live performance

CAMELOT

Guenevere (Phillipa Soo) and Arthur (Andrew Burnap) contemplate their future in Camelot (photo by Joan Marcus)

CAMELOT
Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through July 23, $58-$298
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

You know there’s a problem when you cringe every time the conductor at a musical signals to the orchestra that the next song is going to begin. That was my experience at the current revival of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Camelot, running at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater through July 23.

To make matters worse, director Bartlett Sher, who has given us delightful stagings of South Pacific, The King and I, and My Fair Lady in recent years, and book adapter Aaron Sorkin, the author of A Few Good Men and a contemporary rereading of To Kill a Mockingbird, have drained all of the magic out of the show, literally and figuratively, leaving us with the ghost of a beloved musical journey.

Based on T. H. White’s 1958 best-selling novel The Once and Future King, Camelot is the story of young King Arthur (Andrew Burnap), his promised bride, French princess Guenevere (Phillipa Soo), and the brave knight Lancelot Du Lac (Jordan Donica), who swears to defend Arthur while coveting Guenevere. In the opening scene, the king’s three closest knights, Sir Dinadan (Anthony Michael Lopez), Sir Sagramore (Fergie Philippe), and Sir Lionel (Danny Wolohan), are furious when the carriage carrying Guenevere breaks protocol and stops at the bottom of a hill, the princess escaping into the woods.

Guenevere (Phillipa Soo), Arthur (Andrew Burnap), and Lancelot (Jordan Donica) are involved in a dangerous love triangle in Lincoln Center revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

“A thousand-year-old tradition, Merlyn — royal brides are greeted at the top of the hill,” Lionel says. Merlyn (Dakin Matthews), Arthur’s mentor, answers, “Alright, well, in the name of Arthur, King of all England, it is decreed that royal brides will henceforth be met at the bottom of the hill. A new tradition. Does that do it?” It is as if Sher and Sorkin are announcing that they are creating a new tradition with this updated interpretation of the old-fashioned musical, but they are unable to inject life into this venerable warhorse.

Songs such as “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood,” “The Lusty Month of May,” “If Ever I Would Leave You,” and “Fie on Goodness” are flat and lifeless, corpses dug up from the past. Merlyn is not a mage but a wise adviser; as in the 1993 Broadway revival, the same actor also portrays Pellinore, a ratty, doddering old man who takes Merlyn’s place in Arthur’s life.

Arthur’s former lover, Morgan Le Fey (Marilee Talkington), is not a witch or an enchantress but a brilliant scientist. “In the new century, science is going to crack the world wide open. And I wouldn’t want to see your face when you realize it didn’t make a difference,” Morgan tells Arthur, as if trying to convince him to follow Dr. Anthony Fauci and not Fox News and get vaccinated. “There’ll be greed and injustice and hate and horror,” she adds.

The words justice and injustice appear about a dozen times throughout this Camelot: “If we’re to care about justice, we have to care more about injustice,” Arthur tells Lancelot and Pellinore. The Sorkinization extends to equality as well: “Equality is a myth made by the less-than-equal,” Sir Lionel says to Dinadan and Sagramore. It’s safe to say that this Camelot is not stuck in the Middle Ages.

Talking to Guenevere about human nature, Arthur espouses, “It has an impulse to be generous and it has a fierce desire for fairness.” But when it comes to a final decision Arthur must make, he instead hews inflexibly to his ethics: No one is above the law, not even a king and his queen.

Sher and Sorkin are so focused on contemporary standards of correct behavior that no electricity ever develops among Tony winner Burnap (The Inheritance, This Day Forward), who is a nice, kind Arthur; Tony nominee Soo (Into the Woods, Hamilton), who is a strong, charming Guenevere; and Donica (My Fair Lady, The Phantom of the Opera), who is a brash, overbearing Lancelot.

