Marvin (Christian Borle) and Whizzer (Andrew Rannells) fall in love and become part of an unusual extended family in FALSETTOS (photo by Joan Marcus)
Walter Kerr Theatre
219 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 8, $42-$149
www.lct.org
I saw Falsettos, James Lapine’s new revival of his and William Finn’s beloved musical, during the Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS curtain-call appeal season, when cast members across the Great White Way ask audiences to donate to the nonprofit organization that has been helping those with HIV/AIDS for nearly thirty years. Andrew Rannells made the heartfelt announcement, and people gave money as they left the Walter Kerr Theatre. Although it’s always a poignant moment, it was especially powerful after this show, which came together in the 1980s and 1990s, featuring a heartbreaking plot in which Rannells’s character, Whizzer, contracts a mysterious, deadly disease in 1981. The first act, March of the Falsettos, debuted in 1981 and takes place two years earlier, when the “gay plague” was just beginning; the second act, Falsettoland, premiered in 1990 and is set in 1981. The acts merged into Falsettos in 1992, earning seven Tony nominations and winning two awards, for Best Book and Best Original Score. (There was also an earlier one-act musical about some of the same characters, Trousers, that ran in 1979 and then was revamped in 1985.) So this Lincoln Center revival of Falsettos arrived on Broadway with quite a history; you could feel the excitement before the show started, as the theater was abuzz with friends hugging and chatting so much that the ushers had a hard time convincing everyone to take their seat. At last it got under way, with Marvin (Christian Borle), Whizzer, Jason (Anthony Rosenthal), Mendel (Brandon Uranowitz), and Trina (Stephanie J. Block) singing “Four Jews in a Room Bitching.” And from that moment on, the legend of Falsettos escaped me.
Jason (Anthony Rosenthal) swings for the fences in Lincoln Center revival of FALSETTOS on Broadway (photo by Joan Marcus)
Directed by Lapine (Act One, Finn’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), who wrote the book with composer and lyricist Finn, Falsettos is a groundbreaking show about a new kind of extended, dysfunctional family. Marvin has left his wife, Trina, and their eleven-year-old son, Jason, for his new love, Whizzer, but he still thinks everyone can be together. “I want a tight-knit family / I want a group that harmonizes / I want my wife and kid and friend / To pretend / Time will mend / Our pain,” Marvin sings. Trina has a session with Marvin’s psychiatrist, Mendel, who instantly falls in love with her. “It’s so upsetting when I found / That what’s rectangular is round / I mean, it stinks / I mean, he’s queer / And me, I’m just a freak,” Trina explains in “I’m Breaking Down,” a showstopping number by Block that brings down the house. Two years later, lesbian couple Charlotte (Tracie Thoms) and Cordelia (Betsy Wolfe) have moved in next door and Jason is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, beset by adolescent worries about girls and more. “Would they come, though, / If they were invited, / And not laugh / At my Hebrew / And not laugh / At my father and his friends,” he opines while displaying poor baseball skills. But when Whizzer gets sick, the characters all take a new look at their lives. “Something bad is happening / Something very bad is happening / Something stinks, something immoral / Something so bad that words have lost their meaning,” Charlotte, a doctor, declares. “Rumors fly and tales abound / Stories echo underground! / Something bad / Is spreading, spreading, spreading / ’Round!”
For most of the show, David Rockwell’s set consists of a gray Rubik’s Cube-like square that the cast can take apart and put back together, creating all kinds of furniture and objects, a clever metaphor for the makeshift family they form. The music was revolutionary for its time, with unexpected starts and stops, rises and falls, and multiple pitch changes as various characters chime in and conversationally sing on top of one another (the complex orchestrations are by Michael Starobin); the lyrics, however, are now dated, and the subplot of Jason’s Bar Mitzvah is an awkward device leading to the teary conclusion. Tony nominee Block (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 9 to 5: The Musical) is sensational, giving a don’t-miss performance as a strong woman whose life is turned upside down and inside out. Tony nominee Rannells (The Book of Mormon, Girls) is superb as the beautifully sly and sweetly vain Whizzer; together Block and Rannells overwhelm two-time Tony winner Borle (Peter and the Starcatcher, Something Rotten!). Tony nominee Uranowitz (An American in Paris) and Rosenthal (Newsies, A Christmas Story) provide fine support. Falsettos is a uniquely situated coming-of-age story as characters try to find their place in a difficult life, and in an extended family that was unusual for its time. Even if it’s not quite as earth-shaking today, the show’s emotional landscape remains sadly relevant.
After an eight-year break from directing, Noah Baumbach returned with the exceptional, unexpected drama The Squid and the Whale. You’ll think you’ll know just where this semiautobiographical 2005 Sundance Film Festival award winner (for writing and directing) and New York Film Festival hit is going — yet another painfully realistic look into the dissolution of a New York City family — but lo and behold, The Squid and the Whale will surprise you over and over again. And even when it does head toward the cliché route, it adds just the right twist to keep things fresh. Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and Joan Berkman (Laura Linney) are reaching the end of their marriage, and their two sons, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline), aren’t handling it very well; Walt is taking credit for having written Pink Floyd’s “Hey You,” and Frank has developed the curious habit of pleasuring himself and then – well, you’ll have to see it to believe it. And while Joan hits the dating scene and has begun writing, Bernard is becoming a woolly has-been author who just might be getting the hots for one of his sexy students (Anna Paquin). Set in 1986 Park Slope (there are scenes shot in Prospect Park, the Santa Fe Grill, and other familiar Brooklyn locations) and at the American Museum of Natural History, The Squid and the Whale features sharp dialogue, well-developed characters, and outstanding acting from a terrific ensemble that includes several rising stars. The soundtrack includes Lou Reed’s great “Street Hassle” and a score, composed by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (of Luna), that borrows liberally from Risky Business, of all things. The Squid and the Whale is screening December 5 at 7:00 at Metrograph, with Baumbach (
Jimmy Stewart’s most famous Christmas movie might be It’s a Wonderful Life, but that doesn’t mean it’s his best. That distinction belongs to the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch black-and-white romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner, which is screening December 2 and 3 in the Museum of the Moving Image series “See It Big! Holiday Films.” (It’s a Wonderful Life is also being shown December 3.) Stewart stars as Alfred Kralik, a serious-minded longtime clerk at the Budapest gift shop Matuschek & Co., serving as the right-hand man to owner Hugo Matuschek (The Wizard of Oz’s Frank Morgan), who relies on his star employee’s honesty and expertise. Also working at the store is Pirovitch (Felix Bressart), a timid family man who hides every time Mr. Matuschek asks for an opinion; the shy Flora Kaczek (Sara Haden); the brash, ambitious delivery boy Pepi Katona (William Tracy); and the self-involved would-be bon vivant Ferencz Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut). When Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) shows up looking for a job, Kralik tries to quickly dismiss her, but she ends up charming Mr. Matuschek and getting hired. She and Kralik, her direct superior, bicker constantly, each one hoping that a romantic pen pal will make their dreary lives much brighter, especially as Christmas approaches. But little do they know the love letters that they are so carefully crafting are actually to each other, their secretive literary relationship a far cry from their actual daily one.