this week in broadway

THE MUSIC MAN

Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster turn up the glitz in Music Man revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE MUSIC MAN
Winter Garden Theatre
1634 Broadway between 50th & 51st Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 15, $99-$599
musicmanonbroadway.com

In my decidedly unfavorable review of the 2017 revival of Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler, I wrote, “The new production of Hello, Dolly!, which is breaking house records at the Shubert Theatre, is everything that is wrong with Broadway. . . . Through it all, there’s Bette, who never really inhabits the role but plays herself playing the character while basking in the unending attention, the love bursting forth from the audience at her every knowing smirk; the Shubert practically explodes when she emerges in her glittering red dress for the title song, but it’s Bette who’s being celebrated, not Dolly.”

Unfortunately, the same can be said about the third Broadway revival of Meredith Willson’s 1957 smash The Music Man, continuing through November 6 at the Winter Garden. The star attraction is the beloved Hugh Jackman, but he is trapped as Hugh Jackman playing Professor Harold Hill, a con artist who has arrived in River City, Iowa, to sell the townspeople costumes and instruments for a band that will never be. The Grammy-, Emmy-, and Tony-winning Jackman, who follows such previous Hills as Robert Preston, Eddie Albert, Forrest Tucker, Bert Parks, Van Johnson, Dick Van Dyke, Craig Bierko, and Matthew Broderick, is as charming as ever, but he never fully embodies the character, and the fault lies in part with the audience, who won’t allow him to, and four-time Tony-winning director Jerry Zaks and Tony-winning choreographer Warren Carlyle, the duo who performed the same tasks on Midler’s Hello, Dolly! As with that production, which won four Tonys, many of the scenes don’t move the narrative along but instead are excuses to meander off track with showy, too long set pieces that are only fun for a while before we need to get back to the story.

The cast of The Music Man jumps for joy in Broadway revival at the Winter Garden (photo by Joan Marcus)

Tony winner Sutton Foster fares better as Marian Paroo, whose previous portrayers range from Barbara Cook and Shirley Jones to Rebecca Luker and Meg Bussert, but since we all know what is going to happen between Hill the snake oil salesman and Marian the adorable librarian, Zaks and Carlyle don’t focus properly on the chemistry between them that is necessary to propel the plot, even as basic as it is. Meanwhile, the cast features a slew of Tony winners in small roles, including Shuler Hensley as Marcellus Washburn, Jefferson Mays as Mayor Shinn, Jayne Houdyshell as Mrs. Shinn, and Marie Mullen as Mrs. Paroo, but it’s yet more window dressing; for example, Mays, one of New York City’s most consistently entertaining actors, can’t rise above the more dated material, as nearly all of the mayor’s jokes fall flatter than an out-of-tune trombone.

All the songs are here — “Rock Island,” “(Ya Got) Trouble,” “Seventy-Six Trombones,” “Pickalittle (Talk-a-Little),” “Marian the Librarian,” “Shipoopi,” “Till There Was You” — but the only one you’re likely to be humming on your way out is “Seventy-Six Trombones,” and only because it seems that it never ends. Santo Loquasto’s ever-changing set and colorful costumes get lost in the razzle-dazzle.

Born and raised in Iowa, Willson also wrote the musicals The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Here’s Love, and 1491, the holiday classic “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” several symphonies, and three memoirs. If he were alive to write a fourth book, maybe even he would agree that there’s big-time trouble in River City.

PLAZA SUITE

The Nashes (Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick) try to celebrate their anniversary in Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite (photo by Joan Marcus)

PLAZA SUITE
Hudson Theatre
141 West Forty-Fourth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 26, $99-$559
plazasuitebroadway.com

Some playwrights age better than others. It’s been more than ten years since the last Neil Simon revival on Broadway, and if the current production of Plaza Suite at the Hudson Theatre is any indication, at least part of the reason why is evident.

The three-act play, which opened on Broadway on Valentine’s Day, 1968, is a slapstick love letter to marriage written with a poison pen. In each act, a couple, portrayed by the same actors, flirt and argue as they evaluate their relationships and their lot in life as they flit about in room 719 at the Plaza Hotel in midtown Manhattan. The original featured George C. Scott and Tony nominee Maureen Stapleton and was directed by Tony winner Mike Nichols; the current revival stars Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, who are married in real life, with John Benjamin Hickey directing the fusty festivities. The play might be set in 1968–69, but it feels a whole lot older than that, especially in its Neanderthal portrayal of women.

