this week in broadway

ENGLISH FIRST: A TICKING TIME BOMB

Omid (Hadi Tabbal) and Marjan (Marjan Neshat) form an intimate bond in Sanaz Toossi’s English (photo by Joan Marcus)

ENGLISH
Todd Haimes Theatre
227 West Forty-Second St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 2, $72-$313
www.roundabouttheatre.org

It might be difficult for non-English speakers to learn the world’s most spoken language, but Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play, English, has made a smooth transition from the Linda Gross Theater to Broadway. In fact, the Atlantic-Roundabout coproduction is even more powerful now given the current US administration’s war on illegal (and legal) immigration and America First policies.

According to the Oxford Digital Institute, English “is the language of international communication,” spoken in more than one hundred countries even though it “is a hard language to learn due to its complex grammar rules, pronunciation variations, and vast vocabulary . . . riddled with exceptions and irregularities, making it difficult to master. Additionally, English has a diverse range of accents and dialects, making it challenging for nonnative speakers to understand and communicate effectively.”

Everything I wrote in my review of the off-Broadway premiere in February 2022 still holds true: Concepts of home and personal identity lie at the heart of Toossi’s poignant and involving work, which continues at the Todd Haimes Theatre through March 2. The play is set in a small classroom in Karaj, Iran, in 2008, where Marjan (Marjan Neshat) is teaching basic English to four students who are planning on taking the TOEFL, the Test of English as a Foreign Language, for different reasons. Marjan insists that they speak only English in the class rather than Farsi, their native tongue.

Roya (Pooya Mohseni) wants to be able to speak with her new granddaughter, who lives in Canada with Roya’s son and his wife, who are not teaching the child Farsi. “I hope you not forget. Nate is not your name,” she tells her son, who used to be known as Nader.

Elham (Tala Ashe) has passed her MCATs but needs to learn English so she can study gastroenterology in Australia. “My accent is a war crime,” she angrily admits.

Omid (Hadi Tabbal) has an upcoming green card interview in Dubai, but his English is already excellent, nearly accentless. When asked why people learn language, he says, “To bring the inside to the outside.”

Goli (Ava Lalezarzadeh) is an eighteen-year-old girl who believes Ricky Martin is a poet. “People like accent,” she says, not ashamed of who she is.

After a presentation by Goli doesn’t go particularly well, Marjan, a married woman who spent nine years in Manchester before moving back to Iran with her family, says, “Don’t be sorry! We were speaking English with each other. I think it’s one of the greatest things two people can do together.”

As Elham’s frustration with English builds — she repeatedly uses Farsi in class, accumulating negative points — she gets into disagreements with everyone else, speaking frankly, without apology. “Goli, people hear your accent and they go oh my god it is so funny you are so stupid. . . . Okay if I have accent, bad TOEFL score. Omid has accent, no green card. Roya’s accent? Disaster.” Some of them equate the attempted erasure of their Iranian accent when speaking English with the loss of their identity, as if they are surrendering their unique culture. “Don’t you think people can do us the courtesy of learning our names?” Elham says to Marjan, who went by “Mary” when she lived in England.

“English isn’t your enemy,” Marjan insists. “English is not to be conquered. Embrace it. You can be all the things you are in Farsi in English, too. I always liked myself better in English.” But Marjan won’t acknowledge to herself that that is exactly the problem. “I feel like I’m disappearing,” she says later to Omid.

Four students and a teacher learn about life and language in English (photo by Joan Marcus)

English is beautifully written by Toossi (Wish You Were Here) and gracefully directed by Knud Adams (I’m Revolting, Pulitzer Prize winner Primary Trust), giving each character room to develop. Although they go back and forth between English and Farsi, whenever they speak English, the actors use Iranian accents, but when they talk in Farsi, they lose the accent, sounding like plain old longtime Americans, a device that serves as a metaphor for colonialism, nation-building, and ethnocentrism.

One of the only changes from the Atlantic version is that the song Goli plays for show-and-tell has switched from Shakira’s “Whenever, Wherever” to Martin’s “She Bangs,” in which the Puerto Rican heartthrob sings, “Talk to me. Tell me your name. / You blow me off like it is all the same. / You lit a fuse and now I’m ticking away like a bomb. / Yeah baby.”

Marsha Ginsberg’s revolving cube set is open on two sides, revealing the inside and the outside; the movement feels even stronger this time, more precarious. When the rotation stops so a scene can begin, a stanchion might block part of your view of a character, as if they are disappearing.

Enver Chakartash’s costumes meld traditional Iranian clothing, like head scarves, with American accents. The cast is exceptional, quickly forming a cohesive unit; it probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to assume they have each had to deal with the issue of making sacrifices to learn a new language and culture in some way, as all of them, in addition to the bilingual Toossi, were either born in Iran or Lebanon or their parents were. English was actually Toossi’s NYU thesis, written in response to Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban and anti-immigration policies.

