Little Shop of Horrors

A-

Did New York really need another revival of this oft-produced cult musical by the talented team of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken? Without having seen it, I would have said “no” and I would have been wrong. This is a revival with a difference, combining big talent with small scale. It is not often that we get to see Broadway stars like Christian Borle (Something Rotten!, Peter and the Starcatcher, Falsettos) and Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening, Hair, Hamilton) in such an intimate space, in this case the Westside Theatre. Since the show only has eight actors (one of whom is unseen) plus two puppeteers, it really belongs in a small theater rather than on Broadway. (Alas, Broadway talent, even in an off-Broadway theater, comes with Broadway prices.) The ever-watchable Christian Borle is amazing here in several different roles, most notably that of Orin, the sadistic dentist (a role created by Jack Nicholson in the original Roger Corman film). He makes it clear why he has two Tonys. The versatile Jonathan Groff captures both the nebbish and the opportunist in Seymour. Tammy Blanchard (Gypsy, How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying), in the unenviable position of following the memorable Ellen Greene as Audrey, wisely does not attempt to imitate her. Blanchard’s Audrey seems even more world-weary and insecure. Her voice, while pleasant, is no match for Greene’s. Tom Alan Robbins (Head Over Heels, Newsies) is fine as Mushnik, Seymour and Audrey’s gruff boss. The three urchins — Ronnette (Ari Groover; Head Over Heels), Crystal (Salome Smith) and Chiffon (Joy Woods)— who serve as Skid Row’s amusing Greek chorus, are terrific although it is occasionally difficult to hear their lyrics over the orchestra. The unseen Kingsley Leggs (Sister Act, Pretty Woman) nails the voice of Audrey II, the plant with a taste for human blood. The puppet, designed by Nicholas Mahon, is wonderful and is skillfully manipulated by Eric Wright (Madama Butterfly at the Met) and Teddy Yudain (The Little Match Girl at Spoleto USA). Julian Crouch’s (Head Over Heels, Big Fish) modest set is efficient. Tom Broecker’s (Everyday Rapture, “Saturday Night Live”) costumes are apt. Director Michael Mayer’s (Spring Awakening, Brooklynite) flawless direction pulls it all together splendidly. The book and lyrics by Ashman (Smile, Beauty and the Beast) and the music by Menken (Beauty and the Beast, Newsies, Aladdin) continue to delight. Each of the stars seemed to have an avid fan base from previous stage, film or television appearances; the audience was wildly enthusiastic. I was glad I splurged on a ticket because it was a very enjoyable evening. Running time: two hours including intermission. 

NOTES: 

After January 19, Jonathan Groff will be replaced by Gideon Glick, who filled in for him for two weeks when he had another commitment. 

It is unfortunate that the upstairs theater at Westside is inaccessible to wheelchairs.

The Cake

C+

After successful productions in L.A. and the Berkshires, Bekah Brunstetter’s (“This Is Us”) comedy with serious overtones has landed in New York at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I. Those expecting a serious look at the legal ramifications of denying a wedding cake to a same sex couple won’t find it here; there is no lawsuit involved. What we get instead is a sympathetic look at a Southern woman whose religious beliefs are out of sync with her loving personality. The bake shop owner, Della, superbly played by Debra Jo Rupp (Becoming Dr. Ruth), is a woman of a certain age in a childless stale marriage who hopes to validate her life by appearing in a televised national bake-off. In baking as in life, Della seeks success by closely adhering to the rules. When Jen (Genevieve Angelson; Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike), the daughter of her late best friend, returns from Brooklyn to plan a hometown wedding, Della is thrilled until she learns that Jen’s intended is a woman, Macy (Marinda Anderson; The Treasurer, Miss You Like Hell) , a journalist with inflexible views on just about any subject. The fact that Macy is African-American doesn’t seem to be a problem. When Della claims to be too busy to bake their wedding cake, Jen is crushed. While Jen may have escaped to Brooklyn, she has not been able to shake deeply ingrained feelings of shame about being a lesbian. In a subplot, Della tries unsuccessfully to rekindle the spark in her marriage with the help of lots of butter cream. Later, when her husband Tim (Dan Daily; Days To Come) finally sees the light, he tries to reciprocate with a heap of mashed potatoes. You will either find these scenes hilarious or gross. The play is interspersed with several droll imaginary interchanges between Della and George (Daily again), the unseen host of the TV series. Will Della be able to overcome her religious strictures to bake the cake? The ending seemed a bit facile. The production is greatly enhanced by an amazing set by John Lee Beatty (Doubt, Proof, Good People) with three revolving sections. The shelves of brightly colored cakes certainly made my mouth water. Tom Broecker’s (Our Mother’s Brief Affair) costumes and Tommy Kurzman’s wigs also make a substantial contribution. Lynne Meadow’s (Linda, Of Good Stock) direction is seamless. The play is entertaining but doesn’t really have much depth. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