“Visitor from Mamaroneck” takes place on a late winter afternoon at the Plaza, where Karen Nash (Parker) has planned a romantic getaway with her workaholic husband, Sam (Broderick), to celebrate their anniversary in the same room where they spent their wedding night more than twenty years earlier. Karen orders Champagne and hors d’oeuvres, but when Sam arrives, he is overwhelmed with business issues.

While he is a wiz with figures, she has trouble with any kind of number, which slides right into gender stereotypes. After she claims that it’s their twenty-fourth anniversary, Sam responds, “Tomorrow is our anniversary and we’re married twenty-three years.” She asks, “Are you sure?” Sam: “I go through this with you every year. When it comes to money or dates or ages, you are absolutely unbelievable. We were married December fifteenth, nineteen forty-five.” Karen: “Then I’m right. Twenty-four years.” Sam: “Forty-five from sixty-eight is twenty-three!” Karen: “Then I’m wrong. Math isn’t one of my best subjects.”

When Sam’s devoted, and devilishly sexy, secretary, Jean McCormack (Molly Ranson), shows up, things take a turn for the worse, although not at all unexpectedly. In fact, we can see what’s coming from the proverbial mile away as occasionally funny banter transforms into a terrible, unfair weight on Karen (and Sarah).

A New Jersey housewife (Sarah Jessica Parker) and a Hollywood producer (Matthew Broderick) have a clandestine meeting in Neil Simon revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

“Visitor from Hollywood” is set the following spring, with hotshot Hollywood producer Jesse Kiplinger (Broderick) meeting his high school flame, Muriel Tate (Parker), in room 719. She’s an uptight New Jersey suburban housewife and mother obsessed with his success; she dreams of the glamorous life he’s leading, but he just wants to get into her pants. As he plies her with vodka stingers, she grows friendlier and friendlier even as she protests that she has to get home and take care of her family, although she’s pretty shifty about the details. It’s evident her “I never do things like this!” housewife shtick is . . . just shtick. She knows what she wants: proximity to fame. He wants proximity to her. Close proximity.

The play reveals its age in this act with its outdated references, from Bonwit and Lee Marvin to Elke Sommer and Marge and Gower Champion, which will leave younger audiences scratching their heads (or desperately wanting to Google the names right there and then). “Will you stop with the celebrity routine. Aside from a couple of extra pounds, I’m still the same boy who ran anchor on the Tenafly track team,” Jesse says. Muriel replies, “And is living in the old Humphrey Bogart house in Beverly Hills.” In 2022 — if not in 1968 — it’s tremendously uncomfortable watching a single male Hollywood producer trying to take advantage of a woman in a hotel room, regardless of how happy or not she is.

The play concludes in June 1969 with “Visitor from Forest Hills,” in which Roy and Norma Hubley (Broderick and Parker) are in room 719 at the Plaza, preparing for the wedding of their daughter, Mimsey (Ranson); the only problem is that Mimsey has locked herself in the bathroom and refuses to come out and marry Borden Eisler (Eric Wiegand). Roy and Norma try just about everything to get Mimsey to open the door, as Roy trots out jokes so old they have cobwebs about fathers and wedding costs.

Norma (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Roy (Matthew Broderick) are facing a wedding crisis in Plaza Suite at the Hudson (photo by Joan Marcus)

“All right, what did you say to her?” Roy demands to know. Muriel answers, “I knew it! I knew you’d blame me. You took an oath. God’ll punish you.” Roy explains, “I’m not blaming you. I just want to know what stupid thing you said to her that made her do this.” As they attempt to lure their daughter out of the bathroom, Roy ratchets up the blaming of the women while Norma keeps the truth from the ever-more-worried Eislers downstairs.

The best parts of this Plaza Suite, which runs slightly more than two and a half hours with an intermission and a brief pause, are John Lee Beatty’s gorgeous set, which gets its own well-deserved round of applause; Jane Greenwood’s costumes, especially the glorious outfits worn by Parker; and the stars’ undeniable chemistry and gift for physical comedy. There is some potent slapstick from Broderick (Evening at the Talk House, Shining City), who has appeared in three previous Simon plays, and Parker (The Commons of Pensacola, The Substance of Fire), who last worked with Broderick onstage in the 1995 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying; at one point in the second act, after Parker pulled off a hilarious move, both actors tried unsuccessfully to suppress their own laughter. The third act is highlighted by an outrageously funny stunt by a nearly unrecognizable Broderick, in gray wig and mustache and elegant tux. [Note: Both Broderick and Parker have contracted Covid-19 so the show has been temporarily shut down as of April 7.]

