If only there were a formula for creating a hit show! We’ve all seen impossible musicals like Urinetown work their way from obscurity to Broadway, and plays with fine track records and good performances – two by Neil Simon this season alone -- tank. Casting celebrities seems the safest bet, but they don’t guarantee box office. Some success may simply be serendipitous, and this Dec. there was a lot of that going around. But two productions forged a new gold standards: Race at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and a revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music . Race relations were also centre stage in two recent musicals: Memphis: A New Musical at the Shubert Theatre and the revival of Finian’s Rainbow at the St. James Theatre.
With four November /December openings and some theatres playing 100% capacity, the big musicals are Broadway’s golden geese –– but tumbled in among the top earners is one lone play: Race, written and directed by David Mamet. Mamet is our Bernard Shaw and Nikolai Gogol rolled into one. Topical issues fuel his plays of ideas, and he is not afraid of making enemies. His right-wing bias adds more fuel for controversy. He assaults our cherished assumptions and compels us to confront a universe with no moral centre, where whoever manufactures the best story wins (Oleanna, Speed the Plow). In Race he once again takes on political correctness in a superbly crafted, fast- moving comedy filled with sharp twists, close skirmishes and edge of your seat discoveries. This is not to say that we exit satisfied. Like all good political theatre, his plays make us want to rehash, debate, question, and vent our outrage even days later.
When the distraught blue-blood Charles Strickland (Richard Thomas) enters the law offices of Jack Lawson (James Spader from the TV series Boston Legal ) and Henry Brown (David Alan Grier), his black partner, the lawyers decide to turn him away. But a technical gaffe by Susan (Kerry Washington), the new black law clerk, forces their hand; they become the lawyers of record.
Were her actions ignorant or manipulative, the Lawson wonders. And if they were deliberate, why? Everyone and every motive will come under scrutiny. Mamet marries this tension to some very funny, very astute lines. You know, Lawson asks, what you can say to a black man on the subject of race? Nothing, says Brown. As for the law: Law is not an exercise in metaphysics but an alley fight.
Like other Mamet wheelers-and-dealers, the partners are in business for profit, not to promote causes. Lawson initially has little hope of success. You’re guilty, he tells Strickland in one of many moments of candour, because of the calendar. Fifty years ago, you [white men] were innocent. His cynicism has no bounds. There are no facts, he observes, just two fictions. To win you put on a better show.
Brown, by contrast, is more cerebral. He fought against hiring the black intern, perceiving her as pure trouble. He dislikes her attitude and her graduate thesis, an analysis of the structural survival of racism. He accuses her of undermining their case by leaking their strategy to the district attorney. Lawson he voices his reasons for hiring her but they don’t sound credible. More mystery. Spader’s performance burns with a slow, deliberate incandescence while Grier, matching him scene by scene, brings a calm credibility and charisma that make even plot whims seem plausible.
Lawson’s defence is so clever that halfway through the play, it’s easy to believe that Strickland is innocent, a man with an overactive conscience. And then comes a surprise, and another –until it seems that no one is telling the truth about anything. The play questions the line between different points of view and self-deception. When the play ends, we know a great deal about the white man who confesses to raping a black woman, but we don’t know if he is guilty, and if Susan is a back-stabber or the fall guy. In 2000 the New York Times ran a series of articles on race. Mamet’s play invites more dialogue.
At the Walter Kerr Theatre, Trevor Nunn has directed a superlative revival of A Little Night Music, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angela Lansbury and Alexander Hanson. It is visually sumptuous, highly romantic (set and costumes by David Farley, who also designed for Sunday in the Park with George; lighting by Hartley T A Kemp), and touched by subtly seductive feelings of longing. The evening opens with a lone cello and the cast slowly filling the stage. The drama begins with conflicting desire. Henrik Egerman (Hunter Ryan Herdlicka), a 16 year old divinity student, adores his new stepmother Anne (Ramona Mallory), who is 18. The father, Fredrik (Alexander Hanson), so worships his new wife that he delayed marital consummation for almost a year at her request. Each character has a wish, which becomes their song – “Now,” “Later,” “Soon” – and their songs merge and overlap. The music and renditions are gorgeous.
Long ago Fredrik had a liaison with Desirée Armfeldt (Jones), an actress who has grown tired of touring. She is having an affair with a possessive but married count (Aaron Lazar in a brilliant, over-the-top comic performance). She would like to settle down with Fredrik. Only when he visits her dressing room does she discover that the forty-something lawyer has married a teenager. As they sing “You Must Meet My Wife,” you can almost hear the different subtexts.
