Curtains

Curtains is a new musical by famous writing duo Fred Ebb and John Kander, with an original book by Peter Stone, revised by Rupert Holmes, and under the direction of legend Scott Ellis. It stars David Hyde Pierce (in a Tony award winning role) as Boston police detective Frank Cioffi trying to solve a murder that happens on the set of a new musical having its pre-Broadway run. Everyone's a suspect and so the production is quarantined to the theatre. Cioffi has to crack the case while at the same time using his love of musical theatre to fix the show from the flop it currently is.

It's fun, if nothing else. Everything has shortcomings, but overall nothing is terrible enough to sink the show and stop it from being an over-the-top Broadway good time. Hyde Pierce is fantastic in an atypical lead role (atypical because everyone seems more like a featured player and he gets that status by default). The supporting cast of Karen Ziemba and Jason Daniely are good. But Debra Monk, as the show's producer, and Edward Hibbert, as the show's director, better embody the show's problems and strengths. They both get the brunt of delivering the majority of the show's one-liners, which range from great to terrible. While Hibbert makes all of them work with an absolutely hysterical performance, Monk isn't able to pull it off and turns in a very disappointing performance here. The direction is never bad but nothing leaps out either, making me remember Scott Ellis had anything to do with this. The only consistently impressive part of the entire show is Rob Ashford's choreography. I saw the show with two of my friends who know a great deal about dancing and they were as equally blown-away, mouths agape, as I was.

But the real reason to see Curtains has to do with death. Peter Stone (original book) died before finishing it. Rupert Holmes was brought into finish it. Then, in 2004, Fred Ebb himself died of a heart attack. Holmes helped John Kander finish the lyrics. It's only fitting that the story itself should be about people dying while trying to put up a musical. John Kander and Fred Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret, Kiss of the Spiderwoman) are icons of American musical theatre and one of the greatest songwriting duos of all time. The first act ballad entitled "I Miss the Music," sung by the composer character about how he can't write anymore now that his lyricist partner has left him is poignant enough to bring a tear to one's eye. And the second act number "A Tough Act to Follow" is perfectly fitting because it definitely will be. One should see Curtains for a frivolous good time and to pay respects to the end of the Kander-Ebb era.

Curtains is currently playing at the Al Hirschfeld Theater on 45th Street, New York, NY.

Frost/Nixon

Frost/Nixon is a play dramatizing the infamous 1977 interviews between reporter/talk-show host David Frost (played by Michael Sheen) and ex-President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella in a Tony award winning performance) in which Frost finally got Nixon to admit his guilt in and apologize to the American people for his role in the Watergate scandal.

The best thing I saw all weekend in NYC. While Deuce was a patient, contemplative drama that, if not for its star power, would have been better suited off-Broadway, Frost/Nixon was its antithesis. Technically and emotionally powerful, quick moving and dynamic, the play put on as much of a "show" as any musical up and down the street. Lights, sound, televisions, narrations by characters and taut writing accelerate the historical drama through different events leading up to the interviews. But here playwright Peter Morgan (who also wrote the screenplays for The Queen and The Last King of Scotland) reigns in the stampeding herd and lets the tension of the battle between two egotistical personalities, both at a point where failure means eternal defeat and exile from their respective industries, agonizingly build to its historically landmark climax. Never has paramount corruption by the figurehead of American democracy been more deliciously entertaining.

Frost/Nixon is playing through Aug 19th at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater on 45th Street, New York, NY.

Grey Gardens

A musical about the Bouvier Beale family of East Hampton, NY, relatives of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. It's based on the 1975 documentary of the same name, made by the Maysles brothers. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Edie" were once high-class socialites but later became Long Island's most notorious recluses. Act I portrays the family before their descent, and Act II shows their recluse days.

It's beautifully tragic and tragically funny. Christine Ebersole, in a Tony award winning performance, perfectly portrays both Edith and Little "Edie" (the former in Act 1 and the latter in Act 2). Clearly, it's not your typical Broadway musical fare, but that's why it's great. It's like seeing a super-Indie film playing on three screens at your local AMC multiplex. Here, Broadway doesn't mean hammed up and glitz-ified; it just means really really well done. You find yourself laughing at these bizarre and awkward people. But everything saddens when you remember this really happened. Edie's bright young promise did end up with her in a house overrun with cats, wearing a head scarf and alone with her crazed mother. And if that can happen to a member of one of America's most esteemed families, how can there be any hope for us ordinary folks? (That last sentence would be much more powerful if my last name weren't "Kennedy." Try and disregard that.)

Sadly, it closed yesterday, as Mary-Louise Wilson (Tony award winner for her featured performance as well) didn't want to continue on. Look for it when it pops up in the future (London '07-'08, I hear) and pray to the theatre gods that the lead has anywhere near the talent Christine Ebersole had.

Deuce

A play about two aging tennis idols who get together for the first time in thirty years at a tennis match where they are being honored for their contribution to the sport.