But standout moments here and there do not make up for the misogyny that is on view in all three acts, filling the theater with a dense cloud of midcentury woman hating. It’s also hard to get too excited about watching the foibles of wealthy white people in a fancy schmancy hotel room. The first of a trilogy that was followed by California Suite in 1976 and London Suite in 1995, Plaza Suite feels old, crusty, and unnecessary today, unless they’re going to redefine some of the characters or experiment more with the staging. Playing it straight in 2022 is just not viable, and it has nothing to do with political correctness.

Simon — who was nominated for four Oscars and four Emmys, won four Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize (for 1991’s Lost in Yonkers), and had a Broadway theater named after him in 1983 — was ultimately married five times to four women (three actresses and a dancer); this is the first revival of one of his plays since his death in 2018 at the age of ninety-one. Hopefully the next one will do more to burnish his legacy.

COMPANY: KATRINA LENK, PATTI LuPONE & CHRIS HARPER

Who: Katrina Lenk, Patti LuPone, Chris Harper, Jessica Shaw
What: Virtual discussion about current Broadway revival of Company
Where: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center online
When: Thursday, February 10, free with advance RSVP, 12:30
Why: In my review of the current, controversial revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s beloved Company, I wrote, “Two-time Tony winner Marianne Elliott has reconceptualized Company in ways that go beyond mere gender switching and diverse casting; this Company emphasizes individuality, confinement, isolation, and fear through magnificent staging.” You can hear what some of the key participants have to say about the show when the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center hosts a live, virtual discussion with Tony and Grammy winner Katrina Lenk (The Band’s Visit, Indecent), who plays Bobby, previously always portrayed as a man; two-time Tony and two-time Grammy winner Patti LuPone (Evita, Gypsy), who delivers the classic “Ladies Who Lunch”; and Olivier-winning producer Chris Harper (Elliott’s War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). SiriusXM’s Jessica Shaw will moderate the free talk.

SKELETON CREW

Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew takes place in an auto stamping plant on the brink in 2008 (photo by Matthew Murphy)

SKELETON CREW
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 20, $59-$159 ($49-$99 with code FAFCREW)
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

When the audience enters MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre for the Broadway premiere of Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew, a sizzling tale of socioeconomic ills in 2008 Detroit, they see Michael Carnahan’s set, the dingy, dirty breakroom of an auto stamping plant, filled with handwritten and preprinted signs detailing various rules and regulations, advising employees that there is no smoking, when the next union meeting is, what their OSHA rights are, what they can and can’t do with the refrigerator, coffeemaker, and microwave. However, there are also multiple reminders, on paper and yellow caution floor signs, to wear a mask and turn off cellphones; those warnings are for the audience in 2022, of course, but the effect is an immediate feeling of equality between the performers and the characters they portray. We are them, and they are us, especially as we all continue to deal with a global pandemic.

The cast then heads onstage and removes all the contemporary signs with a resolute vigilance that, we soon find out, applies to the company admonitions that still remain. “I don’t abide by no rules but necessity. I do what I do til’ I figure out another thing and do that. And that’s all I got to say about it,” Faye (Phylicia Rashad) declares.

Rumors are swirling that the plant might be on the chopping block, which would wreak havoc in a city that we know is about to pay dearly during the coming subprime mortgage crisis. Faye, a divorced single mother, is the union leader with twenty-nine years on the job, intent on making it to thirty to receive more substantial retirement benefits. Despite having survived breast cancer, she smokes constantly; she also has a penchant for gambling with her much younger colleagues: Dez (Joshua Boone), a loose cannon hoping to start his own repair garage, and Shanita (Chanté Adams), a pregnant woman who is one of the line’s best workers. Both in their mid-to-late twenties, Dez ceaselessly flirts with Shanita, whose baby daddy is absent.

Their foreman, Reggie (Brandon J. Dirden), a close family friend of Faye’s since he was a child, used to be one of them before being promoted. He often finds himself in the middle, caught between the employees and his bosses upstairs, walking a tightrope that becomes even more tenuous when he admits to Faye that the plant will indeed be shutting down within a year.