About halfway through the play, Marjan tells the class, “If you are here to learn English, I am going to ask you to agree that here in this room we are not Iranian. We are not even on this continent. Today I will ask you to feel any pull you have to your Iranian-ness and let it go. Keep it outside the wall of this classroom. In this room, we are native speakers. We think in English. We laugh in English. Our inhales, our exhales — we fill our lungs in English. No more Farsi. Can we agree to that?” Toossi understands the kind of sacrifices it takes to make a new life in a new country.

In the original production, Farsi was never actually spoken, but on Broadway, the final words are now in the Iranian tongue, a sharp parting shot at what’s happening in America and around the world.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FROM NASHVILLE TO NEW ORLEANS: TWO JUKEBOX MUSICALS HEADING IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS

Louis Armstrong (James Monroe Iglehart) waves goodbye to Broadway in A Wonderful World (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

A WONDERFUL WORLD: THE LOUIS ARMSTRONG MUSICAL
Studio 54
254 West 54th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 23, $69-$278
louisarmstrongmusical.com

Jukebox musicals generally come in two basic kinds of flavors: somewhat-fact-based accounts of superstars (Tina Turner, Cher, the Temptations, Michael Jackson, Neil Diamond, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Carole King) and original narratives based on the work of one composer, performer, or era (Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill; Britney Spears, Once Upon a One More Time; Max Martin, & Juliet; the Go-Go’s, Head Over Heels; the 1970s, Rock of Ages).

A pair of current shows use contrasting approaches, but while one has been extended several times, the other has posted an early closing notice.

At Studio 54, A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical tells the fact-based story of the American trumpeter and singer known as Satchmo (James Monroe Iglehart), concentrating on the songs he performed throughout his career, while at the West End Theatre, Music City relates a fictional contemporary tale of the search for fame and love, consisting of tunes by country songwriter J. T. Harding, who has penned hits for Uncle Kracker, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley, Darius Rucker, and others.

A Wonderful World features nearly thirty jazz and jazz-adjacent tunes as the narrative divides Armstrong’s story into four sections, each with a different woman by his side: tough-talking prostitute Daisy Parker (Dionne Figgins) in New Orleans, jazz pianist Lil Hardin (Jennie Harney-Fleming) in Chicago, dancer Alpha Smith (Kim Exum) in Hollywood, and Cotton Club performer Lucille Wilson (Darlesia Cearcy) in New York. Although the song list is impressive, with such numbers as “Basin Street Blues/Bourbon Street Parade,” “Up a Lazy River,” “Black and Blue,” “Heebie Jeebies,” “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans,” and “After You’re Gone,” many of them are given short shrift rather than full renditions, matching the lack of insight into what made Armstrong the larger-than-life figure he was.

Aside from finding out about his four wives, there is little new audiences will learn about Louis; even when it deals with racism, the focus gets lost, outshone by Armstrong’s huge showmanship and popular success and all his preening. Adam Koch and Steven Royal’s heavily blue sets are glitzy and Toni-Leslie James’s costumes are flashy, but the book, by Aurin Squire, conceived by Andrew Delaplaine and Christopher Renshaw, merely brushes the surface, and the direction, by Iglehart and Christina Sajous, is worshipful where it should be articulate.

Figgins (Memphis, Motown), Harney-Fleming (Hamilton, The Color Purple), Exum (The Book of Mormon), and Cearcy (The Color Purple, Ragtime) steal the show from Tony winner Iglehart (Aladdin, Hamilton), who seems to be playing a caricature of Armstrong, never reaching the necessary depth. Dewitt Fleming Jr. (The Tap Dance Kid, Pearl) gives nuance to Lincoln Perry, better known as Stepin Fetchit, while Gavin Gregory (The Gershwins’ Porgy & Bess, The Color Purple) plays hard-luck bandleader “King” Oliver.

A Wonderful World recently announced that it will be closing early, on February 23; overall, it was a missed opportunity.

Music City brings Nashville to the Upper West Side (photo by Ashley Garrett)

MUSIC CITY
West End Theatre
Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew
263 West Eighty-Sixth St. at West End Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 2, $68 – $130.50
bedlam.org

Despite an exciting, promising first act, Bedlam’s Music City: A New Musical, which opened on November 17 and has been extended three times, the latest until March 2, also ends up being a missed opportunity.

Last year, I visited Nashville with friends and fell in love with the live music pouring out of every bar, club, and honky tonk and into the crowded streets, where people were partying well into the night. Director Eric Tucker and book writer Peter Zinn capture that energy on Clifton Chadick’s lifelike set, which transforms the theater at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on the Upper West Side into the Wicked Tickle, a seedy watering hole in East Nashville. The audience sits at small tables as if they are guests at the club, where they can get drinks, check out the (fake) memorabilia on the walls, and whoop it up as the narrative unfolds around them.