It's fantastic. Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes are remarkable actresses. They captivate the audience for an hour and forty minutes by merely talking to each other. Playwright Terrence McNally has won four Tony awards (two for plays [Master Class and Love! Valour! Compassion!] and two for books of a musical [Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime]) and this script is no misstep. While hardly any action occurs, the conversation between the leads twists and turns around multiple themes, never following one single message to pound home. The play meanders along like the memory recall of an elderly person: consistently insightful about loosely connected ideas.

The play runs through August 19th at the Music Box Theatre on 45th Street, New York, NY.

Parade

Parade is a musical dramatization of the accusation, trial and lynching of Leo Frank for the rape and murder of a 13-year old girl in 1913, the only Jew to ever be murdered in such a fashion in the United States. The book was written by Alfred Uhry (who won a Pulitzer for the play Driving Miss Daisy and an Oscar for its screenplay adaptation) and the music and lyrics are by Jason Robert Brown (Songs for a New World, The Last Five Years). The musical opened on Broadway in 1998 and won two Tony awards, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Musical Score.

Going into the theatre, I was under the impression that the main emphasis of this show would be the love story between Leo and his wife Lucille, as they find a deeper love and understanding of each other through the ordeal. This emotional side of the story is what was stressed on Wikipedia and on the theatre company's website. Considering Jason Robert Brown's other work (perhaps my favorite musical of all time, The Last Five Years), I thought the whole historical premise of the show would just be a vehicle for his unsurpassable talent at telling a love story.

However, it's actually the portrayal of this period of time and the South in general that steals the show. The music is complicated and beautifully fitting for the location and subject matter, something I was afraid of given it's a musical about a lynching, not your typical broadway fare. Granted it's not the happiest of shows. The songs are not the kind you leave the theatre humming away in glee. They work as part of the whole, not as individual ditties. And since we're so egocentric as a species, it's hard for a musical like this to become a favorite with songs so difficult to relate to (at least for me). Had the love story been played up more, I may have found more to connect with and to sing along to after the show ended. But I'd sacrifice my own personal satisfaction for beautiful art anyday. Parade should definitely be seen and appreciated, even if you won't fall in love with it. We rarely fall in love with what we should.

The production I saw was put on by Speakeasy Stage Company, a professional theatre company that specializes in Boston premieres. It was mostly done well. The leads were competent enough, with the actor playing Leo Frank being better than that. The real standout was the actor playing Jimmy Conley, the African-American janitor at the factory that Frank was manager of and that the victim, Mary Phagan, worked at. Conley is also suspected of being the real killer of the girl. His song, at the trial of Frank, was the best part of the musical. It's the kind of number that a performer would kill for: a minor character taking center stage, belting out a show-stealing song, and then fading away into obscurity for most of the story's remainder. And this guy nailed it. The rest of the cast was so-so. From reading their bios, I learned that most of them are attending or have attended The Boston Conservatory, which showed. Their voices were fantastic and everyone always sounded great. Unfortunately, the acting didn't always reach the same heights. No one was terrible, but there weren't enough standouts either.

All in all, see Parade if it's playing in town. Clearly, I can't vouch for the quality of its execution, but the concept and writing of the musical itself is beautiful and not to be missed.

300

A preliminary note: I hate this movie more on an idological level than a practical level. I hate it for what it represents more than for what it is.

What it is is a stupid movie, not the worst but not the best. And I can see how it’d be hard to hate this movie: it’s got blood; it’s got violence; it’s got sex; it’s got naked women. What else can one ask for, right?

How about purpose? Too hard for you, Zack (that’s Zach with a “K” as in “Kill Me Now Please.”) Snyder? My apologies.

The movie is not bad at what it does. Stylistically, it looks great. The atmosphere is creepy; the effects are wonderful; and the violence is very realistic. The artistic quality of the graphic novel has been visually transfered to the screen very well.

The question is "why?" No one making this movie wants to tell this story because it needs to be told. They're telling it because they want to make money and have frat boys say it was "fucking awesome."

Everything is a device. Extreme violence and pointless nudity/sex pull in the straight guys. Buff, half-clothed men for the gay ones and ladies. The father/son relationship at the beginning exists so that one can die later, causing an emotional "moment." Swelling, overly-orchestrated scenes to tell an audience member what is emotional and when they should react, also overloaded with vague emphatic embraces of this concept of freedom.

All of it is manufactured. There was no visionary guiding this film. Someone thought this concept should be a movie and made it one. And while it is not terrible, it does mark the beginning of what will become something terrible: the mass manufacturing of this faux-period drama, actual-meaningless action crap.

300 may have died valiantly at the hands of the Persians after holding their own for so long against insurmountable odds. Unfortunately, if it means a new onslaught of fabricated films with no heart, I would have preferred that their memory was lost forever.


Read more about my pondering of why there are so many half-clothed men in this film here.
The critical conensus on 300 can be seen here.