All the Fine Boys

F

Maybe I would have reacted less harshly to this new play at The New Group had it not been the second play I had seen in a week dealing with inappropriate sex between adults and the underage. Maybe not. It is awful enough in its own right. We meet two 14-year-old girls, Jenny (Abigail Breslin, who played Little Miss Sunshine in the film) and Emily (Isabelle Fuhrman), hanging out in Jenny’s basement with a stack of videos for a sleepover. Although he play is set in 1980’s South Carolina, there is little sense of time or place. At least we are spared ersatz Southern accents. Their inane conversation drags on and on with he girls discussing the various boys at school, and Jenny observing that the ones Emily likes are beyond her reach. The play then alternates scenes of Emily and Adam (Alex Wolff), an artsy high school boy she has a crush on, with scenes of Jenny and Joseph (Joe Tippett, of Indian Summer and Familiar), a man twice her age that she inexplicably goes home with. One girl gets more than she set out for; the other gets less. The most glaring flaw in the play is the cartoonish depiction of Jenny as a grotesque figure with an unlimited appetite for junk food. The long scenes of her and Joseph are hard to watch. The staging is awkward with characters from the previous scene lingering on the set until after the next scene begins. It’s a stretch to believe the two women are teenagers, but that’s probably a blessing. I admire their gutsiness in taking on their roles. The set by Amy Rubin is appropriately ugly with dark deep-pile carpeting covering the floors and the walls and a much-used sofa. Tom Broecker’s costumes are apt. Playwright Erica Schmidt can’t blame the director for the outcome: she directed. Running time: one hour 40 minutes, no intermission.

NOTE: If the play weren’t bad enough, the seats in the Ford Studio at Signature Center are wood laminate with no upholstery. 

Steve **

If you arrive early at the Signature Center for the New Group’s production of Mark Gerrard’s dramedy Steve, you will find Malcolm Gets already onstage playing show tunes on an upright piano. He is joined by four other cast members for an enjoyable 15-minute Broadway songfest. At play’s end, there’s a charming musical curtain call. Unfortunately, between those two points there is the play itself which, for me, wore out its welcome long before its 90 minutes had passed. Although there are strong superficial similarities with the recently opened Dada Woof Papa Hot — both plays deal with a gay couple approaching middle age who are raising a child, their fears about losing attractiveness, their worries about infidelity and their relations with another gay couple, the play that Steve really reminded me of was Matt Crowley’s 1968 hit The Boys in the Band. Both begin with a birthday party that turns out badly. Despite all the ways that gay life has changed in the intervening years, the characters’ mode of relating to each other has not made much progress. If anything, modern technology has increased the possibility of bad behavior. There was no sexting in 1968. Steven (Matt McGrath, so good recently in The Legend of Georgia McBride), once a chorus boy and singing waiter, has just turned 47. His partner Stephen (Gets) is a successful attorney. Steven is now a stay-at-home dad raising their unseen 8-year-old son Zach. (For some reason that have not chosen to marry.) When Steven retrieves his partner’s cellphone from Zach, who has “borrowed” it, he finds a sexting exchange between Stephen and Brian (Jerry Dixon), the partner of Steven’s oldest friend Matt (Mario Cantone). The fifth guest at the birthday dinner is Carrie (Ashlie Atkinson), their terminally ill lesbian friend whose lover abandoned her when she became sick. Their waiter is a hunky Argentinian named Esteban (Francisco Pryor Garat) who keeps turning up at various locations throughout the play. Just to round out the name game, there is a fourth Steven, Brian and Matt’s prodigiously endowed trainer, who is unseen but much commented upon. Any attempt at meaningful communication is short-circuited by turning either to show-queen bitchiness or raunch. One scene is instantly replayed with a different ending, but that device goes nowhere. There is a funny scene where Stephen is juggling texts, sexts and a phone conversation with his mother. The capable cast does their best to animate characters that aren’t well-developed. Allen Moyer’s set is elegantly simple and Tom Broecker’s costumes are fine. Director Cynthia Nixon plays a weak hand well. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Of Good Stock **