About a half hour before curtain, an open mic begins, introducing some of the characters, so get there early and soak in the realistic atmosphere. The show proper begins with brothers TJ (Stephen Michael Spencer) and Drew (Jonathan Judge-Russo) performing their rousing “Y’allsome,” in which they declare, “Y’all ain’t scared to have a little fun. / Whiskey shots from a water gun. / Ain’t slowing down — / And here comes the sun! / Y‘allsome party people. / Y’allsome crazy mothers. / Y’allsome freakin’ good lookin’ country music lovers! / Hankin’ and drankin’ all wrecking ball shaking the walls.”

When they’re done, Drew, who comes up with the titles and ideas for the songs, and TJ, who writes the music and lyrics, are approached by Leeanne (Leenya Rideout), a slick record executive who wants to hear their demo, as she’s scouting tunes for country superstar Stucky Stiles’s (Andrew Rothenberg) next tour and album.

They don’t have a demo, so Drew decides to ask local drug dealer and open-mic regular Benjamin Bakerman (Rothenberg) to invest two grand in their band so they can afford studio time. Bakerman instead offers them the opportunity to earn the cash by delivering “cookies” for him. TJ is initially against the plan, but Drew talks him into it.

Soon TJ is handing off bags of meth to such junkies as Tammy (Rideout), a former wannabe country star. “Bet you think you’re gonna be a big ol’ star one day just like everyone else in this shithole town,” she says, lighting up her pipe. “I remember when I used to walk around Nashville with a guitar on my back. I wish somebody woulda told me back then how ridiculous I looked.”

At the next open mic, TJ instantly falls for a young woman named 23 (Casey Shuler) as she plays a deeply personal ballad, singing, “Like soldiers coming home from war / Who am I to want something more?”

With money in their pockets, TJ and Drew start working on their demo in drummer Newt’s (Drew Bastian) studio. Meanwhile, Stucky wants to be recording his own songs instead of party tunes written by others, but Leeanne tells him that ship has sailed.

TJ and 23 connect and start writing together, Stucky comes to the Wicked Tickle, and relationships get twisted and complicated as Bakerman keeps putting pressure on TJ to sell his product.

Drew (Jonathan Judge-Russo) and TJ (Stephen Michael Spencer) contemplate a shot at the big time in Music City (photo by Ashley Garrett)

Unfortunately, Tucker (Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet, Sense and Sensibility) and Zinn (Rumspringa, Somewhere with You) throw in the kitchen sink in the second act, heaping on trauma after trauma, leading to a mind-boggling finale that comes out of nowhere and pulls everything that happened before down with it. In addition, John Heginbotham’s choreography, performed by Corry J Ethridge and Holly Wilder, seems to have come from a completely different show.

It’s a shame, because nearly all the other elements are in place: The backup band, featuring Ann Klein on guitars, Tony Tino on bass, Bastian on drums, and emcee and music director Julianne B. Merrill on keyboards, is excellent, keeping things hopping throughout, and the cast is charming and engaging, especially Spencer (Clyde’s, Julius Caesar) and Shuler (Titanic, Robin Hood), who make an adorable couple. The twenty songs, which include “Smile” (a hit for Uncle Kracker), “Somewhere with You” (Chesney), and “Alone with You” (Jake Owen), range across the country spectrum like a live jukebox, although “Sangria” (Shelton), which gets the spotlight, doesn’t carry enough weight here.

Then again, the PBRs are cheap, the staging is fun, and, hey, it’s Nashville in New York, which is some kind of wonderful.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ROMEO + JULIET ON BROADWAY CONQUERS KING LEAR AT THE SHED

Sam Gold’s Romeo + Juliet is made for Gen Z but can be enjoyed by all (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

ROMEO + JULIET
Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 16, $159-$1002
romeoandjulietnyc.com

Last fall, when I saw Sam Gold’s Romeo + Juliet at Circle in the Square and Kenneth Branagh’s King Lear at the Shed, I was not anticipating being charmed by the former and disappointed in the latter.

Tony and Obie winner Gold has had decidedly mixed results with controversial and often confusing star-driven adaptations of such Shakespeare plays as Macbeth and King Lear on Broadway, Othello at New York Theatre Workshop, and Hamlet at the Public.

Meanwhile, Branagh is widely considered the finest interpreter of the Bard since Laurence Olivier, both onstage, such as his immersive version of Macbeth at Park Ave. Armory and his 1987 and 2016 takes on Romeo and Juliet, and his well-received cinematic adaptations of Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing.

Lear is a personal favorite of mine; Branagh’s is the eighth major production I’ve seen in the last twenty years. I have not had as much luck with R&J, from David Leveaux’s flat 2013 Broadway revival to Hansol Jung’s profoundly perplexing 2023 effort at the Lynn Angelson, although I adored Michael Mayer’s & Juliet, a musical imagining of what might have happened if Juliet had survived.

