this week in broadway

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.

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE

Caroline, or Change returns to Broadway in marvelous revival at Studio 54 (photo by Joan Marcus)

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE
Studio 54
254 West 54th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 9, $49-$250
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

A few days before seeing Michael Longhurst’s Broadway revival of Caroline, or Change at Studio 54, I was at another theater waiting for a play to begin when the two men next to me started talking about the show, saying that friends of theirs considered it the best musical of the young century. Who am I to disagree?

I was sucked in from the opening moments, when Black maid Caroline Thibodeaux, spectacularly portrayed by Sharon D Clarke, is downstairs in the basement of the Gellman home in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in late 1963. She’s doing the laundry and listening to the radio, explaining, “Nothing ever happen under ground in Louisiana / Cause they ain’t no under ground in Louisiana / There is only under water.” She is joined by the Washing Machine (Arica Jackson, in a bubbly costume), who tells her, “Consequences unforeseen. / Consequences unforeseen. / Put your faith and clothes in me, / a brand-new nineteen-sixty-three / seven-cycle wash machine,” and the Radio (a 1960s-style girl group consisting of Nasia Thomas, Nya, and Harper Miles in matching sparkling outfits and antennae), who agree, “Tough and dreary and all dishevel, / sixteen feet below sea level.” The demonic Dryer (a devilish Kevin S. McAllister) declares, “Laundry mine now! / You know the story: / Let’s make this basement a purgatory. / Time has come / Time has come / Time has come to suffer heat!”

Caroline is an unhappy single mother raising four kids on the thirty dollars a week she makes working tirelessly for the Gellmans, who are Jewish: The recently widowed Stuart Gellman (John Cariani), who prefers to play the clarinet rather than to say much or face reality; his new wife, Rose Stopnick Gellman (Caissie Levy), who can’t help feeling like an unloved replacement for the deceased, beloved Betty and who misses her old Upper West Side neighborhood; and Stuart’s eight-year-old son, Noah (alternately played by Gabriel Amoroso, Adam Makké, or Jaden Myles Waldman), who has developed a secret relationship with Caroline. He goes down to the basement to hang out with her, lighting her cigarettes and watching her work, even though, as she tells him, “I got no use for you. This basement too darn hot for two.”

Maid Caroline Thibodeaux (Sharon D Clarke) has some sharp words for Noah Gellman (Adam Makké) in poignant, prescient show (photo by Joan Marcus)

When Rose catches Noah leaving change in his pocket yet again, she chastises him and decides to let Caroline keep whatever she finds, to both punish Noah and supplement Caroline’s meager wages. But Caroline does not want any charity, instead collecting the money in a bleach cup and returning it to the boy — until she doesn’t, and things take a sharp turn.

Pulitzer and Tony-winning book writer Tony Kushner (Angels in America, Homebody / Kabul) references change in many ways throughout the show’s one hundred and fifty minutes (with intermission). As Caroline, three-time Olivier winner Clarke (Death of a Salesman, The Amen Corner) carries the weight of 1960s racism and inequality on her shoulders; Caroline is thirty-nine, while Clarke is fifty-five, and it’s easy to believe that the constant wear and tear on Caroline’s daily existence has aged her unfairly.

She is deeply unsatisfied with her position in life but also feels that there is no way out, that she has no choice but to play the role of the lowly black maid. While waiting for the bus (McAllister) with fellow maid Dotty Moffett (Tamika Lawrence), who is going to night school to better herself, Caroline says, “I don’t like the way you do. You change.” Dotty responds, “You the one that change! . . . Sorry you is sick and shame. Sorry you drinking misery tea. Sorry your life ain’t what it should be.”

As they continue to talk, the Moon (N’Kenge, in a dazzling round seat dangling from the rafters), a celestial presence watching from above, finally appears, promising, “Change come fast and change come slow / but change come, Caroline Thibodeaux.” Caroline replies, “Nothing ever changes under ground in Louisiana.”

At the Gellmans’ Chanukah party where Caroline, her sixteen-year-old daughter, Emmie (Samantha Williams), and Dotty are preparing dinner, Rose’s father, the progressive Mr. Stopnick (a scene-stealing Chip Zien), shouts, “The old world’s ending! Negroes marching! Change is coming! Down with the filthy capitalist chazzerim!” But Stuart’s parents (Joy Hermalyn and Stuart Zagnit) are having none of that, pleading, “Let’s not dwell on ugly things! Let’s thank God for the joys He brings! Watch the colored candles melt! Spin the dreidel for Chanukah gelt!”