Reggie (Brandon J. Dirden) and Faye (Phylicia Rashad) face a crisis in Broadway premiere of Skeleton Crew (photo by Matthew Murphy)

He tries to convince her to stay quiet about it, which she is hesitant to do. “It’s my job to protect these folks,” Faye says. Reggie responds, “Faye, I’m confiding in you. I’m putting myself on the line for you cuz I’m on your side. But I need you on mine. I need your guidance. Help me figure this out without sounding the alarm.” She agrees but feels guilty keeping the news from Dez and Shanita, who have their own issues with management.

“You youngins don’t have no respect for the blood been spilled so yo’ ass have some benefits,” Faye says to Dez, who she regularly calls “stupid.” Dez shoots back, “What benefits? I don’t hardly see no benefits.”

When materials start disappearing from the plant, Dez, who brings a gun to work and has been acting suspiciously, is a prime suspect. Meanwhile, Faye has hit some hard times and hides a secret from her colleagues. And Shanita shares her complex dreams with the others and plans on working as long as she can, piling on the overtime, before she gives birth. The tension is so thick that something has to eventually give, and when it does, everybody better stand back.

Skeleton Crew premiered at the Atlantic’s Stage 2 in January 2016, then moved to the bigger Linda Gross Theater in May of that year. It’s the first play of Morisseau’s to be produced on Broadway; she also wrote the book for Ain’t Too Proud to Beg: The Life and Times of the Temptations. The play completes her Detroit Projects trilogy, three works set in her hometown in the twentieth century, beginning with 2013’s Detroit ’67 and continuing with 2015’s Paradise Blue. Seen as a whole, the plays explore the Black experience in America in a way that evokes both August Wilson and Lynn Nottage; specific plays that immediately come to mind are Wilson’s Jitney and Nottage’s Sweat and Clyde’s as well as Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s recent Cullud Wattah, about the Flint water crisis.

Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson shows a firm confidence in Morisseau’s language and themes; he previously directed the world premiere of Paradise Blue at the Signature. He also was a close friend of Wilson’s and starred in and/or directed many of his plays, including Jitney and The Piano Lesson, both of which featured Dirden. In addition, Santiago-Hudson knows the Samuel J. Friedman well; his one-man show, Lackawanna Blues, was the previous production at the theater, completing its run in November.

Adesola Osakalumi dances between scenes in Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Morisseau (Pipeline, Blood Rot) masterfully avoids any specific discussion about race, instead letting the story play out with that subtext hovering over everything like an ominous cloud. The audience knows that Detroit has had a history of race riots — from 1833 and 1849 to 1943 and 1967 — and in 2007-8, nearly twenty thousand Black men and women lost their jobs in car factories. “African Americans earn much higher wages in auto industry jobs than in other parts of the economy, and the loss of these solid, middle-class jobs would be a devastating blow,” the Economic Policy Institute reported at the time.

Tony winner and six-time Emmy nominee Rashad (A Raisin in the Sun, August: Osage County), who has directed three Wilson plays, is a powerhouse as Faye, a tired but strong-willed woman who is determined to not let a system she’s been fighting against her entire life beat her down. Rashad delivers her quips with an uncanny assuredness, her eyes revealing the wear and tear of years of battle, both personal and professional. Boone (Actually, All the Natalie Portmans) is a fireball as Dez, ready to explode at any moment but with a soft side underneath. Adams (Roxanne, Roxanne, Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, directed by Santiago-Hudson) is charming as Shanita, who is wise beyond her years. And Dirden, who played Sly in the original New York production of Detroit ’67, gives a rousing performance as Reggie, a kindhearted man who has to make hard decisions that rip him up inside.

In between scenes, choreographer Adesola Osakalumi (Cullud Wattah, Fela!) dances at the front of the stage or behind the breakroom windows, moving robotically to hip-hop music that mimics the motion of the machines in the plant, which are seen almost abstractly in projections by Nicholas Hussong lit by Rui Rita. (The sound and music is by Robert Klapowitz, with original songs by J. Keys.) It equates humans with automation, as if people are interchangeable with machines. It might not be a new idea, but it is beautifully laid bare in Morisseau’s searing, intimate drama.