Closing February 16, Gold’s Romeo + Juliet is a plush and lively, radical AMSR presentation tailored for Gen Z, complete with an Insta-friendly plethora of stuffed teddy bears onstage and in the lobby. When the audience enters the theater in the round, the actors are already hanging out, talking, dancing, and dissing with each other, pushing around a shopping cart of stuffed animals, skateboarding, and lounging on plastic furniture. They wear sneakers, hoodies, and a Hello Kitty backpack. On one side, a giant pink teddy bear watches in silence while across the space a DJ spins Jack Antonoff’s thumping music.

The youthful cast features the hot Rachel Zegler as Juliet and the even hotter Kit Connor as Romeo, with Tony nominee Gabby Beans as Mercutio and the friar, Sola Fadiran as both Capulet and Lady Capulet, Taheen Modak as Benvolio, Tommy Dorfman as the nurse and Tybalt, and Gían Pérez as Samson, Paris, and Peter. The doubling and tripling often makes it hard to know who is who, and some actors do better with the tweaked dialogue than others. Two songs are completely unnecessary, and the use of a handheld microphone is baffling, as is the handling of a poison jug.

But much of the staging is dazzling, from Juliet’s bed, which drops slowly from the rafters, to a colorful expanse of flowers that emerges from the floor. Yes, the F-bomb appears twice, but surprises await those who fully invest themselves in this contemporary tale made for this moment in time.

Kenneth Branagh’s ritualistic King Lear goes astray early (photo by Marc J. Franklin / courtesy the Shed)

Unfortunately, Branagh, codirecting with Rob Ashford and Lucy Skilbeck, struggles with his streamlined adaptation, which, at a rushed two hours without intermission, has cut several key scenes and famous lines, and without the proper character development it’s often hard to differentiate among the minor characters, who are played by recent graduates of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and look like survivors from Game of Thrones. Branagh, who is sixty-four, does not portray Lear as an aged, failing man but as a younger warrior, which alters the plot’s narrative center.

Like Gold’s R+J, Branagh’s staging involves a large sphere, in this case an imposing UFO-like disc that hovers over the action, occasionally moving and tilting, onto which ominous weather patterns are projected. (The script identifies the setting as “outer space.”) It also leaves in one of the songs, which feels extraneous given the show’s shortened length.

Thus, my initial thoughts that Gold would pale in comparison to Branagh were misbegotten.

“O teach me how I should forget to think!” Romeo tells Benvolio.

Who woulda thunk it?

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT: A (DYS)FUNCTIONAL FAMILY SATIRE

The Dahls have a Christmas to remember — or forget — in Cult of Love (photo by Joan Marcus)

CULT OF LOVE
Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Through February 2
2st.com

I started to call Leslye Headland’s hilarious, on-target Broadway debut, Cult of Love, the story of a dysfunctional family at Christmas, but I stopped myself because it sounded redundant; has there ever been a holiday-themed play about a functional family?

Directed with plenty of pizzazz and panache by Obie winner and two-time Tony nominee Trip Cullman, the hundred-minute satire introduces us to the musical Dahl family, who come together on Christmas Eve at their farmhouse in Connecticut to sing songs and do battle. Patriarch Bill (David Rasche) is a piano-playing Pollyanna and a hugger who prefers to avoid arguments; his children think he might be suffering from dementia, because how else can he be so positive? Matriarch Ginny (Mare Winningham) strums the guitar, sings songs about Jesus, and plays favorites with her children, even though she fails to see it.

The Dahls’ eldest progeny, Mark (Zachary Quinto), is a law clerk in DC, almost became a priest before abandoning Christianity, and is having marital problems with his wife, Rachel (Molly Bernard), who converted from Judaism and drinks too much at family events.

Older daughter Evie (Rebecca Henderson) recently got back from her Italian honeymoon with her new spouse, Pippa Ferguson (Roberta Colindrez); both have successful careers in brand management.

Third child Johnny (Christopher Sears) is the ever-late prodigal son who has been in and out of rehab for years; everyone is excited when they learn he is bringing a mystery guest, Loren Montgomery (Barbie Ferreira).

The baby of the group, twentysomething Diana Dahl Bennett (Shailene Woodley), is a Bible thumper with a six-month old son with her husband, Episcopal priest James Bennett (Christopher Lowell), and she is pregnant again.

Music is the only thing a Connecticut family can agree on in hilarious Broadway satire (photo by Joan Marcus)

Over the course of a fretful, highly volatile evening, the Dahls and their significant others discuss racism, homophobia, smoking, molestation, mental health, the Mexican wedding cookies known as polvorones, and tolerance in between picking up instruments (guitars, banjo, ukulele, melodica, washboard, sleigh bells, maracas) and breaking into traditional religious songs as well as tunes by Radiohead, the Fleet Foxes, and Sufjan Stevens, displaying gorgeous harmonies and pure joy that, momentarily, put aside their seemingly endless issues with one another.