Sorkin goes out of his way to make Arthur a regular man of the people; instead of celebrating how he miraculously became king, he invents the following exchange: “You’re talking to a man who pulled a sword out of a stone. I was the ten thousandth person to try. How do you explain that?” Arthur asks Guenevere, who responds, “Nine-thousand, nine-hundred, and ninety-nine people loosened it.” Guenevere then adds, for good measure, “We have greatness in our grasp, humanity does. But for some reason, every time we see it, we assign the responsibility to some supernatural force. Or to God,” as if Sorkin is railing against modern-day belief systems.

Taylor Trensch (Bare the Musical, Matilda the Musical) is miscast as Mordred, Arthur’s miserable son, but Talkington (A Nervous Smile, The Middle Ages) stands out as his mother, even if she’s way ahead of her time. Camden McKinnon (A Raisin in the Sun, Renfield) never has a chance as twelve-year-old Tom of Warwick, who gets caught up in the didactic conclusion as Arthur — or, if you will, Sher and Sorkin — promise a better, more equitable future.

Michael Yeargan’s sets are spare but attractive, with doors, tables, desks, and royal chairs rolled on and off by the cast, although an iron gate used for Arthur’s privacy gets confusing and the “round table” is actually rectangular; the shadowy lighting is by Lap Chi Chu, with effective sound by Marc Salzberg and Beth Lake, uncomplicated choreography by Byron Easley, colorful costumes by Jennifer Moeller, and projections by 59 Productions that identify location and the weather, from the castle to a forest.

At one point, Arthur insists, “This is Camelot. People don’t run from here, they run to here.”

I cannot in good faith recommend that anyone run to Lincoln Center to see this Camelot.

RACE: THE MOVIE: THE PLAY

Wyatt Saveyer (cowriter Bret Raybould) and Gene Yus (producer Dean Edwards) go for quite a ride in Race: The Movie: The Play (photo by Eddie Merino)

RACE: THE MOVIE: THE PLAY
Soho Playhouse
15 Vandam St. between Varick St. & Sixth Ave.
Wednesday – Saturday through May 27, $41 ($31 with code RACISMSOLVED)
www.racethemovietheplay.com
www.sohoplayhouse.com

For more than two years, beginning during the pandemic lockdown, I’ve spent many Tuesday nights watching the livestreamed “This WAS The Uncle Floyd Show,” in which master pianist, puppeteer, and vaudeville-style comedian Floyd Vivino revisits his no-budget television program that ran on various stations from 1974 to 1998. A collection of haphazard, unrehearsed sketches pushing the limits of good taste, performed by a ragtag, close-knit cast and featuring impressive musical guests, it was beloved by a devoted cult that included David Bowie, John Lennon, and Paul Simon.

This past Tuesday night, however, I found myself at the Soho Playhouse watching Race: The Movie: The Play, which has a similar comic sensibility as The Uncle Floyd Show and deserves just a devoted following. Taking on the enormous issue of racism in Hollywood, RTMTP spoofs, references, and/or skewers such high-profile films as Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, Get Out, The Help, Hidden Figures, Black Panther, Django Unchained, Bamboozled, Moonlight, Driving Miss Daisy, Blazing Saddles, and others.

Written by Cristian Duran and Bret Raybould, directed by Duran, and produced by Ted Alexandro, Dean Edwards, and Raybould, RTMTP began life as an award-winning film script, but when the producers couldn’t get funding to make a movie, they turned to the theater. Edwards stars as the distinguished Gene Yus, a gay Frederick Douglass–like character who is about to embark on a concert tour through the Deep South. Raybould is Wyatt Saveyer, a lanky Italian who is hired by Interracial Cab Company head Don Freeman (Andre D Thompson) to drive the stagecoach, led by the white horse Meta and the black horse Phor. Instead of money, Wyatt will receive a solid gold OOTGO badge, confirming that he is “One of the good ones,” which he recognizes as “a distinction white allies, and me an Italian one, can earn from the Black community.” Don explains, “With this OOTGO badge, you will get lifetime access to any cookout.” Wyatt adds, “And you get to say the N word one time,” to which Don quickly replies, “No the fuck you don’t.” Who gets to use the N word is a running gag throughout the ninety-eight-minute play.