(MTC is currently hosting Detroit Week on Broadway, beginning February 4 at 8:00 with “Detroit Comes to Broadway,” celebrating the people and culture of the Motor City. On February 6 at 5:00, Morisseau, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, and Michael Dinwiddie will take part in the free virtual discussion “Black Theatre: Radical Longevity.” And on February 7 at 6:00, “Morisseau Moment” fêtes the playwright with proclamations and presentations from her three latest shows, Skeleton Crew, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, and Confederates, livestreaming from the Harlem School of the Arts.)

COMPANY

Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) is not exactly thrilled about turning thirty-five in Company (photo by Matthew Murphy)

COMPANY
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 31, $59 – $299
companymusical.com

Originally slated to open on Broadway on March 22, 2020 — Stephen Sondheim’s ninetieth birthday — Marianne Elliott’s reimagining of composer and lyricist Sondheim and book writer George Furth’s beloved Company finally arrives at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, two weeks after Sondheim’s sad, sudden passing just as we all could use, er, a little company. Having never seen the iconic musical before — it debuted on Broadway in 1970 and was revived in 1995 and 2006 — I cannot compare it to any of those editions or focus on the well-publicized changes to this new version, primarily involving several gender switches, most importantly to the main character, who has gone from Bobby the man to Bobbie the woman. But what I can report is that Elliott’s inventive adaptation has a fine first act and an utterly spectacular second.

Bobbie, played with a nagging trepidation by Katrina Lenk, is turning thirty-five and none too happy about it. After receiving a flurry of birthday messages, she says, “How many times do you get to be thirty-five? Eleven? Okay, come on. Say it and get it over with. It’s embarrassing. Quick. I can’t stand it.”

Harry (Christopher Sieber) and Sarah (Jennifer Simard) battle as Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) and Joanne (Patti LuPone) look on in Sondheim-Furth revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Bobbie is tired of being the third wheel. She puts a mylar “35” balloon on her wall and it ticks like a biological clock. Her married and engaged friends, some with kids, attempt to entertain her but they have their own lives away from her. She is spending more and more time with bottles of Maker’s Mark to try to make her forget her loneliness. She’s attracted to a dimwitted flight attendant, Andy (Claybourne Elder), who doesn’t exactly fulfill her needs.

She visits with Sarah (Jennifer Simard) and Harry (Christopher Sieber), who get into a riotous jiu-jitsu battle; Susan (Rashidra Scott) and Peter (Greg Hildreth), who, on their terrace, announce they’re getting divorced; Jenny (Nikki Renée Daniels) and David (Christopher Fitzgerald), who get high and discuss Bobbie’s possible fear of being hitched (“It’s not like I’m avoiding marriage. It’s avoiding me, if anything. I’m ready,” she insists); Jamie (Matt Doyle) and Paul (Etai Benson), who are getting married but Jamie is suddenly having doubts; her former lover Theo (Manu Narayan), who has made the kind of important decision Bobbie is unable to; her friend P.J. (Bobby Conte Thornton), who is in love with New York itself; and the older Joanne (Patti LuPone) and her third husband, Larry (Terence Archie), who party at a nightclub. “The phone is a phenomenon. Really. The best way for two people to be connected and detached at the same time,” Bobbie says. Joanne responds, “Second only to marriage.”

The story goes back and forth in time — the script explains, “The narrative is conveyed in a stream of consciousness technique and time moves both backwards and forwards, encompassing the past, present and future” — as Bobbie contemplates the state of her existence as she turns thirty-five, alone in the big city. “One’s impossible, two is dreary, / Three is company, safe and cheery,” she tries to convince herself. “Here is the church, / Here is the steeple, / Open the doors and / See all the crazy, married people!”

Friends gather to celebrate Bobbie’s (Katrina Lenk) birthday in Company (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Two-time Tony winner Elliott (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Angels in America) has reconceptualized Company in ways that go beyond mere gender switching and diverse casting; this Company emphasizes individuality, confinement, isolation, and fear through magnificent staging constructed around Bunny Christie’s ingenious set; much of the action takes place in and around claustrophobic rectangular spaces framed by fluorescent lights. (The lighting is by Neil Austin.) Bobbie, wearing a sensational sexy red pantsuit (Christie also designed the costumes), is trapped physically and psychologically in each scenario, from a tiny room in her apartment to the club to a street where every door is numbered “35.” Turning thirty-five and still being single is a nightmare that follows her wherever she goes.