“Evie! Are you picking a fight during Christmas carols?” Mark cries out. Evie responds, “I’m questioning the problematic lyrics, Mark!” Diana concludes, “You ruin it when you do that.”

When Evie wants to talk about Bill’s health, Mark argues, “Is Christmas really the best time for that?” Evie explains, “Christmas is exactly the time to talk about the things we never talk about.”

John Lee Beatty’s cluttered Christmas-themed set feels homey and lived in, with windows and glass doors that offer peaks at what is going on in the outside world, where perhaps sanity is possible. Jacinth Greywoode’s expert musical direction will make you wonder if there will be a cast album. The ensemble is terrific as Cullman guides them through an ever-more-claustrophobic situation.

“You must be having a wonderful time,” Bill says to Loren, who answers for her and the audience when she replies, “Oh, sure. I love the singing, the lesbian drama. It’s all great.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

EUREKA! STRIKING GOLD ON BROADWAY

The executive committee at Eureka Day School has its work cut out for it (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

EUREKA DAY
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 16, $48-$321
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day is the funniest play of the year.

Five years ago, I called Colt Coeur’s East Coast premiere of Eureka Day at walkerspace an “uproarious satire.” It’s even better in the Broadway debut of the Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman, succeeding where a similarly themed show, Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, about a woke quartet of grown-ups trying to put on an acceptable, PC holiday show for young schoolchildren, failed. The fall 2018 iteration of The Thanksgiving Play at Playwrights Horizons was fresh and original and utterly hilarious; its 2023 Broadway version was stale and outdated, like dried-out leftovers.

That doesn’t happen with Eureka Day, which strikes gold for the second time.

The story takes place in the fall of 2018 in the library of the Eureka Day School in Berkeley, California. The executive committee is meeting, and the opening dialogue sets the stage for what’s to come.

Meiko: Personally no / I don’t find it offensive / the term itself is not offensive.
Eli: It’s descriptive.
Suzanne: I think she’s saying / I’m not putting words in your mouth / she’s saying it’s not offensive / but when you contextualize it in that way. . . .
Meiko: I find / the best way not to put words in someone’s mouth? / is not to put words in their mouth.
Don: Okay okay.
Suzanne: Sorry sorry.
Meiko: It’s fine / what I meant was / that we’d want to make it absolutely clear that it’s optional / that it’s not / Either / Or.
Suzanne: Right / and also / that the inclusion of the term on this list at all is / I think / inappropriate? / and that some people may / With Good Reason / find its inclusion offensive.
Eli: No no yeah / I just wonder though / by leaving it off / is it possible some people would find its absence offensive?
Don: You’re concerned / that it could be a sort of / erasure / of people’s experience?
Eli: Right / if our Core Operating Principle here is that everyone should / Feel Seen / by this community.
Suzanne: There’s no benefit in Feeling Seen if you’re simultaneously Being Othered / right?
Meiko: Well / no yeah.
Don: Carina, did you want to / do you want to / offer anything?
Carina: Oh, I / I’m happy to defer / I don’t know that I’ve really formed a strong [opinion.]
Don: That’s perfectly all right / even just your gut instinct is [welcomed] / this is an Open Room / we welcome your unique perspective.

The discussion is about what to include in the school’s online dropdown menu where parents are supposed to click off their kid’s race/ethnicity/heritage, but it could deal with so many other subjects that are part of the committee’s efforts to be as inclusive as possible in any and all situations.

“Sounds like there’s a lot to unpack here,” Don says, but there’s a lot to unpack everywhere in this outrageously hilarious satire.

The white, childless Don (Bill Irwin) is the head of the committee and prefers not to take sides, ending each meeting with a quote from the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi. The well-off, white Suzanne (Jessica Hecht) is a longtime board member who has put each of her six children through Eureka Day and regularly supplies the library with books. The white, Jewish Eli (Thomas Middleditch) is a wealthy tech bro with an open marriage and one son in the school. He is secretly dating the half-Japanese Meiko (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz), who has a daughter in the school and spends much of her time knitting rather than actively participating in the committee’s proceedings. And the biracial Carina (Amber Gray) is filling the spot saved for the new member, hesitant to share her views until she can’t stop herself as it all becomes ridiculously absurd.

When a student contracts the mumps and the health department sends an official notice explaining that nonvaccinated children will be barred from attending school until they get their shot, the committee calls for a hybrid Community Activated Conversation, with parents commenting from home on the chat, which delves into vaccination efficacy, conspiracy theories, personal and public responsibility, and plenty of vicious name-calling.