A white-coated narrator (Patrice Battey-Simon) shares fun facts in Race: The Movie: The Play (photo by Eddie Merino)

On the road, Gene and Wyatt meet racist hillbilly repairman Wyatt Devil (David Healy), racist white plantation owner Ray Cist (Nick Whitmer) and his daughter, Jen Trifier (Amanda Van Nostrand), prison guard Tuwoke (Patrice Battey-Simon), Black plantation owner Pyler Terry’s Damea (Thee Suburbia), wannabe rapper Stretch (Eagle Witt), touchy-feely Doctor Bukkake (Healy), strapped Black cowboy D-Jango (Menuhin Hart), Kawanda king T’Challa-Latte (Quan Wiggins), evil villain Thanus (Rhyis Knight), mouth breather Max Hayte (Derek Humphrey, who also portrays the squeaky Mick E. Mouse), and Judge Hughbythecolorofyourskin (R. Alex Murray).

Gene and Wyatt encounter racism in many forms while confusingly shifting between time periods, breaking the fourth wall, and poking fun at themselves as Wyatt learns how to be an ally, proudly proclaiming his growth as a human being. When Gene asks Wyatt for help amid a fight, Wyatt admits, “Oh yeah. Sorry, I got lost in a brief spat of character development.” Early on, Wyatt says to Gene, “Hmm . . . a lot of your accomplishments are making me question my preconceived notions about you.” Later, Gene yells at Wyatt, calling him “quite possibly the most helpless, hapless, shiftless shit-for-brains idiot I’ve ever met! What’s your great struggle, what’s your cross to bear: Learning to be less racist and understand privilege? BOO FUCKING HOO!” And Wyatt tells himself with wonder, “Maybe it is harder to be a Black man in America . . . NAH!”

Throughout the show, musical director Andrew Hink, gleefully sitting at his keyboard stage right, plays an eclectic collection of instrumentals, from Britney Spears’s “Baby One More Time” to Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” (Every episode of The Uncle Floyd Show featured Vivino performing old standards on piano, though with vocals.)

A wacky cast explores racism and white supremacy in fun spoof at Soho Playhouse (photo by Eddie Merino)

Is RTMTP wildly uneven? You betcha. Do they sledgehammer home their points? Sure, but they are pretty important points. Do more jokes miss than hit their targets? Probably — I wasn’t keeping score — but there are a ton of one-liners, and even the very best baseball players reach base only forty percent of the time.

The depiction of what happens when someone gets canceled is pure genius, the danger of telegraphing while driving is made clear, and T-shirts are emblazoned with playful but serious political messages. Throw in some S&M, a bit of blackface, goofy costumes and props, some improvising in response to audience reaction, low-rent projections that show where the action is taking place, and a cast that is ready, willing, and able to laugh at itself and you have the ingredients of a lively, enjoyable evening, though I would skip the chicken cutlet sandwich. (Plus, if you’re white, you’ll feel like you’ve earned another notch toward your own OOTGO badge.)

One of the highlights the night I went was when Edwards was unable to get a line right after trying several times, so he asked Wiggins, as T’Challa-Latte, for help; it was almost too perfect that the sentence he couldn’t get out was “Let me get this straight, so the only way for us to unlock the power of diversity is if we fulfill the white q’uota?”

Race: The Movie: The Play might not run for a quarter-century and four thousand episodes like The Uncle Floyd Show did — it’s scheduled to close May 27 — but Duran and Raybould are still hoping to make that film, which will, of course, be called Race: The Movie: The Play: The Movie.