During Chanukah, children often receive chocolate gelt, shaped like change: nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars. Earlier, when Caroline is considering keeping the money Noah has been leaving in his pocket, she opines that her ten-year-old son, Jackie (Alexander Bello or Richard Alexander Phillips), has to see the dentist, her eight-year-old son, Joe (Jayden Theophile), wants candy, and her oldest son, Larry, who is fighting in Vietnam, needs a care package with cookies. Chanukah gelt, both real and confectionary, is not going to solve their problems.

A Chanukah party leads to trouble in Caroline, or Change (photo by Joan Marcus)

The outstanding score by Tony-winning composer Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Thoroughly Modern Millie), who previously teamed up with Kushner on the opera A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck for Glimmerglass, ranges from R&B, soul, and gospel to blues, klezmer, and folk, with orchestrations by Rick Bassett and Buryl Red that avoid treacly sentimentality. The multilevel set, by Fly Davis, who also designed the costumes, sometimes separates into two parts, creating a gap between Noah’s upstairs bedroom and the other half of the house, but the space it creates is often confusing and uncomfortable. However, the depiction of the washer/dryer and radio is hilarious, their playful movement choreographed by Ann Yee.

Longhurst (Constellations, Europe) keeps the action proceeding at an exciting pace that does not allow pauses for applause after songs, which works beautifully, although the audience can’t help but shower praise on Clarke after a showstopping solo in which Caroline finally asserts herself, proclaiming, “Ya’ll can’t do what I can do / ya’ll strong but you ain’t strong like me.”

Seventeen years after its debut, the semiautobiographical Caroline, or Change is both prescient and timely. Kushner — who grew up in a Jewish family in Lake Charles, with a father who played the clarinet, a mother who had cancer (but did not pass away when he was a child), and a Black maid named Maudie Lee Davis to whom the show is dedicated — makes references to the Spanish flu and a Confederate statue being torn down, and the repeated refrains about being underwater came just before Katrina struck Louisiana in 2005. The Covid-19 crisis and murder of George Floyd brought racial injustice and inequity to the forefront of America yet again, recalling the 1960s civil rights movement.

Caroline, or Change doesn’t provide any easy answers or celebrate any heroes; it is instead a potent reminder that while things have changed over the last sixty years, a whole lot more still needs to change. The best new musical of the twenty-first century? Who am I to disagree?

THE LEHMAN TRILOGY

The Lehman Trilogy takes place on Es Devlin’s stunning stage (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

THE LEHMAN TRILOGY
Nederlander Theatre
208 West 41st St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 2, $59-$209
877-250-2929
thelehmantrilogy.com

“The prospect of sitting through a nearly three-and-a-half-hour play about the history of Lehman Brothers performed by a mere three actors might not necessarily be your idea of fun,” I wrote about the American premiere of The Lehman Trilogy at Park Avenue Armory in the spring of 2019. But it turned out to be what I called “an epic masterpiece, must-see theater at its finest.”

Still, the prospect of watching it two and a half years later, at the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway with two of the same actors amid a continuing pandemic, was not necessarily my idea of fun. But it turned out to once again be must-see theater at its finest.

Adapted by writer Ben Power and director Sam Mendes from Stefano Massini’s five-hour Italian original, the dazzling play relates the history of the men behind the business, siblings Henry (Simon Russell Beale), Mayer (Adam Godley), and Emanuel Lehman (Adrian Lester), who were born and raised in the small town of Rimpar in Bavaria and arrived, individually, in the United States between 1844 and 1850, operating a fabric store in Montgomery, Alabama. Over the years, they change with the times and the needs of the market, selling raw cotton, coffee, and coal and, eventually, trading money, building a vast empire that came crashing down in the 2008 financial crisis. Henry is considered the head, with the most business sense; Emanuel the arm, able to forcibly get things done; and Mayer the potato, an unequal partner who serves as the mediator. As the firm develops, the evolving name of the company is written and rewritten on glass walls, a constant reminder of where they were and where they are going.