Christian Burns: Wait. HALF the school is antivaxxers? Seriously????
Sandra Blaise: “Anti-vaxxer” is not really a term I’m comfortable with. It’s actually something said out of IGNORANCE.
Karen Sapp: Exactly! Protect your children by EDUCATING YOURSELVES.
Tyler Coppins: OR, Protect your children by VACCINATING THEM.
Courtney Riley: Wait what???? Why should we be forced to keep our kids home because you CHOOSE to endanger yours?
Doug Wong: Okay here’s another idea: what if we made the quarantine days OPTIONAL.
Orson Mankel: Doug, that’s idiotic. If the “problem” is that we won’t have enough kids in class, why make the problem worse???
Christian Burns: TRUE FACTS: Moonlanding wasn’t faked. 9/11 wasn’t an inside job. Global Warming is real. Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism.
Karen Stacin: Mock all you want, but I saw so many bad things as a nurse. That’s why I decided I would NEVER subject my children to Western Medicine of any kind.
Christian Burns: Remember that time I got crippled from polio? Oh, no, wait. I didn’t. Cause I got FUCKING VACCINATED.

Things only devolve from there in side-splitting ways that are even funnier — and more frightening — now that President-elect Donald Trump has nominated the controversial Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

Community Activated Conversation at Eureka Day goes terribly wrong in hilarious Broadway play (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Ancient Greek polymath Archimedes is often credited with coining the exclamation Eureka! upon discovering what became known as the Archimedes Principle, a scientific theory about buoyancy. So it makes sense that Spector has named the woke school in question Eureka Day. Todd Rosenthal’s set features blue chairs, red, orange, and yellow trapezoid tables that are rearranged into geometric shapes, posters of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Albert Einstein, Maya Angelou, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Michelle Obama, and a sign that reads “Social Justice” under a placard that proclaims, “Berkeley Stands United Against Hate.” Clint Ramos’s naturalistic suburban costumes are highlighted by the long, fussy frocks worn by Suzanne.

Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro (August: Osage County, This Is Our Youth) directs with a sweet glee, while sound designers Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen know just when the laughs are coming, particularly during the Community Activated Conversation, when David Bengali’s projections take over and the characters’ discussion fades into the background.

The ensemble is outstanding: Tony nominee Gray (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, Hadestown) is cool and collected as the determined Carina, who can’t believe what the board is doing; two-time Tony nominee Hecht (Summer, 1976, Fiddler on the Roof) is delightful as the nervous, jittery Suzanne, punctuating her dialogue with wonderful sighs and grunts; Tony winner Irwin (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, On Beckett) is tender as the mild-mannered, oblivious Don; Emmy nominee Middleditch (Silicon Valley) adds humanity to the selfish Eli; and Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz (How the Light Gets In, Unrivaled) beautifully captures Meiko’s evolving value system as she reconsiders being part of the team.

As funny as Eureka Day is, it tackles some hard-hitting subjects, from race and income inequality to religion and health care; the executive committee is so wrapped up in DEI that they miss what is right in front of them, stirring up more trouble with their inability to follow old-fashioned rules and face the truth of what is really happening in their school, to the students.

At one point, the other members of the committee explain to Carina how there was controversy over a recent eighth-grade production of Peter Pan. “I don’t know what they were thinking,” Suzanne recalls. “We came to what I thought was a very [good agreement] / we set the production in Outer Space / and that really solved the [problem],” Don says. “So then all the kids got to fly,” Eli adds, as if that were the only solution, while Carina can barely accept what she has gotten herself into.

Fortunately, Eureka Day does not have to worry about any such controversies, as it gets it all right, flying high from start to finish.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SURVIVAL AT SEA AND ON BROADWAY: SWEPT AWAY

A talented cast tries to stay afloat in Swept Away (photo by Emilio Madrid)

SWEPT AWAY
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 29, $56-$216
sweptawaymusical.com

When I first heard that a show called Swept Away was coming to Broadway, I wondered how — and why — anyone would make a musical out of Lina Wertmüller’s 1974 class-clash shipwreck romantic comedy, Swept Away . . . by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August, which was remade in 2002 by Guy Ritchie starring his then-wife, Madonna. I eventually found out that it is in fact based primarily on Mignonette, the 2004 album by Americana roots-rock favorites the Avett Brothers, inspired by the true story of an English yacht that sank in 1884, leaving the crew of four men struggling to survive in a lifeboat, including the captain and teenage cabin boy Richard Parker — the name given to the Bengal tiger in the fictional shipwreck tale The Life of Pi. (There are also songs from such other Avett Brothers records as Emotionalism, The Carpenter, and True Sadness.)