Then strings are pulled and more strings, and they all – the lawyer’s family and the count’s -- join together for “A Weekend in the Country” at Desirée’s mother estate. There they and their servants couple, uncouple, re-couple – break each other hearts and discover their own deepest desires. Catherine Zeta-Jones’s rendition of “Send in the Clowns,” sung after Fredrik has rejected her yet again, is a high point of this season. It is quietly and deeply moving – which is always an achievement but especially with a classic tune. Jones’s performance throughout is charming, delicately nuanced – and impeccable. Angela Lansbury, at once ironic and elegant, is an ideal Madame Armfeldt.
A Little Night Music is a generous work, and the generosity reaps huge rewards. The supporting cast not only enjoy solos but at times sing the feelings of the lead performers during dramatic scenes. New talent is offered an opportunity to shine, but they have to step in line behind Leigh Ann-Larkin, who plays Egerman’s randy maid. Her gifts as actor, singer, and comedienne combine in a high-spirited rendition of “The Miller’s Song.” It’s a show-stopper. Director Trevor Nunn’s exceptional cast work in a seamless ensemble yet shine individually.
Finian’s Rainbow, a 1947 musical that was far ahead of its time, brings us an angry leprechaun (the nimble Christopher Fitzgerald), romance, American share croppers, big business, and a Southern white politician (a bold, blustery David Schramm) who transforms into an African-American (the gospel-voiced Chuck Cooper) and mends his racist ways. The book is creaky, and the performances under the director of Warren Carlyle leave something to be desired, but you can’t top those old-time tunes: “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” “Old Devil Moon” and “If This Isn’t Love.”
Memphis deserves more of an audience. It can brag top talent. The meaty book is by Joe DiPietro (The Toxic Avenger), rocking 1950s tunes by David Bryan (founding member of Bon Jovi), hot- and- bothered choreography by Sergio Trujillo (Jersey Boys), and astute direction by Christopher Ashley (Xanadu). But the producers have been loyal to their very gifted regional (and original) performers, not replacing them with names once the show moved to Broadway. Memphis tells a compelling story about a rags-to-riches-to-rags white guy (played with an endearingly passionate nerdiness by Chad Kimball) who falls in love with black music and a black singer (Montego Glover), takes on the Deep South’s racists, and changes the sound of American music.
Three shows about celebrities, which are now closed, deserve an ovation: the charming revival of The Royal Family, a 1927 comedy by Ferber and Kaufman at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, starring the always engaging Jan Maxwell and Rosemary Harris, was followed by two off-Broadway successes: The Understudy, a new play by Theresa Rebeck starring Julie White, and So Help Me God!, a revival by Maurine Dallas Watkins by the Mint Theatre, directed by Jonathan Banks and starring Kristen Johnston. They may have had short runs, but their stockings were stuffed with critical acclaim.
Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play at the Lyceum Theatre offers a unique look at love, sexuality, manners and medicine. -The garden in winter scene -- a coup de theatre that closes the play -- is beautiful and unsettling.
BROADWAY LISTINGS
All about Me, Henry Miller; A Behanding in Spokane, Schoenfeld; Billy Elliot: The Musical, Imperial; Bye Bye Birdie, Henry Miller; Chicago the Musical, Ambassador; Fela!, Eugene O’Neill; Finian’s Rainbow, St. James; God of Carnage, Bernard B. Jacobs; Hair: The American Tribal Love Rock Musical, Al Hirschfeld; Hamlet, Broadhurst; In the Heights, Richard Rodgers; In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play, Lyceum; Jersey Boys, August Wilson; The Lion King, Minskoff; A Little Night Music, Walter Kerr; Looped, Lyceum; Mamma Mia!, Winter Garden; Mary Poppins, New Amsterdam; Memphis: A New Musical, Shubert; The Miracle Worker, Circle in the Square; Next Fall, Helen Hayes; Next to Normal, Booth; The Phantom of the Opera, Majestic; Present Laughter, American Airlines; Race, Ethel Barrymore; Ragtime, Neil Simon; Rock of Ages, Brooks Atkinson; South Pacific, Vivian Beaumont; Time Stands Still, Samuel J. Friedman; A View from the Bridge, Cort; West Side Story, Palace; Wicked, Gershwin.