Phil Connors (Andy Karl) is trapped in Punxsutawney, PA, forced to relive Groundhog Day over and over again (photo by Joan Marcus)
August Wilson Theatre
245 West 52nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 7, $79.50 – $169
www.groundhogdaymusical.com
“Hoping for an early spring? Well, tomorrow is Groundhog Day, and the good folks in Punxsutawney are already gathering in a snowy field waiting for the dawn. Why? Because they’re morons,” meteorologist Phil Connors (Andy Karl) declares at the beginning of Groundhog Day, the fabulous musical adaptation of the popular 1993 comedy. The arrogant, condescending, misogynistic Connors, who hosts the television program Good Weather with Phil Connors — “Thanks for watching,” he patronizingly says whenever recognized by a gushing fan — has been sent to cover the annual Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, with excited associate producer Rita (Barrett Doss) and quiet cameraman Larry (Vishal Vaidya), but he doesn’t care one iota about whether the rodent sees its shadow or whether there will be six more weeks of winter. “Small towns, tiny minds / Big mouths, small ideas / Shallow talk, deep snow / Cold fronts, big rears,” he sings about the local populace and eager tourists who have flooded the community, many who have come in costume to celebrate the aptly named Phil the groundhog. “There’s nothing more depressing than small town USA / And small don’t come much smaller than Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day,” he adds. Connors might care only about himself, unwilling to find the charm that is the core of America, but he’s about to get one very unusual comeuppance because of his snarky, superior attitude. Every morning, he wakes up to discover that it is still Groundhog Day — he is stuck in a loop in which he keeps meeting such corny, down-home characters as the Chubby Man (Michael Fatica), bed-and-breakfast owner Mrs. Lancaster (Heather Ayers), groundhog fans Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland, nerdy marching band sweethearts Fred and Debbie (Gerard Canonico and Katy Geraghty), the bumbling sheriff (Sean Montgomery), and high school acquaintance and insurance salesman Ned Ryerson (John Sanders), who all annoy him no end, especially when they want to talk about the weather. He’s trapped in a nightmare of his own making, perhaps incapable of figuring a way out.
Phil Connors (Andy Karl) and Rita (Barrett Doss) pause for a special moment in smash Broadway musical (photo by Joan Marcus)
Three-time Tony nominee Karl (On the Twentieth Century, Rocky) is a phenomenon as Connors, a role immortalized by Bill Murray in the film; he is bursting with an infectious charisma and bewitching energy that envelops the audience from the very start and never lets go; it’s an unforgettable, bravura, career-making performance by a rising star. He even has fun showing off the brace he has to wear after having torn his ACL during previews. But he’s helped tremendously by an outstanding book that really understands the heart and soul of the film, which is not a shock, as the book is written by Danny Rubin, who cowrote the movie with director Harold Ramis. Thus, the characters and the plot come first, with plenty of spoken dialogue leading into the superb music and lyrics by Australian comedian, musician, writer, director, and actor Tim Minchin, who also wrote the music and lyrics for Matilda the Musical, earning him a Tony nomination for Best Original Score. (He also played crazed rock star Atticus Fetch on Californication.) The songs flow seamlessly into the story, with some brilliant surprises. Rebecca Faulkenberry (Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Rock of Ages) brings down the house as Nancy Taylor, a conquest of Phil’s who opens the second act with “Playing Nancy,” lamenting her fate both as the character and the actress playing the character. “Well, here I am again the pretty but naive one / the perky breasted, giggly, one-night-stand / Is it my destiny to be a brief diversion / just a detour on the journey of some man?” she asks, wanting to be more than she is. Later, Sanders (Matilda, Peter and the Starcatcher) delivers the beautiful ballad “Night Will Come,” about life’s inevitabilities.
Meteorologist Phil Connors (Andy Karl) can’t stop bumping into insurance salesman Ned Ryerson (John Sanders) in Groundhog Day (photo by Joan Marcus)
Minchin and Rubin don’t sugarcoat anything, instead focusing on the bittersweet nature of human existence. Tony-winning director Matthew Warchus (Matilda, God of Carnage) never allows the show to get boring, despite so much repetition, while Peter Darling and Ellen Kane’s playful choreography weaves its way through Rob Howell’s fast-changing sets amid Christopher Nightingale’s smart orchestrations. (Howell also designed the fun costumes.) And during “Hope,” magician Paul Kieve (Ghost, Matilda) adds some very cool illusions as Phil contemplates the end. There’s a reason the Old Vic production garnered eight Olivier nominations (winning Best Actor and Best Director) and the Broadway version is up for seven Tonys (Best Musical, Best Book, Best Actor, Best Direction, Best Original Score, Best Choreography, and Best Scenic Design): The cast and crew are just that good, from top to bottom, led by Karl, all coming together to create a show to remember, one that, yes, audiences are likely to want to see over and over again and one that, despite its British roots, is profoundly American.