Swept Away is now experiencing a different, unexpected type of survival. Last week, the ninety-minute show, starring Tony winner John Gallagher Jr. (Spring Awakening) and Tony nominee Stark Sands (Kinky Boots) and featuring a book by Tony winner John Logan (Red, Moulin Rouge! The Musical), direction by Tony winner Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, American Idiot), and choreography by Tony nominee David Neumann (Hadestown), posted an early closing notice, explaining that the sails would be taken down after only twenty previews and thirty-two regular performances. It was as if the cast and crew were in their own lifeboat, lost at sea.

But on December 11, first Sands at the matinee and then Gallagher in the evening (the show I saw) gleefully announced at the curtain calls that, because of overwhelming audience response and a series of sell-outs, the “dark and risky” musical has a little more life left in it, extending two weeks. (Gallagher dared the audience to spread the word and maybe get another two weeks, but the website currently says “must end December 29.”)

The little musical that could premiered in 2022 at Berkeley Rep and moved to Arena Stage in DC last fall before cruising to Broadway. Swept Away looks and sounds great. The narrative unfolds on Tony-winning designer Rachel Hauck’s duly impressive set, a large ship on its final voyage — it is going to be sold for scrap — that juts out toward the audience and, later, stunningly capsizes, using mirrors on its underside to reveal what is happening in the lifeboat. All the technical aspects are exceptional, from Tony winner Susan Hilferty’s seafaring costumes to four-time Tony winner Kevin Adams’s lighting, Tony winner John Shivers’s sound, and the music arranging, orchestrations, and direction, by Chris Miller, Brian Usifer, and conductor and multi-instrumentalist Will Van Dyke.

The plot could use some course correction, although it is often saved by the stomping music and rousing choreography. A young man known as Little Brother (Adrian Blake Enscoe) has run away from his family farm to go on an adventure at sea, hoping to see the world, then return home and marry his childhood sweetheart, Melody Anne. His older brother (Sands) tracks him down and tries to prevent him from boarding the ship, but soon both of them are on their way to hunt whales, a dying occupation because of the invention and widespread use of paraffin and kerosene.

The captain (Wayne Duvall) is a stern, bearded fellow who insists on being called “sir” by his second mate (Gallagher), a salty sailor who takes Little Brother under his wing as they interact with the extremely well cast crew of men’s men (Josh Breckenridge, Hunter Brown, Matt DeAngelis, John Michael Finley, Cameron Johnson, Brandon Kalm, Rico LeBron, Michael J. Mainwaring, Orville Mendoza, Chase Peacock, Robert Pendilla, Tyrone L. Robinson, David Rowen, and John Sygar).

“We’re pagans and idolators here, waiting to whore ourselves from one pox-ridden port to another,” the mate says to the pious Big Brother, who wants everyone to join him in worship on a Sunday. “We’re sailors and workers; we got no time and no inclination for your pious bullshit, so do not embarrass yourself in front of the crew, and do not inflict your unforgiving sonofabitch G-d on the rest of us.”

Following a fierce squall, the two brothers, the captain, and the second mate are adrift at sea, going weeks without any food and water, growing hungrier and hungrier by the minute, recalling not only Pi Patel’s frightful journey in Life of Pi but Monty Python’s hilarious lifeboat sketch.

The musical doesn’t shy away from taking chances, although not all of them succeed, particularly involving Big Brother and religion. However, such splendidly rendered numbers as “Hard Worker,” “No Hard Feelings,” “May It Last,” and the title song keep everything afloat.

All of their prayers may not have been answered, but getting a reprieve at least through the Christmas holiday is something to sing about, with or without Madonna.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE WRONG KIND OF FAITH: TAMMY FAYE ON BROADWAY

Katie Brayben’s prayers for Broadway musical go unanswered (photo by Matthew Murphy)

TAMMY FAYE
Palace Theatre
1564 Broadway at Forty-Seventh St.
Through December 8, $59.75-$119
tammyfayebway.com

It’s extremely rare for a professional critic to see and review a new Broadway show that has already posted its closing notice. Two years ago, I saw KPOP at Circle in the Square; it announced it was closing a few days later, right before my review went up.

But I ended up seeing Tammy Faye — the much-heralded British import that had been nominated for four Olivier Awards across the pond, including Best New Musical, and won for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor — shortly after the news came that it would be cutting its run frightfully short, following twenty-four previews and only twenty-nine regular performances. I was determined to not let that information impact my experience, but it was nearly impossible to avoid the sad truth.

Tammy Faye is the first fully fledged show in the beautifully renovated Palace Theatre, which was built in 1913; it is well worth a walk up to the top to get a bird’s-eye view of its grandiose splendor. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the less-than-heavenly production on the stage, which bills itself as “the story of a traveling preacher’s wife who beamed into homes with a message of hope . . . and stole the country’s heart.”