When Richard Greenberg’s scheduled play wasn’t ready on time, Manhattan Theatre Club replaced it with this piece by Melissa Ross that premiered at South Coast Repertory earlier this year. In it we meet the Stockton sisters — Jess (Jennifer Mudge), Amy (Alicia Silverstone) and Celia (Heather Lind) — the adult daughters of a long deceased famous author, Mick Stockton, an inveterate womanizer whose wandering ways did not even slow down when his wife was dying of cancer. The family is gathered for a long Summer weekend at their Cape Cod home, which Mick left to Jess, along with his literary estate. Jess’s husband Fred (Kelly AuCoin) is a food writer who met Jess when he was Mick’s assistant. The occasion for the get-together is Jess’s 41st birthday, which is significant because it marks the year that she outlives her mother. Amy, a simpering narcissist engaged to the equally vapid Josh (Gregg Keller), is preoccupied by her upcoming destination wedding. Celia, a hippy do-gooder with commitment issues, has invited her current interest Hunter (Nate Miller), whom she met while building houses for Habitat for Humanity in Missoula. If the sisters are accomplished or lead interesting lives, you wouldn't know it from the play. During the course of the weekend, we learn more about all their relationships, usually at a high decibel level. The playwright could not have asked for a better production. Santo Loquasto’s evocative revolving set made me want to head for Cape Cod as soon as possible. Tom Broecker’s costumes suit the characters well. The cast is fine, especially AuCoin and Mudge. The direction, by MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow, does not hide the play’s shortcomings. The three-sister play has a long honorable tradition that includes works by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Henley, Wasserstein and Letts. I wish I could say that this play was a welcome addition to the canon, but after more than two hours of bickering and shouting, the only thing I welcomed was the end. One of the characters makes an exit before intermission. Lucky him. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes including intermission.

A Month in the Country **

Turgenev’s theater masterpiece has a peculiar history. Written in 1850, a good 50 years before the Chekhov plays it prefigures, it was not produced until 1872 and did not receive proper recognition until the Moscow Art Theatre took it up, at Chekhov’s urging, during the early 1900’s.   It never achieved the popularity of the plays it inspired. Here in New York, Roundabout presented it three times — in 1976, 1979 and, on Broadway, in 1995 in a production directed by Scott Ellis. I saw the 1995 production, which starred Helen Mirren in her Broadway debut. (She almost made me forget that she was a 50-year-old playing a 29-year-old.) Despite the star-studded cast, which also included F. Murray Abraham, Ron Rifkin and Alessandro Nivola, Times critic Vincent Canby panned the production. I recall my reaction as being less negative, although I was disappointed that it didn’t make me re-experience the pleasure I had reading the play. Now CSC has revived the play in a brisk production starring two current television stars, Taylor Schilling of “Orange Is the New Black” and Peter Dinklage of “Game of Thrones,” and a former one, Anthony Edwards of “ER.” The results are wildly uneven. While Schilling looks perfect for the alluring but chilly Natalya, her interpretation does not dig very deep. Dinklage, on the other hand, makes Rakitin a touching figure. Edwards is properly obtuse as Natalya’s husband Arkady. (Turgenev specifies his age as 36, only 7 years his wife’s senior, but, once again, he has been cast as much older.) Megan West, who plays the murdered girl on “How To Get Away with Murder,” struck me as too perky and childlike in the early scenes, but got better as the play progressed. For me, the weakest link was Mike Faist as Belyaev, the young tutor whose presence destabilizes the household; he lacks the looks and charm to make his attractiveness plausible. The ever watchable Elizabeth Franz makes the most of the role of Arkady’s mother. Thomas Jay Ryan, as the cynical Dr. Shpigelsky, almost steals the show; his proposal to Lizaveta (Annabelle Sciorra) was, at least for me, the play’s highlight. Director Erica Schmidt rushes the play along to its detriment. I was appalled at the interjected scene of Natalya and Belyaev ripping each other’s clothes off, because there is absolutely no basis for it in the text. Tom Broecker’s costumes are fine, but Mark Wendland’s set is strange. A low wall, similar to a courtroom barrier, surrounds the stage. The back wall is a birch forest, which has to be the most cliched shorthand for a Russian setting ever. An oppressive large box overhangs the entire stage, semitransparent in front, which fulfills no function that I could think of unless it is supposed to suggest how confined their world is. The program lists the son as Koyla, instead of Kolya — twice. To his discredit, the Times critic repeated the error. I suppose it’s better to have a flawed production of an important play than none, but it’s a close call. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes including intermission.