ON SITE OPERA: IL TABARRO

On Site Opera’s Il tabarro takes place on board the 1908 lightship Ambrose at South Street Seaport (photo by Bowie Dunwoody)

IL TABARRO
South Street Seaport, Pier 16, 89 South St.
1908 Lightship Ambrose
May 14-17, $60, 6:30
osopera.org
southstreetseaportmuseum.org

In late summer 2021, On Site Opera (OSO) presented What Lies Beneath, a collection of six vignettes on board the 1885 cargo ship the Wavertree at the South Street Seaport.

In April 2022, the Manhattan-based company brought its stirring version of Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, the first work in the Italian composer’s Il Trittico (“The Triptych”), to the Prince George Ballroom on East Twenty-Seventh St.

Now OSO is teaming up again with the South Street Seaport Museum for the second part of Puccini’s trilogy, Il tabarro (“The Cloak”), with a libretto by Giuseppi Adami, on board the 1908 lightship Ambrose; the audience will be seated on Pier 16, with minimal interaction with the cast. The approximately sixty-minute story of a love triangle gone bad — does it ever go well? — runs May 14-17 and stars baritone Eric McKeever as barge owner Michele, soprano Ashley Milanese as his wife, Giorgetta, and tenor Yi Li as dockhand Luigi. The ensemble features mezzos Claire Coven and JoAnna Vladyka, sopranos Yohji Daquio, Lindsey Kanaga, Theodora Siegel, and Kiena Williams, baritone Paul LaRosa, bass Brian McQueen, and tenor Daniel Rosenberg, with costumes by Howard Tsvi Kaplan, lighting by Shawn Kaufman, props by Rachel Kenner, and sound by Scott Stauffer. The orchestra will be conducted by Geoffrey McDonald, and the production will be helmed by Laine Rettmer, the first guest director of a full show in OSO’s eleven-year history; OSO co-founding director Eric Einhorn will be leaving the company at the end of the year.

On Site Opera rehearses Il tabarro at Sunlight Studios (photo by Bowie Dunwoody)

“What we have planned for this next installment of Puccini’s Il Trittico promises to be the perfect marriage of found site and libretto,” Rettmer said in a statement. “You will experience the overlay of 2023 merging into 1916 in this engrossing sixty-minute tale set against the setting sun on New York City’s Seaport.”

Ticket holders can also order in advance a $25 boxed dinner from Cobble Fish, which can be eaten before or during the show. The Ambrose, aka Lightship LV-87, is a National Historic Landmark and was the first lightship to have a radio beacon; it served in various capacities, including as an examination vessel during WWII, through 1963. The Seaport Museum offers free guided tours of the lightship Wednesday through Sunday. OSO will ultimately conclude Puccini’s Il tabarro with Suor Angelica at a date to be announced.

GOD OF CARNAGE

Two couples can’t reach a genuine understanding in God of Carnage (photo by Carol Rosegg)

GOD OF CARNAGE
Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 20, $72.50
www.tbtb.org

“Why does everything always have to be so exhausting?” Veronica (Christiane Noll) asks in Theater Breaking Through Barriers’ (TBTB) splendid off-Broadway premiere of Yasmina Reza’s 2008 dark comedy, God of Carnage, running at Theatre Row through May 20. The prescient fifteen-year-old show feels even more relevant today as we deal with exhaustion of all kinds on a seemingly endless basis.

Before the actors take the stage, they identify themselves in voiceover: what they’re wearing and what the set looks like, the words projected onto the back wall, which Veronica explains “is composed of approximately twenty square and rectangular panels and is painted bright red. Because the panels are all different sizes and overlap each other, the wall presents as fractured with an illusion of depth to it. It is reminiscent of the cubism movement of the early twentieth century.” In this revival, “illusion of depth” and “cubism” would be two ways to describe what happens over the course of ninety minutes.

Founded in 1979, TBTB is “dedicated to advancing artists and developing audiences of people with disabilities and altering the misperceptions surrounding disability”; thus, some of the actors have disabilities (that are not necessarily noticeable and aren’t the point), and the dialogue is projected through the entire play for those who are hard of hearing (though often a distracting second or two behind the action). God of Carnage is an excellent choice for TBTB, as part of the plot involves a drug that might be causing side effects that mimic certain disabilities.