Bobbie’s friends represent parts of herself as well as a potential companion. “Someone is waiting, / Sweet as David, / Funny and charming as Peter. Larry . . . / Someone is waiting, / Cute as Jamie, / Sassy as Harry / And tender as Paul,” she sings in “Being Alive,” adding, “Did I know him? Have I waited too long? / Maybe so, but maybe so has he.”

As portrayed by Tony winner Lenk (The Band’s Visit, Indecent), Bobbie is not after our sympathy or even our compassionate understanding; no mere old maid, she serves as a reminder of the uncertainty and isolation we all experience, whether coupled or not, regardless of how happy we might be. The scene in which Bobbie, in bed with Andy, sees one possible outcome of her life unfold before her is horrifyingly funny, whether you live alone or are married with kids; it’s a tour de force for both Elliott and the ensemble.

Joanne (Patti LuPone) has a bit of important advice for Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) in Broadway revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Two-time Tony winner LuPone (Evita, Gypsy) brings the house down just by saying, “I’d like to propose a toast,” prior to singing “The Ladies Who Lunch.” The signature role of Joanne has previously been performed by Elaine Stritch, Debra Monk, Sheila Gish, Lynn Redgrave, and Barbara Walsh, while the roll call of male Bobbys includes Dean Jones, George Chakiris, Larry Kert, Boyd Gaines, Adrian Lester, Raúl Esparza, and Neil Patrick Harris.) The rest of the cast is exemplary as well, with shout-outs to Simard’s brownie-desiring Sarah, two-time Tony nominee Fitzgerald’s puppy-dog-eyed David, and Doyle’s breathlessly fast-paced rendition of “Getting Married Today.”

Liam Steel’s choreography is fun, as are illusions by Chris Fisher. One oddity is that characters often enter and exit the stage through the aisles, which are also frequented by theater staffers holding signs telling the audience to keep their masks on, momentarily diverting our attention while also reminding us of the situation we’re still in.

David Cullen’s orchestrations honor Sondheim’s complex melodies, performed by a fourteen-piece band conducted by Joel Fram that hovers above the stage. The second act explodes with an electrifying “Side by Side by Side” and never lets up through Bobbie’s closing soliloquy, “Being Alive,” an able metaphor for what we all need right now. Winner of three Olivier Awards — for Set Design (Christie), Supporting Actress in a Musical (LuPone), and Musical Revival — Company is more than just grand company in these troubled times, when we can all benefit from being together once again.

MRS. DOUBTFIRE

Daniel Hillard (Rob McClure) goes to extreme measures to see his kids in Mrs. Doubtfire (photo by Joan Marcus)

MRS. DOUBTFIRE
Stephen Sondheim Theatre
124 West 43rd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 8, $79 – $229
mrsdoubtfirebroadway.com

Robin Williams and Stephen Sondheim must be turning over in their graves — or urns. The musical adaptation of Chris Columbus’s overrated hit 1993 movie, Mrs. Doubtfire, in which Williams plays the title character, a divorced actor who dresses up as an older Scottish nanny in order to spend more time with his children, opened earlier this month at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on West Forty-Third St., less than two weeks after the musical genius passed away at the age of ninety-one. Williams died in 2014 at the age of sixty-three.

Mrs. Doubtfire the musical is a labored, inorganic embarrassment, a jaw-droppingly inauthentic mess that is scheduled to run for at least six months on the Great White Way. Tony nominee Rob McClure, the talented star of such duds as Chaplin and Honeymoon in Vegas, dives into the shtick headfirst, but four-time Tony-winning director Jerry Zaks is trapped by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell’s leaden book and Karey and Wayne Kirkpatrick’s trite music and lyrics. Williams was able to make the film somewhat palatable, but McClure never has a chance with the Broadway version.

Just as the movie felt like a retread of Sydney Pollack’s 1982 romantic comedy, Tootsie, in which Dustin Hoffman plays an unemployed actor who dresses up as an unfashionable older woman in order to get a part on a soap opera, Mrs. Doubtfire the musical offers little we haven’t already seen in the 2019 musical adaptation of Tootsie, which earned ten Tony nominations, winning two awards.

