Carolee Carmello desperately tries to save new musical by Kathie Lee Gifford (photo by Jeremy Daniel)
Neil Simon Theater
250 West 52nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 31 [new closing date: December 9], $35-$140
www.scandalousonbroadway.com
“Aimee Semple McPherson is a liar and a fake,” declares Asa Keyes (Benjamin Howes) at the beginning of the new Broadway musical Scandalous: The Life and Trials of Aimee Semple McPherson. In response, Emma Jo Schaeffer (Roz Ryan) proclaims, “Sister Aimee saved my life.” The two statements set up the unusual dichotomy that was McPherson, an enigmatic Pentecostal evangelist who was a female radio pioneer and the leader of the popular Angelus Temple in Los Angeles but might best be remembered for her mysterious disappearance at the height of her career. It took ten years for Kathie Lee Gifford — who wrote the book and lyrics, along with additional music — to bring Scandalous to Broadway, but now that it’s here, at the Neil Simon Theatre, it’s likely to follow in its subject’s footsteps and disappear, although not nearly as mysteriously. Two-time Tony nominee Carolee Carmello (Parade, Lestat) is very good as McPherson, spreading the word from high atop a blindingly white pulpit, but Gifford and composers David Pomeranz (who worked with Kathie Lee on her first show, Under the Bridge) and Disney veteran David Friedman make the proceedings feel more like an Up with People concert than a Broadway musical. David Armstrong’s direction is tiresome and repetitive, Lorin Latarro’s (American Idiot) choreography is nearly nonexistent (when it’s not head-scratchingly obvious), and two-time Tony winner George Hearn (Sunset Boulevard, La Cage aux Folles) is sadly, drastically underused. And it’s rarely a good sign when the Playbill includes a slipped-in loose sheet of the musical numbers that reveals that several songs in the second act have been axed. Today show cohost Gifford, whose husband, Frank, went to McPherson’s Foursquare Church when he was a child, spends too much time putting McPherson, and faith in general, up on a pedestal, essentially preaching herself, only without the edge that McPherson seemed to have. “Was she a true woman of God? Or just one helluva woman?” Louella Parsons (Elizabeth Ward Land) asks near the end of the show. Don’t expect to find out — or care — in the trivial Scandalous. [ed. note: On December 4, it was announced that the show would close on December 9, after thirty-one previews and twenty-nine regular performances.]
After his mother’s (Kil Hae-yeon) get-rich-quick scheme doesn’t quite work out as planned, she disappears, leaving her laconic son, Kwon Youn-ho (Um Tae-goo), to continually fight off her ever-more-crazed business partner, Seo-hee (Park Se-jin), a divorced mother desperate to get back the money she claims she is owed. Meanwhile, Youn-ho is trying to make a life for himself and his fiancée, Se-kyung (Yoon Che-yong), but her mother doesn’t approve of his job in reconstruction — he convinces people to leave their homes with small payments so that buildings can be knocked down and fancier residences put up in their place. But neither Youn-ho nor Seo-hee is evil; both have been cast in difficult situations that lead to extreme measures that they regret as they try to put their lives back together. Kim Joon-hyun’s first feature film is a patiently paced drama that subtly examines how the global financial crisis affects families in both large and small ways. Everyone in the film is seeking to maintain or renew a relationship with a loved one, be it a parent, a child, a sibling, or a lover, but money complicates their situations. Um is excellent as Youn-ho, a young man seemingly disinterested in his own existence, letting life just happen to him, a fine counterpart to Park’s Seo-hee, a woman willing to do just about anything to prevent her life from getting completely away from her. Choked is screening November 18 at 5:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series Korean Cinema Showcase: Filmmakers of the Future, which highlights the work of three young, independent Korean directors: Kim, Lee Han, whose Punch was shown in October, and Lee Sang-woo’s Barbie, which is playing December 16 at 5:00.
First-time writer director Patrick Wang proves to be a quadruple threat in his extraordinary feature-film debut, In the Family. An actor, theater director, and economist with an MIT degree, Wang, who is also the star of the film and one of the producers, reveals a smart economy in the quietly powerful drama, despite its 169 minutes. Wang plays Joey Williams, an Asian-American contractor living in Tennessee with his partner, teacher Cody Hines (Trevor St. John), and Cody’s young son, Chip (Sebastian Brodziak), from a previous marriage. They are a happy family, but when Cody suddenly dies in a tragic car accident, Joey’s life slowly starts to fall apart as he discovers he has no legal rights to any of Cody’s holdings and possessions, including Chip. Joey faces his dilemma with an almost Zen-like demeanor, calmly believing that everything will work out and that Cody’s family — sister Eileen (Kelly McAndrew), brother-in-law Dave (Peter Hermann), and mother Sally (Park Overall) — will do the right thing. But as he soon finds out, that isn’t the case, so he considers taking legal action, but without any footing, no lawyer will represent him. While he sits alone in the house that used to be so filled with life and hope, Joey recalls happier times, as flashbacks show how he and Cody first met and eventually fell in love. Wang and cinematographer Frank Barrera (Runaway, As Good as Dead) barely move the camera during the contemporary scenes, allowing the audience to feel the pain building inside Joey, while the flashbacks are shot with a shaky handheld camera that evokes the turmoil to come. Wang avoids genre clichés, wisely choosing not to make grand statements about same-sex marriage, civil unions, and gay rights, instead letting the story play out in a lyrical yet heartbreaking way. First and foremost, Joey, Cody, and Chip were a family — not a gay or mixed-race family — and Joey can’t understand why they are being treated differently than if they were a supposedly more traditional husband, wife, and child. The acting is solid throughout, with a documentary-like quality — Wang cites Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage and John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence as major inspirations — highlighted by a fine turn by multiple Tony nominee Brian Murray as a client of Joey’s. Don’t let the length scare you away — In the Family is a gripping, involving movie that will make you forget all about time. Nominated for Best First Feature at the 2012 Independent Spirit Awards, In the Family opens November 16 at Cinema Village, playing daily at 4:40, with Murray appearing opening day and Brodziak on hand Saturday and Sunday.
In 2004, musician and composer Antony Hegarty and film and video pioneer Charles Atlas premiered their multimedia collaboration, Turning, at the Whitney Biennial. The performance featured 