Michael Novak (Gabe Fazio), who runs a wholesale household goods company, and his wife, Veronica, a writer who works in an art history bookstore, have invited over Alan Raleigh (David Burtka), a hotshot corporate lawyer, and his wife, Annette (Carey Cox), who’s in wealth management, to discuss an unfortunate situation: The Raleighs’ eleven-year-old son, Benjamin, struck the Novaks’ eleven-year-old, Henry, across the face with a stick in Cobble Hill Park, knocking out two of his teeth. For legal and insurance purposes, the parents are drafting a document explaining precisely what happened. The disagreements begin from the very start, when Veronica states that Benjamin was “armed with a stick” but Alan objects to that word and they decide on “furnished” instead.

The narrative plays out like a courtroom drama as the audience shifts its sympathies among the four characters, who eventually all show their true colors, some of them unexpected. Alan spends much of his time on his cell phone, handling a crisis for a pharmaceutical company in a bind because of serious issues with one of its drugs. He remains in the living room, speaking loudly to his colleagues and clients, oblivious to whether or not everyone hears what he’s saying because he’s sure that it’s far more important than arguing about a couple of boys being boys.

Gabe Fazio, David Burtka, Christiane Noll, and Carey Cox star in off-Broadway debut of Tony-winning play (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Annette is furious at her husband’s disrespect and neglect and is at first insistent that Benjamin must apologize in person to Henry. But as more facts come out, she starts pulling back and pointing fingers. Veronica is appalled at this change, although she at times seems more concerned about her collection of rare art volumes and the book she’s writing on Sudan. Meanwhile, Michael sees nothing wrong with how he disposed of his daughter’s beloved hamster, while his mother keeps calling on the landline, worrying about her own health situation.

Every time the Raleighs get up to go, something happens to keep them in the living room, reminiscent of Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, in which people at a dinner party are unable to leave. And as the two couples’ discussions get more combative — there’s even a debate over the homemade clafouti Veronica serves — the parents get more and more cruel as things devolve into mayhem.

Translated from the original French by Christopher Hampton, who has translated five of Reza’s plays, including the Tony-winning ‘Art,’ God of Carnage debuted on Broadway in February 2009 with an impressive cast: Jeff Daniels as Alan, Hope Davis as Annette, James Gandolfini as Michael, and Marcia Gay Harden as Veronica. All four actors were nominated for Tonys; Gay Harden won for Best Actress and Matthew Warchus for Best Director, and the show took home the Best Play prize. Roman Polanski’s 2011 film starred Christoph Waltz as Alan, Jodie Foster as Annette, John C. Reilly as Michael, and Kate Winslet as Veronica.

TBTB’s adaptation might not boast huge names, but it is a small gem that celebrates the sharp writing, which is filled with hilarious absurdities while turning modern-day Brooklyn parenting inside out. The show takes place on the cusp of the social media revolution, when bullying was still mostly limited to physical rather than online interaction. The Novaks and the Raleighs are practically the opposite of helicopter parents; at one point, when Annette criticizes her guests’ parenting skills, Alan gives her permission to say anything she wants to Benjamin, something that is unlikely to happen today, especially in the Cobble Hill area.

Bert Scott’s set is centered by an off-white sofa and matching armchair, with a glass coffee table, beige rug, utility table with bottles of alcohol, Parson chair, and end table with a vase of yellow tulips; the soft lighting and projections are by Samuel J. Biondolillo, with sound by Eric Nightengale and appropriate bourgeois Brooklyn costumes by Olivia V. Hern.