Andre (J. Harrison Ghee) and Frank (Brad Oscar) preen for Wanda Sellner (Charity Angél Dawson) as Daniel (Rob McClure) looks on in Mrs. Doubtfire (photo by Joan Marcus)

Nearly every musical number feels forced and unnatural, as if Zaks (La Cage aux Folles, Hello, Dolly!), choreographer Lorin Lotarro (Waitress, Merrily We Roll Along), and the Kirkpatricks (Something Rotten!) looked around David Korins’s set to find random objects to incorporate into the dancing. When Daniel and the kids start playing air guitar with brooms, well, I considered jumping onstage and sweeping them all away, for the benefit of the audience as well as the performers. Meanwhile, the Spanish restaurant where a critical late scene occurs should be shut down for improper use and storage of musical theater.

The show is primarily set in the Hillard home, where father Daniel (McClure) has plenty of time to hang around with his three kids, Lydia (Analise Scarpaci), Christopher (Jake Ryan Flynn), and Natalie (Avery Sell). While his wife, Miranda (Jenn Gambates), is working hard, putting together a fashion line with her hunk of a partner, Stuart Dunmire (Mark Evans), Daniel is like a fourth child, running around the house with the three of them and breaking things. Lydia finally has had enough and throws him out; when the judge awards full custody to Lydia, Daniel is distraught, ready to do whatever he can to spend time with them again. He is watched closely by court liaison officer Wanda Sellner (Charity Angél Dawson), who will ultimately report back to the judge whether Daniel has an acceptable place to live and a regular job and, therefore, should be allowed to have shared custody.

But it all gets turned upside down and inside out when Daniel hatches the plan to pretend he’s Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire — and gets the job as his children’s nanny, taking care of them every weekday afternoon. He has to keep his secret from Lydia as well as the kids, but Wanda is on the prowl, suspicious that something nefarious is going on.

A game cast never has a chance in Mrs. Doubtfire (photo by Joan Marcus)

Brad Oscar and J. Harrison Ghee, as Daniel’s brother, Frank, and Frank’s partner, Andre, respectively, are supposed to provide comic relief (it’s already a comedy, right?) as the designers behind Daniel’s transformation into Mrs. D, but their jokes quickly become repetitive (for example, how Frank has to speak extra loudly every time he tells a lie), and laughing at flamboyant gay minor characters is not as much fun as it was once upon a time. And the scenes with Peter Bartlett as hapless kids’ show host Mr. Jolly (accompanied by Jodi Kimura as humorless channel president Janet Lundy) are not very jolly, unless you find laughing at doddering elderly men hysterical.

“What’s wrong with this picture?” the opening number prophetically asks. The show had to shut down for more than a week because of positive Covid cases; for those of you who had tickets during that time, consider yourselves lucky. [Ed. note: The musical is going on hiatus from January 10 to March 14 “out of concern for the potential long-term employment of everyone who works on Mrs. Doubtfire, and the extended run of the show.”]

CLYDE’S

Clyde (Uzo Aduba) keeps a close watch on her employees in new Lynn Nottage play (photo by Joan Marcus)

CLYDE’S
Helen Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St.
Through January 16, $49-$149 (livestream January 4-16, $59)
2st.com/shows/clydes

If there’s a better living American playwright working today than Lynn Nottage, you’ll have to convince me.

The Brooklyn-born two-time Pulitzer Prize winner is back on Broadway with the delectable comedy Clyde’s, continuing at Second Stage’s Helen Hayes Theater through January 16. The ninety-minute play is set in the kitchen of a roadside diner in Berks County, Pennsylvania, run by the fierce and dominating Clyde (Uzo Aduba), who spent time in jail and exclusively hires ex-cons. But Clyde is no saint, helping the downtrodden out of the goodness of her heart; instead, she abuses her staff with vicious delight, insulting them with zinging barbs, threatening their employment, and sexually harassing them.

The kitchen crew consists of Tish (Kara Young), a single mother with an unreliable ex; Rafael (Reza Salazar), a twentysomething who is enamored with Tish; and the wise sage Montrellous (Ron Cephas Jones), a sandwich guru who avoids talking about his personal life. They are joined by Jason (Edmund Donovan), who is fresh out of the big house, complete with white supremacist gang tattoos on his face, neck, and arms.

“He tell you what happens if I catch any of you morons stealing? Breaking my rules?” Clyde tells Jason, referring to Rafael. “I don’t go to the police. I deal with it my way. Understand?” Later, Rafael warns Jason, “Bro, it’s real. Do not cross her. She’ll make you suffer.”

