and misleadingly titled Let’s Love!, if not for the casting of the charismatic Aubrey Plaza, whose fan I have been since the second season of “The White Lotus.” Alas, her inclusion is not enough to rescue this trio of uninspired, unrelated short plays. The first is basically a pair of monologues in a bar, in which a white woman of a certain age (Mary McCann) tries to pick up a middle-age black man (Dion Graham). Except for a couple of one-liners, the dialog is weak and McCann’s performance is bland. The middle and longest piece features Plaza as Susan, a foul-mouthed, hard-hearted woman for whom sex is primarily a bargaining chip. Plaza is fine, but the role doesn’t give her much range. Chris Bauer is a hoot as the man she hires to beat up her ex-boyfriend Dan, a thankless, underwritten role played by CJ Wilson. His current girlfriend Faye is overacted by Mary Wiseman using an intentionally annoying high-pitched voice. The final scene of this piece, between Plaza and the ever-reliable Noah Robbins, playing a nerd she meets on J-Date, was the highlight of the afternoon for me. It has very little connection to the other scenes and would be fine as a stand-alone. The final play features Robbins again, this time as a young man on a first date with Dylan Gelula, whose dinner out is ruined by his sudden case of food poisoning, which strangely turns out to be a bonding experience that promises to be the start of a relationship. As if in recognition of the fact that Coen’s plays provide insufficient entertainment, the production adds a prelude and interludes with Nellie McKay, singing, playing the piano, the guitar and a harmonica and dressed in a variety of costumes from top hat and tails to folk singer garb. Her voice is sweet and the songs are pleasant, although they have no bearing whatever on the plays. A musical finale with the entire cast also seems unrelated to anything else, but it is fun to see Plaza play a mean sax. The set by Riccardo Hernandez is functional and the costumes by Peggy Schneider are apt. Honesty compels me to report that the audience seemed to be thoroughly enjoying everything. Nevertheless, I feel that this production was not up to Atlantic’s usually high standards. Dress warmly; the theater was chilly. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

 

 

Ragtime

A

For her first production as Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Theater, Lear deBessonet has basically imported last year’s City Center staging of Ragtime, with some enhancements, to the Vivian Beaumont Theater. In principle, this seems like a lazy way to start her new job, but the results are so satisfying that you won’t hear any complaints from me. The production is superb in every way – cast, musicians, costumes and set. The combination of Stephen Flaherty’s music and Lynn Ahrens’ lyrics is a match made in heaven. Terrence McNally’s book is a marvel at preserving the complexity of E.R. Doctorow’s 1975 novel for the stage. In a top-notch cast, Joshua Henry stands out with his powerful version of Coalhouse Walker Jr. Caissie Levy makes an excellent Mother and Brandon Uranowitz excels as Tateh. Colin Donnell as Father, Nichelle Lewis as Sarah and Ben Levi Ross as Mother’s Younger Brother are all fine. Shaina Taub as Emma Goldman, Anna Grace Barlow as Evelyn Nesbit, John Clay III as Booker T. Washington and Rodd Cyrus as Houdini all make the most of their small but important roles. Nick Barrington as The Little Boy holds his own with the adults. Tabitha Lawing as The Little Girl doesn’t get much chance to shine. The large orchestra, under James Moore’s baton, makes the score sound wonderful. Ellenore Scott’s choreography understatedly adds much to the production. Linda Cho’s period costumes are a visual treat. David Korins’ set design makes good use of the power of suggestion: the house in New Rochelle is captured in a fragment of façade, a doorway and a staircase. Rolling stairways become multipurposed props. Backdrops and projections are used sparingly but effectively. I felt no sense of watching a bare-bones concert version. The bottom line is that this is a wonderful addition to the New York season and bodes well for deBessonet’s tenure. Running time: two hours, 50 minutes with a 15-minute intermission.

Sondheim's Old Friends

A

This stellar revue, a hit in London, has moved into Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, with Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga heading a largely new cast of 19 superb performers. Unfortunately, Lea Salonga was out for the performance I attended, but her songs were ably performed by other cast members. To winnow the songs down to 40 must have been a challenging task for deviser/producer Cameron Mackintosh. He opted to include songs from West Side Story and Gypsy, shows for which Sondheim wrote just the lyrics, but it’s hard to fault him for that because they are such great numbers. The organizing principle was not one I could grasp; songs from some shows are scattered through the revue while songs from others, such as Sweeney Todd, are presented in a block. There were very few that were new to me.

Other than the amazing Bernadette Peters (Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George), who doesn’t seem to age, the only name I recognized was Beth Leavel (The Prom, The Drowsy Chaperone). Joanna Riding is a two-time Olivier winner for best actress in a musical. The other cast members are Jacob Dickey, Kevin Early, Jasmine Forsberg, Kate Jennings Grant, Bonnie Langford, Gavin Lee, Jason Pennycooke, Jeremy Secomb, Kyle Selig, Maria Wirries, Daniel Yearwood, Paige Faure, Alexa Lopez, Greg Mills and Peter Neureuther.

With so many excellent numbers, it’s hard to pick standouts, but I particularly enjoyed Riding’s “Getting Married Today,” Grant and Peters’ “Children Will Listen,” Secomb’s “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” Langford’s“ The Worst Pies in London” and “I’m Still Here” and Leavel’s “The Ladies Who Lunch.” I especially liked some of the ensemble numbers in Act II including “Tonight Quintet,” “Broadway Baby” and “Not a Day Goes By.”
The scenic design by Matt Kinley is simple with lights circling arches and edging stairs. There were two side structures that were rolled in for the numbers from “West Side Story” and “Sweeney Todd” that I assume were deliberately ugly to reflect the grimness of their settings. Large projected images of Sondheim surround the proscenium The costumes by Jill Parker featured lots of sequins, mostly in black with a few in color. The excellent orchestra of 17 sounded louder than its size. The choreography by Stephen Mear was smoothly integrated into the songs. Matthew Bourne, credited with direction and musical staging, held everything together to produce a satisfying whole.

My one complaint is an ongoing one about today’s Broadway musicals – overamplification. The loud decibel warning on my Apple watch went off at least once. Sondheim’s lyrics are such an important part of his appeal that one does not want to have them muddied by poor sound design. Fortunately, the problem was intermittent rather than constant and not enough to spoil the experience. 

If you are a Sondheim fan, two and a half hours of pure pleasure awaits you on 47^th Street.