“You call this a film?” Jafar Panahi asks rhetorically about halfway through the revealing documentary This Is Not a Film. After several arrests beginning in July 2009 for supporting the opposition party, the highly influential and respected Iranian filmmaker (Crimson Gold, Offside) was convicted in December 2010 for “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” Although facing a six-year prison sentence and twenty-year ban on making or writing any kind of movie, Panahi is a born storyteller, so he can’t stop himself, no matter the risks. Under house arrest, Panahi has his friend, fellow director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (Lady of the Roses), film him with a handheld DV camera over ten days as Panahi plans out his next movie, speaks with his lawyer, lets his pet iguana climb over him, and is asked to watch a neighbor’s dog, taking viewers “behind the scenes of Iranian filmmakers not making films.” Panahi even pulls out his iPhone to take additional video, photographing New Year’s fireworks that sound suspiciously like a military attack. Panahi is calm throughout, never panicking (although he clearly does not want to take care of the barking dog) and not complaining about his situation, which becomes especially poignant as he watches news reports on the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan.
Writer, actor, and former cabaret star Josef Hader gives a deeply intelligent, intensely gentle and thoughtful performance as Austrian writer Stefan Zweig in Maria Schrader’s moving biopic, Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe, opening May 12 at Lincoln Plaza. The episodic film follows the exiled Jewish writer as he and his second wife, Lotte (Aenne Schwarz), try to find a new home as Fascism takes hold across Europe. He is a man without a country, and it profoundly troubles him; he grows more and more brittle over the course of a prologue, four chapters, and an epilogue that follows him from Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires to Bahia, New York, and Petrópolis between 1936 and 1942. But none of them is his beloved Austria. “Apart from the personal joys your country has given me, apart from its beauty, its daring architecture . . . there is an even more powerful impression that I would like to share with you,” he tells Brazilian foreign minister José Carlos de MacedoSoares (Virgílio Castelo) and an adoring crowd gathered around a gorgeously designed long table for a celebration in his honor at the Jockey Club in Rio. “Every nation, in every generation — and therefore ours too — must find an answer to the most simple and vital question of all: How do we achieve a peaceful coexistence in today’s world despite all our differences in race, class, and religion? And it seems to me that Brazil has found an answer, even though not only its vegetation but also its population are more diverse in color than in Europe. Since my arrival in the Bay of Rio, it has seemed to me like a vision of the future,” he concludes. At the XIV International P.E.N. Congress in Buenos Aires, he is interviewed by reporters who almost demand that he take a public position on Adolf Hitler and events in Germany and Austria, but he refuses to speak ill of his native land. “Where is the line between literature and politics?” his rival, Emil Ludwig, asks from the podium, insisting it is the writer’s responsibility to cry out against injustice. When Belgian author Louis Piérard (Vincent Nemeth) then reads a list of names of banned writers, including Zweig’s, Zweig buries his face in his hands, refusing to claim a place as a martyr for the cause. (However, the newspapers claimed he was crying. “What a disgusting vanity fair,” he wrote to his first wife, portrayed in the film by Barbara Sukowa.)
Gillies Mackinnon’s Whisky Galore! follows in the tradition of such British charmers as Local Hero, Waking Ned Devine, and The Full Monty, another quirky tale of a small community coming together when facing unexpected challenges. It’s 1943, and WWII has not quite made it to the remote (and fictional) Scottish island of Todday, but you wouldn’t know it from the actions of Captain Wagget (Eddie Izzard), an English commander rigidly leading a ragtag unit of islanders just in case Hitler should attack. The town has gone dry, with no alcohol deliveries expected because of the war, putting a damper on everything, including celebrations; most importantly, postmaster Joseph Macroon (Gregor Fisher), a leader on the island, won’t allow his daughters, Catriona (Ellie Kendrick) and Peggy (Naomi Battrick), to marry their intendeds, schoolteacher George Campbell (Kevin Guthrie) and Sergeant Odd (Sean Biggerstaff), respectively, until they can have the proper party, with plenty of booze. George also faces the wrath of his Bible-thumping mother (Ann Louise Ross), who forbids him from marrying Peggy. In desperate need of drink, the town gets excited when a cargo ship runs aground just off the island, transporting tens of thousands of export-only alcohol for a cabinet minister. While Captain Waggett seeks to protect the bounty from thieves — his colleagues and neighbors — a group of thirsty islanders, including Joseph, George, Odd, Sammy (Iain Robertson), the Biffer (Antony Strachan), Old Roddy (Sean Scanlan), and Angus (Brian Pettifer), devise a plan to obtain the contraband whisky, right under Waggett’s nose.