Montrellous is the Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Yoda, the Zen master of the kitchen. He raises sandwich making to an art. “You know why I love the sandwich?” Montrellous says. “’Cuz it’s a complete meal that you can hold between your fingers. It’s the most democratic of all foods. Two pieces of bread, and between, you can put anything you want. It invites invention and collaboration.” Rafael responds, “Jesus, I make a sandwich every day, but somehow your shit always tastes like the truth.” Montrellous adds, “It’s about order, baby. I’m interested in the composition, it’s not merely about flavor. Dig? I think about the balance of ingredients and the journey I want the consumer to take with each bite. Then finally how I can achieve oneness with the sandwich.” It’s also a metaphor for (re)building one’s life.

Rafael (Reza Salazar), Tish (Kara Young), Montrellous (Ron Cephas Jones), and Jason (Edmund Donovan) search for the perfect sandwich in Clyde’s (photo by Joan Marcus)

Whenever Montrellous begins to wax poetic about potential combinations, the lights take on a sepia tone, as if sacred word is descending from the heavens. (The expert lighting is by Christopher Akerlind.) Tish and Rafael make offerings of their own unique flavor profiles, looking to Montrellous for his approval like students trying to please their teacher (or father). Jason, who at first doesn’t care about kitchen hygiene or carefully developed recipes, soon takes part as well, learning that the sandwich is much more than just a bunch of stuff between two slices of bread.

But no matter how hard they try to make the perfect sandwich, Clyde continually shoots them down, not giving a damn about quality but only that they fill orders as fast as they can. In one hysterical scene, she pops up over and over again in the cut-out window, from multiple angles, leaving order slip after order slip as Tish, Rafael, Jason, and Montrellous hustle to keep pace. She also occasionally brings in questionable ingredients that probably fell off a truck somewhere, insisting the staff use them no matter the expiration date or the stench. It all comes to a head when investors are scheduled to meet with Clyde to help her out of some financial problems.

Takeshi Kata’s functional kitchen set serves as a kind of way station, a limbo or purgatory where the characters exist between their prior incarceration and the freedom of the real world. Clyde is like the judge, jury, and executioner over what Nottage calls in a program note a “liminal space,” as she constantly reminds them where they’ve been while disparaging any hope they might have for a better future. As Montrellous says, “And you know what they say, ’cuz you left prison don’t mean you outta prison. But, remember everything we do here is to escape that mentality. This kitchen, these ingredients, these are our tools. We have what we need. So, let’s cook.” He later explains, “This sandwich is my strength. This sandwich is my victory. This sandwich is my freedom.”

As the fiery Clyde, three-time Emmy winner Aduba (Orange Is the New Black, Mrs. America), who has appeared in such stage works as Coram Boy, Godspell, and The Maids, might refuse to taste any of Montrellous’s sandwiches, but she devours the scenery. She storms into each scene in a different outrageously jaw-dropping costume by Jennifer Moeller, with dazzling colors and remarkable shoes. Aduba and Emmy winner Cephas Jones (This Is Us, Hurt Village) complement each other beautifully, Montrellous’s calmness balancing her fiery fury.

Clyde (Uzo Aduba) and Montrellous (Ron Cephas Jones) have different ideas about the future in new Broadway play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Salazar (Richard II, Oedipus El Rey) and Young (All the Natalie Portmans, Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven) form a delicate but poignant duo, facing their own demons and dependencies. Donovan (Greater Clements, Lewiston/Clarkston) ably fits well right in the middle of it all, lending an intriguing unpredictability to Jason, who’s struggling to get through every day and avoid going back to prison.

Kate Whoriskey, who previously directed Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Sweat and Ruined, knows just what to do with Nottage’s words, bringing them to life with a scintillating intelligence, capturing the rhythm of her language and the depth of her characters. Clyde’s might be hilariously funny, but it is serious about the revolving door of the prison system, immigration, income inequality, sexism, racism, greed, and power, its own seven deadly sins.

In just the last dozen years or so, Nottage has given us Sweat, Ruined, Mlima’s Tale, The Secret Life of Bees, and revivals of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark and Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine, with the Michael Jackson musical MJ and an opera adaptation of her 2003 play, Intimate Apparel, up next. That’s quite a banquet. And as a bonus dessert, performances from the Hayes Theater will be simulcast live online January 4-16 ($59), filmed by five to seven cameras.

In his final appearance on The David Letterman Show in October 2002, musician Warren Zevon, discussing his terminal cancer, said about life, “Enjoy every sandwich.” With Lynn Nottage, that’s an easy order to fill.