Adam Godley, Simon Russell Beale, and Adrian Lester play multiple roles in The Lehman Trilogy (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The story is told primarily in the third person, an ingenious decision that adds an extra dimension to the characters, giving them each a unique perspective on themselves and their family.

Henry: Every morning, like this morning, they get up at five in their three-room home.
Mayer: They light the lamps with whale oil and wash with one pail of water between them.
Emanuel: This is worse than Germany! Emanuel said on his third day in America.
Mayer: After the slap that Henry laid on his face he never said it again.
Henry: Every morning, like this morning, while Montgomery sleeps, they pray together before leaving.
Emanuel: Just as they did in Bavaria. They put on their hats and go out.
Mayer: Another day.

The narrative is divided into three chapters, “Three Brothers,” “Fathers & Sons,” and “The Immortal,” as their fame and fortune rises through the next generations, which include Emanuel’s ruthless son, Philip (Beale); Mayer’s son, Herbert (Lester), who believes in fairness, stability, and security, not the Lehman tradition of risk taking; and Philip’s son, “Bobby” (Godley), who loves the limelight and becomes the very public face of the company. “No one outside this family can ever truly understand. What we’ve done. Why we did it. What we plan to do next,” Philip says. Bobby answers, “At Yale they teach us that nothing is more outdated as betting on industry. The times are changing, Father. The new century will wipe everything away.” He doesn’t know how right he is.

The play takes place on Es Devlin’s gorgeous set, a large, revolving transparent cube with several office-like rooms. Video designer Luke Halls projects geographic scenes onto the huge semicircle at the back of the stage and onto the floor around the cube, from the vast sea and plantation estates to cotton fields and the New York City skyline. As good as it all looks, the set lacks the magic and power it had in the armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall; it feels too cramped on the Nederlander stage, where, depending on where you’re sitting, you’re unlikely to get its full impact.

The history of the Lehman brothers is told by three actors in sensational production (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Beale (Candide, Uncle Vanya), Godley (Rain Man, Anything Goes), and Olivier winner Lester (Red Velvet, Company), who replaces Ben Miles as Emanuel, are majestic, an absolute marvel. The three men have a commanding presence, balancing humor and gravitas as they move about the cube, using office packing boxes as furniture, arranging them into steps, furniture, and even a piano. (A real piano is played offstage by Candida Caldicot.)

Oscar, Tony, and Olivier winner Mendes (The Ferryman, American Beauty) and Power (Emperor and Galiean, Husbands and Sons) have made a few tweaks to the show in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis and the George Floyd protests. When Mayer discusses how the company benefits from plantations and slaves, Henry notes, “Doctor Beauchamp, who once treated the children of those slaves for chickenpox, now shakes his head the way he once did about yellow fever: ‘Surely you knew it could not last, Mr. Mayer? Everything that was built here was built on a crime. The roots run so deep you cannot see them but the ground beneath our feet is poisoned. It had to end this way.’” But “Mayer doesn’t want to hear. So day and night, he tries to convince himself that, although the war is lost, the South if you look hard enough still stands, is not dead.”

Later, in a Greek diner in Nebraska, Henry relates the story of its owner, Georgios Petropoulos: “He crossed the country in 1918 when the soldiers brought the influenza back from Europe and half a million Americans died. He saw the priests collecting the bodies off the street in Philadelphia, and the protests in San Francisco, against the wearing of masks.” At the Nederlander, employees walk up and down the aisles, making sure all audience members are wearing their masks correctly, over their mouth and nose.

Despite running more than three hours with two intermissions, The Lehman Trilogy flies by, moving faster than the Dow Jones stock ticker. It’s also a whole lot more satisfying, with Power, Mendes, and the outstanding cast taking all the risks and leaving all the rewards for the audience.

TROUBLE IN MIND

Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind finally makes it to Broadway after sixty-six years (photo by Joan Marcus)

TROUBLE IN MIND
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 9, $39-$250
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

In 1955, Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind was destined to be the first play by a Black woman writer to be staged on Broadway. However, when the white producers insisted that Childress use a rewritten happy ending instead of her original one, she adamantly refused. Four years later, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and became a much-revived classic while Trouble in Mind languished in relative obscurity, occasionally performed by small companies and schools.