Burtka (Gypsy, It Shoulda Been You) is strong and unflappable as Alan, a selfish man who cares more about his job than his wife and son. “I really wish you would just turn off your cell phone and focus on your family for a change,” Annette yells at him during TBTB’s added introduction. “There is nothing worse than someone who is so addicted to their cell phone that they can’t shut it off for a time and focus on what is right in front of them.” Cell-phone rudeness has only gotten worse since 2008, so Reza was right on target with Alan. When Annette says under her breath to the audience, “Blah blah blah, it’s the same nonsense all the time,” Alan asks, “Who are you talking to?,” as he is unable to see anyone else but himself, including the audience. (Echoing Alan and Annette, when Michael describes himself to the audience in the guise of testing out a new voice recorder, Veronica grumbles, “Michael, what are you doing?”)

Cox (The Glass Menagerie, The Handmaid’s Tale) kicks it into high gear as Annette, who is getting sick and tired of being pushed around by everyone because of her generally mousey demeanor; she is like the hamster, ready to break free from Alan, who calls her “Woof-woof” as if she is his pet. Meanwhile, Fazio (The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, The Good Nurse) captures Michael’s unpredictability, the character drifting in his own world, reaching for the fancy rum when things get rough. And Tony nominee Noll (Ragtime, Chaplin) holds nothing back as Veronica, whose carefully orchestrated existence is coming unhinged despite her best efforts to remain in control, even regarding her clafouti recipe.

TBTB artistic director Nicholas Viselli, who just received a Legend of Off-Broadway Award from the Off Broadway Alliance, builds the narrative at an ever-increasing pace as the Novaks and the Raleighs discover that they might be more alike than they ever imagined. No one is left unscathed in this spirited tale that begins as a taut psychological drama and slowly evolves into all-out physical chaos. These scenes of carnage may have been penned fifteen years ago, but in this stinging production it feels like they could have been written yesterday.

THE THANKSGIVING PLAY

D’Arcy Carden, Chris Sullivan, Katie Finneran, and Scott Foley star in The Thanksgiving Play on Broadway (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE THANKSGIVING PLAY
Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 11, $109-$169
2st.com/shows
www.playwrightshorizons.org

Call it The Thanksgiving Play That Goes Wrong.

In November 2018, I wrote that the world premiere of Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play at Playwrights Horizons was “a wild and woolly farce that takes on important indigenous issues — in real life and on the stage. [FastHorse] is attempting to level the playing field by increasing diversity and pushing an own-voices sensibility.”

Nearly five years later, the play is debuting on Broadway from Second Stage, with a different director, different cast, different set, and significantly tweaked script that make it all feel like so many dried-out leftovers.

The plot is the same. Logan (Katie Finneran) is a high school drama teacher directing a forty-five-minute Thanksgiving play for elementary school students. She has hired her overly politically correct boyfriend, local street performer Jaxton (Scott Foley), to star in the show, along with professional actress Alicia (D’Arcy Carden), whose experience has been primarily in Disney theme parks; elementary school history teacher and amateur writer and actor Caden (Chris Sullivan) is the research consultant. Logan has decided it will be a devised production, with everyone contributing in an improvised fashion, which delights Caden, who has come with plans for a major epic, but bores Alicia, who says, “I’m an actress. Could I come back when there’s a script? I just got to town and have a hundred things to do.”

Logan, who is proudly vegan and refers to Thanksgiving as “the holiday of death,” has received the Race and Gender Equity in History Grant, the Excellence in Educational Theater Fellowship, a municipal arts grant, the Go! Girls! Scholastic Leadership Mentorship, and the Native American Heritage Month Awareness Through Art Grant and is determined to please all her funders. She is distressed when she discovers that Alicia, who she believed was Native American because of one of her head shots, is not. “So we’re four white people making a culturally sensitive First Thanksgiving play for Native American Heritage Month? Oh my Goddess,” Logan proclaims as if it’s the end of the world.

