Who: Kelli O’Hara, Bill Irwin, Lauren Worsham, Christopher Fitzgerald, Jonathan Freeman, Chris Sullivan, Jeffrey Schecter, Ted Sperling, singers from MasterVoices and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s
What: Rare revival of Babes in Toyland
Where: Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, 881 Seventh Ave. at West 57th St., 212-247-7800
When: Thursday, April 27, $10-$150, 7:00
Why: Formerly known as the Collegiate Chorale, MasterVoices is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary with a one-night-only revival of Victor Herbert and Glen MacDonough’s 1903 operetta, Babes in Toyland, with the full original score and orchestrations. Singing such songs as “Toyland,” “March of the Toys,” and “I Can’t Do the Sum,” some of which never made it to the 1929 and 1930 Broadway revivals, will be Kelli O’Hara as Contrary Mary, Bill Irwin as Master Toymaker, Lauren Worsham as Jane, Christopher Fitzgerald as Alan, Jonathan Freeman as Uncle Barnaby, Michael Kostroff as Chief Inspector Marmaduke, Chris Sullivan as Gonzorgo, Blair Brown as the Narrator, Jay Armstrong Johnson as Tom Tom, and Jeffrey Schecter as Roderigo, in addition to the 130 members of MasterVoices and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, directed and conducted by MasterVoices artistic director Ted Sperling. The 1903 operetta was turned into a classic Laurel & Hardy film (also known as The March of the Wooden Soldiers) as well as a 1961 Disney musical starring Ray Bolger, Annette Funicello, Tommy Sands, and Ed Wynn, a 1986 television movie with Keanu Reeves, Richard Mulligan, Eileen Brennan, Drew Barrymore, Jill Schoelen, and Pat Morita, and a 1997 animated film with Raphael Sbarge, Christopher Plummer, Charles Nelson Reilly, Jim Belushi, and Bronson Pinchot, so it’s always attracted a rather diverse cast.
Albert Serra’s The Death of Louis XIV is the crowning achievement of Jean-Pierre Léaud’s majestic sixty-year career. Léaud first came to prominence in the late 1950s and 1960s, starring in François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel films (The 400 Blows, Stolen Kisses) and classics by Jean-Luc Godard (Masculin Féminin, Made in U.S.A.). In The Death of Louis XIV, we get to watch the seventy-two-year-old actor play a character dying, very slowly, portraying the last three and a half weeks of the Sun King’s life, the end of a seventy-two-year reign, the longest in French history. Based on actual accounts of the king’s death, including the memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon and Philippe de Courcillon de Dangeau, the film takes place primarily in Louis XIV’s bedchamber, where he is watched over by his valet (Marc Susini as Blouin), doctors (Patrick d’Assumçao as Fagon, Bernard Belin as Mareschal), and priests (Jacques Henric as Father Le Tellier, Philippe Dion as Cardinal de Rohan) and visited by sycophantic but concerned courtiers. Wearing a spectacular wig that makes him look like an elderly Max from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, the king lies on his back, seldom speaking or moving, as he is poked and prodded and fed and the doctors consider amputating his infected leg. He gets polite applause when he swallows a bite of egg. A possible charlatan (Vicenç Altaió as Le Brun) gives him a supposedly magic elixir. He proffers advice to his grandson, Louis, Duke of Orléans (Francis Montaulard), who is destined to succeed him. Desperate to maintain his dignity, the king is soon as helpless as a newborn baby, dribbling as the end nears.