The play has finally made its Broadway debut, in an uneven Roundabout production at the American Airlines Theatre. Right before it begins, an announcement explains that it is being presented exactly as Childress wrote it, without one word being changed. In the hands of director Charles Randolph-Wright, that might not have been the best idea, as this Trouble in Mind, which can be laugh-out-loud funny and sharply poignant and prescient, too often feels stilted and repetitive as Childress reveals the systemic racism and misogyny baked into the theater, which is still all too relevant today.

It’s the fall of 1957, and a group of actors are arriving at a Broadway theater to start rehearsals for Chaos in Belleville, a play by an unseen white man named Melton about racism, sharecropping, and lynching. The cast consists of the bitter Wiletta Mayer (LaChanze), a middle-aged Black actress who has grown sick and tired of playing mammies, maids, and slaves; Millie Davis (Jessica Frances Dukes), a younger Black actress who loves fancy outfits and likes to sting Wiletta about her advanced age; Sheldon Forrester (Chuck Cooper), an elderly Black character actor who usually doesn’t stir the pot but is concerned about certain aspects of Chaos; John Nevins (Brandon Micheal Hall), a young Black actor with dreams of success; Judy Sears (Danielle Campbell), a white Yale woke grad; and Bill O’Wray (Don Stephenson), an established white actor who declines to have lunch with his Black colleagues. Al Manners (Michael Zegen) is the white director who is so determined to have a hit that he fails to understand the inherent racism of the script and the needs of his cast; Eddie Fenton (Alex Mickiewicz) is the white stage manager and Manners’s right-hand man, and Henry (Simon Jones) is an elderly white doorman who has seen it all.

Wiletta (LaChanze) teaches John (Brandon Micheal Hall) a thing or two about the business as Sheldon (Chuck Cooper) looks on (photo by Joan Marcus)

“I think the theater is the grandest place in the world, and I plan to go right to the top,” John tells Wiletta, who tries to set him straight. “Show business, it’s just a business. Colored folks ain’t in no theater,” she says, explaining how he should act in front of white people, pretending to laugh at their jokes. “White folks can’t stand unhappy Negroes . . . so laugh, laugh when it ain’t funny at all,” she strongly advises.

John and Millie believe Chaos is an important work. “I hope I can do a good job and that people learn something from this play,” Millie says naively. Sheldon just hopes that everything goes smoothly, regardless of the content of the play. “Do, Lord, let’s keep the peace,” he says. “Last thing I was in, the folks fought and argued so, the man said he’d never do a colored show again . . . and he didn’t!”

Manners claims he is seeking authenticity, espousing, “I want truth. What is truth? Truth is simply whatever you can bring yourself to believe, that is all.” But his idea of truth is more about financial success than the inherent racism in the play, which starts to come out as some of the actors can’t hold back their thoughts any longer, including Judy, who shouts, “Oh, I get so mad about this prejudice nonsense! It’s a wonder colored people don’t go out and kill somebody, I mean actually, really do it . . . bloody murder, you know?”

Henry (Simon Jones) makes a point to Wiletta (LaChanze) in Trouble in Mind (photo by Joan Marcus)

Childress, who grew up in Charleston and Harlem and wrote such other plays as Florence and Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White (being revived in the spring by TFANA) in addition to the young adult novels A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich and the Pulitzer Prize-nominated A Short Walk, cuts to the heart of racism in theater in Trouble in Mind; she was inspired to write it after appearing with Georgia Burke in the 1944 Broadway show Anna Lucasta, basing the character of Wiletta on Burke. She also references the idea of being forced to make script changes. “Melton is so stubborn, won’t change a line,” Eddie tells Manners, who replies “But he did.” Eddie adds, “Yes, but so stubborn.” Manners concludes, “A genius should be stubborn.”

Tony winner LaChanze (The Color Purple, The Secret Life of Bees) is radiant as Wiletta, who is bold and strong, caught in between wanting to continue her career but no longer able to hold back what she thinks. (As a bonus, LaChanze gets to belt out a song too.) In her Broadway debut, Dukes (Is God Is; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark) excels as Wiletta’s nemesis, each costume (by Emilio Sosa) making statements of their own.