Perhaps British audiences and critics were not as familiar with the lurid story of televangelist couple Jim Bakker (Christian Borle) and Tammy Faye LaValley (Katie Brayben), who rose to stardom in the 1970s and ’80s through their satellite network, The PTL Club (Praise the Lord), backed by Ted Turner (Andy Taylor) and also featuring Trinity Broadcasting Network founders Paul Crouch (Nick Bailey) and his wife, Jan (Allison Guinn). The premise of the musical is misguided from the start, attempting to literally and figuratively raise Tammy Faye high on a pedestal and celebrate her as a feminist icon even though much of America considers her and Jim a key part of the intrusion of Christian fundamentalism into politics. The show — and the intrusion — also involves such Electric Church preachers as Jerry Falwell (Michael Cerveris), Billy Graham (Mark Evans), Marvin Gorman (Max Gordon Moore), Pat Robertson (Taylor), and Jimmy Swaggart (Ian Lassiter).

One plot point revolves around California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan’s (Lassiter) appearance on The PTL Club; when Jim and Tammy Faye do not officially endorse him, their rival Falwell, who is determined to bring the Bakkers down by any means necessary, informs Reagan, “Sir, it’s time to put G-d in the White House.” Reagan replies, “Isn’t that against the Founding Father’s intentions,” to which Falwell responds, “There is only One True Founding Father, sir.” The two men then talk about returning America to “greatness again,” a reference to Donald Trump that falls with a thud.

Jerry Falwell (Michael Cerveris) is out to stop Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and The PTL Club (photo by Matthew Murphy)

The book, by James Graham (Dear England, Finding Neverland), is a paint-by-numbers retelling of Jim and Tammy Faye’s personal and professional relationship, from their meet cute at an event led by Graham — “My brothers and sisters, I cannot do this alone! So, who will join this new Christian army? Stand up and be counted!” — to Jim’s sexual misconduct with church secretary Jessica Hahn (Alana Pollard) and allegations of fraud with his right-hand man, John Fletcher (Raymond J. Lee). Tammy Faye is portrayed as an innocent throughout as well as a free-thinking conservative, especially when, on live television, she hugs Steve Pieters (Charl Brown), a gay pastor who has AIDS, sending Robertson and Falwell into a tizzy and running to Reagan for help.

Elton John’s (The Lion King, Billy Elliot) music is surprisingly bland and uninspired, while the lyrics, by Jake Shears (Tales of the City) of the Scissor Sisters, make excuses for Tammy Faye. “Now that I hear angels calling me home / What’s left of the debt to be paid / Could I have done better / Is the blame mine alone / Will I be forgiven / Or should I be afraid?” she sings in a hospital after being told she has cancer. “You’ve shown me where to find my wings / But I don’t know if they fly / Heavy is the weight of my shame / Questions run like rivers / In the tears that I cry / Will you make me answer for my name?”

Two-time Olivier winner Brayben (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Girl from the North Country) has been widely hailed for her performance as Tammy Faye, and it can be electrifying, but there’s a disingenuousness to it; Tammy Faye was a Christian music favorite, releasing such albums as Love Never Gives Up, We’re Blest, and Enough Is Enough, but Brayben plays her as a superstar, as if she were a pop goddess with Janis Joplin talent. There would have been no show at all if director Rupert Goold (American Psycho, Enron) had Brayben sing more like Tammy Faye, but it would have been more honest. Two-time Tony winner Borle (Some Like It Hot!, Something Rotten!) is miscast yet again, failing to capture Bakker’s boring nature, while two-time Tony winner Cerveris (Assassins, Fun Home) can’t get out from under his bad wig.

The set, by Bunny Christie, resembles a 1960s game show, with a large board of squares, like television screens, that occasionally open up to reveal characters; if only Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, or other stalwarts of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In could appear to provide a good laugh.

The night I went, the most exciting moment was when two-time Tony nominee Andrew Rannells (The Book of Mormon, The Boys in the Band) held court during intermission from his tenth-row-center seat; Rannells was nominated for an Olivier for playing Jim Bakker in the London production, but he opted not to continue the role on Broadway, citing a contract dispute, although perhaps he also saw the writing on the wall.

Meanwhile, the temperature in the theater never rose past lukewarm. Audience response was tepid at best, and not just because there were a lot of empty seats. It was embarrassing when the actors asked for applause, as if we were watching a broadcast of The PTL Club, and not much came. And Finn Ross’s video design is hectic and inconsistent — and downright annoying when live projections reveal Tammy Faye getting ready in her dressing room, applying makeup and singing, her voice not synched exactly to the video, a prime example of how off-kilter everything is.

It’s always sad when a show closes early, leaving many hardworking and talented people out of a job. But just as the Bakkers accepted millions of dollars from their true believers and were busted for fraud, it would be hard to justify spending any of your money on this all-around-disappointing musical.

“Just reach out and open your hands,” Tammy Faye sings in “Open Hands — Right Kind of Faith.” In “If Only Love,” she promises, “We all possess the strength we need / If you believe, then you’ll succeed.” But it takes much more than just open hands and faith.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]