Alicia (D’Arcy Carden) and Logan (Katie Finneran) face some PC issues in The Thanksgiving Play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Each scene that they discuss unravels either because of length, cost, or political sensitivity. When Caden suggests starting the play four thousand years ago with the agricultural revolution and using lots of fire, Logan says, “I am conscious of not allowing my personal issues to take up more space in the room than the justified anger of the Native people around this idea of Thanksgiving in our postcolonial society. I want to make that crystal clear.” Alicia asks, “Was America even invented yet?” To which Jaxton replies, “It was not. Better times. That makes me wonder if using the word of the conqueror, ‘American,’ could be a trigger for people? What word do you prefer for naming this physical space? I’ve heard ‘Turtle Island’ used a lot. Do you prefer that?” Alicia chimes in, “I like turtles.”

They argue about casting, food, historical accuracy, prayer, Columbus Day, the depiction of violence, and “white people speaking for white people” as they try to figure out what actions they can take in good conscience in today’s equality-conscious culture.

The word “woke” began to take on its current meaning in 2014 following the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In the October 2020 Vox article “A History of ‘Wokeness,’” Aja Romano writes, “In the six years since Brown’s death, ‘woke’ has evolved into a single-word summation of leftist political ideology, centered on social justice politics and critical race theory. This framing of ‘woke’ is bipartisan: It’s used as a shorthand for political progressiveness by the left, and as a denigration of leftist culture by the right.” This evolution of wokeness lies at the heart of the problems with this new iteration of The Thanksgiving Play; in the five years since it debuted off Broadway, the play has become a victim of its own wokeness.

In 2018, MacArthur Genius FastHorse (Cherokee Family Reunion, Urban Rez, What Would Crazy Horse Do?) was right on target, skewering how difficult it was to use the proper language to describe people and events. The battle between Logan and Jaxton’s progressiveness and Caden’s insistence on historical accuracy was hilariously spoofed by Alicia’s utter disinterest in what either side had to say, representing Americans who were fed up with partisan fighting over everything and instead just wanted to get on with it all. At one point, Jaxton says about Alicia’s lack of Native American heritage, “I think we could get away with using her before 2020, but now we’re post the postracial society. We can’t be blind to differences.”

At Playwrights Horizons, Jaxton said “a few years ago” instead of “before 2020,” and therein lies the conundrum. What was a clever, prescient satire in 2018 now feels stale and mean, revealing that the show is already dated. The cast is fine, led by Carden as a sexier Alicia, but Riccardo Hernández’s classroom set is confining, although it’s telling that posters on the wall promote such previous school productions as Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, Euripides’s Medea, Sophocles’s Oedipus, and Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is, works that many school districts today would consider too controversial to put on.

The supremely talented Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812) is unable to get a firm grasp on the proceedings, teetering between farce and a cautionary tale. I wrote about the PH show, “One of the main reasons why The Thanksgiving Play works so well, despite the occasional bumpiness, is because we recognize parts of ourselves in the four characters; of course, off-Broadway audiences tend to be significantly liberal — and often privileged — terrified of uttering or doing the wrong thing when it comes to people of color yet rather clueless about their own giant blind spots. Thus, there are moments in the show when you are likely to hesitate before laughing, wondering whether you are being insensitive by enjoying yourself too much.” That dichotomy is missing here.

The original production began with Logan (Jennifer Bareilles), Alicia (Margo Seibert), and Jaxton (Greg Keller) coming out dressed as pilgrims and Caden (Jeffrey Bean) as a giant turkey, singing, “The Twelve Days of Thanksgiving,” announcing that this was going to be a good-natured social comedy. The Broadway edition opens with a video of children, dressed in homemade costumes, singing the same song, but it is announcing that the debates over the validity of how and why we celebrate Thanksgiving and the entire DEI movement are poisoning the next generations. Each version concludes with the statement: “Teacher’s note: This song can do more than teach counting. I divide my students into Indians and pilgrims so the Indians can practice sharing.” At Playwrights Horizons, the audience laughed at that line; at the Hayes, they gasped. The Thanksgiving Play’s time has come and gone.