Zegen (Bad Jews, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) overplays his hand as Manners, while Tony winner Cooper (The Life, Avenue X) is cooped up by Randolph-Wright’s (Motown the Musical, Ruined) often stagnant direction, not making enough use of Arnulfo Maldonado’s long, deep set. At one point Manners says, “I definitely know what I want and however unorthodox my methods, I promise never to bore you.” Unfortunately, that’s just what happens, especially in the second act. It’s as if Randolph-Wright has such reverence for Childress’s stand to make no revisions that he lets the pace drag as every word she wrote is delivered with the same emphasis, leaving the production feeling more like a historical document than the gripping drama it should be.

LACKAWANNA BLUES

LACKAWANNA BLUES
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 12, $59
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

In 2006, the HBO film of Lackawanna Blues earned John Papsidera an Emmy for Outstanding Casting for a Miniseries, Movie, or Special and S. Epatha Merkerson won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Rachel “Nanny” Crosby. But in the Broadway debut of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s one-man show, which premiered at the Public in 2001 and continues at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through November 12, Santiago-Hudson proves once again that he can do it all by himself.

In the ninety-minute play, Santiago-Hudson, serving as actor, writer, and director, portrays more than two dozen characters that were part of his childhood growing up in the steel town of Lackawanna in upstate New York, focusing on his five-year-old self and the woman left in charge of his care, the beloved Miss Rachel, also known to the tight-knit community as Nanny. Ruben’s mother had financial problems stemming from drug abuse, and his father did not live with them. Through the age of eleven, he often lived with Miss Rachel, who ran a pair of boardinghouses, one at 32 Wasson Ave., where young Ruben met such fanciful figures as Numb Finger Pete, Sweet Tooth Sam, Ol’ Po’ Carl, Small Paul, Mr. Lucious, Freddie Cobbs, and Mr. Lemuel Taylor; Santiago-Hudson embodies each of them with shifts in his voice and physical movement as he relates funny and poignant anecdotes about fishing, baseball, and domestic violence.

He wanders across Michael Carnahan’s intimate set, consisting of a few chairs, a small table, the front door of 32 Wasson Ave., a hanging window, and a back wall that evokes the boardinghouse, beautifully lit by Jen Schriever (with several cool surprises). Sitting in one corner is New York Blues Hall of Fame guitarist and Grammy nominee Junior Mack, playing music composed and originally performed onstage by Bill Sims Jr.; Mack previously performed in Sims’s band, so it is a natural hand-off. He interacts well with Santiago-Hudson, sometimes coming to the forefront, other times whispering under Santiago-Hudson’s dialogue. Occasionally, Santiago-Hudson whips out a harmonica and blasts away with verve. (The warm sound design is by Darron L West.)

Lackawanna Blues is a celebration of a town that was enjoying the fruits of prosperity, not a dirge about marginalized people suffering hard times. The play begins with Santiago-Hudson declaring, “Nineteen fifty-six. Lackawanna, New York, like all Great Lakes cities, was thriving! Jobs everywhere, money everywhere. Steel plants, grain mills, railroads, the docks. Everybody had a new car and a conk. Restaurants, bars, stores, everybody made money. The smell of fried fish, chicken, and pork chops floating in the air every weekend. In every bar the aroma of a newly tapped keg of Black Label, Iroquois, or Genesee beer, to complement that hot roast beef-on-weck with just a touch of horseradish. . . . You could get to town on a Monday and by Wednesday have more jobs than one man can take. These were fertile times.” There were problems, but the people knew how to take care of one another, with Miss Rachel at the center. “Nanny was like the government if it really worked,” Santiago-Hudson says.

Santiago-Hudson is no stranger to one-man shows; in 2013 at the Signature, he portrayed his mentor and friend, the late August Wilson, in How I Learned What I Learned. He has directed and/or starred in numerous Wilson works, winning a Tony for his role as Cantwell in Seven Guitars and earning a Drama Desk Award for directing Jitney and an Obie for helming The Piano Lesson. He won an Obie Special Citation for the original production of Lackawanna Blues, while Sims earned an Obie for his music.

On Broadway, Santiago-Hudson makes you think you see every character, smell every smell, witness minute details of every scene even though he never changes his costume or introduces props. It’s a compelling, deeply personal performance that feels right at home in the 622-capacity theater as he marvelously succeeds in inviting the audience into his past. When asked at a talkback about what happened to his mother, he said that would be a show unto itself while sharing some of the specifics of her tragic yet hope-filled life. Sounds like a heckuva sequel.

SIX

Six queens battle it out to see who has it worst in Six (photo by Joan Marcus)

SIX
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
256 West Forty-Seventh St. Between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Thursday – Tuesday through September 4, $99-$279
sixonbroadway.com

The premise of the new Broadway musical Six is as simple as its title: The six wives of Henry VIII battle it out in an American Idol–like competition to determine which of them had it worst, a riotous twist on the old game show Queen for a Day, in which women shared their personal problems on television, with the most heart-wrenching tale earning its forlorn teller a crown and various sponsored prizes.

Fighting it out in Six, which premiered at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and made its way across the UK and to Australia, Canada, Chicago, and Massachusetts before landing at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, are the divorced Catherine of Aragon (Adrianna Hicks); the beheaded Anne Boleyn (Andrea Macasaet); Jane Seymour (Abby Mueller), who died shortly after giving birth; the divorced Anna of Cleves (Brittney Mack); the beheaded Katherine Howard (Samantha Pauly); and Catherine Parr (Anna Uzele), who survived Henry. Each woman makes her case in a spotlighted solo, set to music that ranges from pop to hip-hop to R&B and techno, performed onstage by the Ladies in Waiting: conductor and keyboardist Julia Schade, bassist Michelle Osbourne, guitarist Kimi Hayes, and drummer Elena Bonomo. The playful orchestrations are by Tom Curran, with flashy choreography by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille, the music and movement referencing Adele, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, the Spice Girls, and other pop faves.

Each former wife of Henry VIII takes center stage in Six (photo by Joan Marcus)

Wearing dark, glittering spikey costumes bordering on futuristic S&M, designed by Gabriella Slade, the women take center stage one by one as Tim Deiling’s frenetic lighting evokes a medieval discotheque. Each woman details her unique relationship with Henry in such songs as “Don’t Lose Ur Head,” “Heart of Stone,” and “I Don’t Need Your Love”; don’t be surprised if people near you are singing along, because the 2018 cast album has been streamed more than a hundred million times prior to the show’s Broadway opening. A woman sitting in front of me even knew specific gestures made by the performers, moving and grooving to every tune and nearly jumping out of her chair for the grand finale.

In between songs, each of the queens explains why she should be ruled the ultimate champion. Catherine of Aragon declares, “Who lasted longest was the strongest.” Boleyn claims, “The biggest sinner is obvs the winner.” Seymour opines, “Who had the son takes number one.” Cleves states, “Who was most chaste shall be first-placed.” Howard demands, “The most inglorious is victorious.” And Parr concludes, “The winning contestant was the most ProTESTant . . . Protestant.”

The divas also throw plenty of shade at one another in their quest to prove that they had it worst. When Seymour admits, “You know, people say Henry was stone-hearted. Uncaring. And I’m not sure he was?” Boleyn replies, “Yeah, actually, come to think of it, there was this one really cute time where I had a daughter and he chopped my head off.” When Catherine of Aragon says, “How about this: When my one and only child had a raging fever, Henry wouldn’t even let me, her mother, see her,” Seymour responds, “Oh, boo hoo, baby Mary had the chicken pox and you weren’t there to hold her hand; you know, it’s funny, because when I wanted to hold my newborn son, I died!!!!!!”

Cleverly cowritten with sheer glee by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, who previously collaborated on Hot Tub Time Machine, and codirected by Moss (Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, Fisk) and Jamie Armitage (And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens, Love Me Now), Six knows exactly what it is, not trying to be anything else; it’s an immensely crowd-pleasing show that doesn’t overwhelm you with history but does make mention of Hans Holbein, the C of E (Church of England), the Tudors, the Bubonic Plague, Thomas Cromwell, Henry Mannox, and the Holy Roman Empire. “Let’s get in Reformation,” Cleves orders in one song. (If you’re afraid you’ve missed something, you can most likely find it at this Wiki fan page.) Marlow and Moss also inject a powerful dose of female empowerment, although it leads to a too-easy, politically correct finish. As Parr says, “Every Tudor rose has its thorns.”

The cast is passionate and exuberant, making tons of eye contact with audience members in order to gain their vote. I saw understudy Courtney Mack as Boleyn, replacing Macasaet, and she more than held her own with Hicks, Mueller, Brittney Mack, Pauly, and Uzele, who form a strong team that often repeats the familiar refrain, “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived,” but want to be known for something more in this exhilarating “histo-remix.”