“This is a challenge, but we are the future of theater and education. Are we all in agreement?” Logan asks.

Not me.

BOB FOSSE’S DANCIN’

Dancin’ “revival” gets too much backward in looking forward (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

BOB FOSSE’S DANCIN’
Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 14, $114 – $318
dancinbway.com

The original Broadway production of Dancin’ was a thrilling celebration of music and movement as only Bob Fosse could do it. The superb cast included Sandahl Bergman, René Ceballos, Christopher Chadman, Wayne Cilento, Vicki Frederick, and Ann Reinking, shaking things up to a wide range of genres, from pop and jazz to classical and patriotic, with little or no plot. It was nominated for seven Tonys, with Fosse winning for Best Choreography and Jules Fisher for Best Lighting.

For the current reimagining of the show at the Music Box — there are too many changes to properly call it a revival — they have added Fosse’s name to the title, but that ends up being a disservice to the late, magnificent choreographer (and sometimes director) of Sweet Charity, Damn Yankees, The Pajama Game, Pippin, Chicago, and the film version of Cabaret, who is unlikely to have been thrilled with this 2023 iteration, which opened March 19 and has just posted an early closing notice of May 14 after receiving no love from the Tonys, coming up empty-handed.

Cilento is back, this time as director and musical stager, with Christine Colby Jacques credited with “reproduction of Mr. Fosse’s choreography” and David Dabbon with “new music and dance arrangements.” Cilento had his work cut out for him, as there was no script and no recordings of the original presentation, so he and Jacques, who understudied for the 1978 Broadway show, used muscle memory and YouTube videos of other productions. The result is a hot mess from start to finish, but it won’t tarnish Fosse’s legacy, as he can’t take any of the blame for this one. (Notably, however, Nicole Fosse, his daughter with Gwen Verdon, is one of the producers.)

Dancin’ will be closing early after coming up with no Tony noms (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The so-called Bob Fosse’s Dancin’ features a whole lotta hats, cigarette smoking, shoulder shimmying, sequins, and jazz hands as the cast prances and twirls in, on, and around tall metal scaffolding towers and in front of occasionally dizzying projections on a back screen. The imposing industrial set is by Robert Brill, with projections by Finn Ross, over-the-top sound by Peter Hylenski, excessive lighting by David Grill, and inconsistent costumes by Harriet Jung and Reid Bartelme.

“Recollections of an Old Dancer” kicks off with tone-deaf archival footage of Bill “Mr. Bojangles” Robinson. “Big City Mime,” which was understandably cut in 1978, returns, a sleazy depiction of New York as a town of hookers and pimps. “Big Deal” is a failed attempt at noir. “The Female Star Spot” goes woke on Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again.” The “America” segment, with such red, white, and blue tunes as “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and “Gary Owen,” feels today like parody. (At least they cut “Dixie”; other numbers were left out because of rights issues.) “The Dream Barre” has been banished.

The second act opens with the still-stellar “Benny’s Number,” a rousing performance of the Benny Goodman Orchestra’s “Sing, Sing, Sing,” with drummer Gary Seligson soloing up high on a platform, although it goes on too long; uncoincidentally, the original company performed the first part of the piece at the Tonys, so it is in this piece that Fosse’s choreography is most closely replicated in 2023.

And speaking of singing, we are told at the beginning that there will be some singing, but it turns out that there is a significant amount, and most of the vocals are undistinguished, delivered more like the performers are on The Voice or American Idol than on a Broadway stage. The individual scenes are like flashy MTV videos that have little to do with one another; Dancin’ 1978 worked as individual set pieces, but Dancin’ 2023 doesn’t trust the dancing enough and instead bombards the audience with posturing glitz and glamour to grab our attention. That continues during the curtain call, in which each dancer takes a bow with their name projected hugely on the screen, as if we need to remember who is who when we vote.

The only name we’d prefer not to see is Bob Fosse’s on the marquee.