this week in broadway

AUGUST WILSON’S JITNEY

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 12, $79-$169
jitneybroadway.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

August Wilson’s Jitney, the first play he wrote in the American Century Cycle, also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle, is the last of the ten plays to reach Broadway, and all one can ask is, What took so long? Jitney is another masterpiece from the Pittsburgh-born playwright, whose cycle comprises ten plays, each set in a different decade of the twentieth century, capturing the black experience in America over one hundred years with grace, honesty, dignity, humor, and a soul-searching reality. Coincidentally, the film version of Wilson’s second play to hit Broadway, the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences, was released in December; the first movie based on a Wilson play, Fences garnered Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (director Denzel Washington), Best Supporting Actress (Viola Davis), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Wilson). A Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Jitney takes place in a ramshackle car service office in 1977 in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, where taxis won’t go. The gypsy cab company is run by the soft-spoken, straightforward Becker (John Douglas Thompson). His motley group of drivers consists of Turnbo (Michael Potts), a confrontational gossip who can’t stay out of other people’s business; YoungBlood (André Holland), an angry Vietnam vet trying to provide for his wife, Rena (Carra Patterson), and baby; Fielding (Anthony Chisholm), an aging, stumbling alcoholic who’s been separated from his wife for twenty-two years; and the practical, sensible Doub (Keith Randolph Smith), who is a kind of den father, keeping the peace while spouting such sage phrases as “Time go along and it come around.” Stopping by often is the sharply attired Shealy (Harvy Blanks), who takes phone calls at the station for his numbers racket, and Philmore (Ray Anthony Thomas), a regular customer who drinks himself into oblivion and then needs a ride home. Tensions rise when Becker eventually lets everyone know that the city will be tearing down the building soon, leaving them all jobless, and Becker’s son, Booster (Brandon J. Dirden), arrives after spending twenty years in prison, desperate to reestablish a relationship with his estranged father.

The Olivier Award-winning Jitney is a glorious play, a spectacular blending of poetic, incisive dialogue, powerful, soaring performances, and intimate, seamless staging by director Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who won a Tony for his role in Wilson’s Seven Guitars, later directed that work as well as the recent Signature revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Piano Lesson (starring Dirden), and was Wilson’s personal choice to portray him in the playwright’s autobiographical one-man show, How I Learned What I Learned. As with virtually every Wilson play, the cast is exceptional, bringing the beautifully developed characters to life in ways that make them feel like they’re your friends or acquaintances. Most of the actors have appeared in previous Wilson shows, including Thomas, who played Becker in Jitney at the Cincinnati Playhouse, and Chisholm, who has been playing Fielding since 1996 and once toured the Hill District with Wilson, who died in 2005 at the age of sixty. So every Wilson show has a welcoming family aspect surrounding it, and Jitney is no exception. When the play ended, I felt a tinge of sadness, wanting to spend more time with every one of these characters. The appropriately musty, messy set, by Tony-winning designer David Gallo (Wilson’s King Headley III, Gem of the Ocean, Radio Golf, 2000 production of Jitney at Second Stage), features ratty chairs and couches, newspaper clippings of Pittsburgh sports teams, an old pot-bellied stove, and large windows across the back of the stage that tantalizingly reveal who’s coming into the station next. Originally written in 1979 and rewritten in 1996, Jitney is very much about taking control of one’s life and being part of something bigger, regardless of the odds. At one point, Doub questions why Becker took so long to tell him about the station being torn down. “That ain’t what I mean, Becker,” Doub says. “It’s like you just a shadow of yourself. The station done gone downhill. Some people overcharge. Some people don’t haul. Fielding stay drunk. I just watch you and you don’t do nothing.” “What’s to be done?” Becker responds, adding “I just do the best I can do,” to which Doub boldly replies, “Sometime your best ain’t enough.” Like the rest of the dialogue, those words hit hard, resonating loud and clear in this stunning triumph.

THE PRESENT

Anna (Cate Blanchett) makes an explosive point at fortieth birthday party (photo © Joan Marcus)

Barrymore Theatre
243 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday (and some Mondays) through March 19, $59 – $159
thepresentbroadway.com

The Present brings us quite a gift, the Broadway debut of Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett, who is absolutely captivating in an uneven black comedy that can go from penetrating to tiresome in the blink of an eye. “An eclectic mix,” Yegor (David Downer) says about the guests at Anna’s (Blanchett) explosive fortieth birthday party, but he also could be speaking about the play itself. Adapted for the Sydney Theatre Company by Andrew Upton from Anton Chekhov’s first major play, sometimes known as Platonov, which remained unperformed in Chekhov’s lifetime, The Present is a three-hour look at lust, the aging aristocracy, personal and professional failure, and fear of death. Upton, who is married to Blanchett, transports the story to 1990s Russia, where the Clash and Joy Division dominate the soundtrack. Anna is considering remarrying following the death of her beloved husband, a much older man called the General, at least in part to maintain control of her late husband’s vast holdings. Among those interested in Anna, either as a bride, a one-night stand, or a business partner are Nikolai (Toby Schmitz), a doctor and Anna’s stepbrother, who has brought hot young student Maria (Anna Bamford) as his date; the practical Yegor, an older businessman who has come with his bland son, Dimitri (Brandon McClelland); Kirill (Eamon Farren), a snarky DJ who is the son of retired lawyer Alexi (Martin Jacobs); and Mikhail Platonov (Richard Roxburgh), the General’s best friend who is married to Sasha (Susan Prior), the daughter of retired colonel Ivan (Marshall Napier) and the sister of Nikolai. Also at the party are Sergei (Chris Ryan), Anna’s stepson, who is married to Sophia (Jacqueline McKenzie), and former KGB operative Osip (Andrew Buchanan). “Birthdays are always lively. Balancing the past and the present is tricky at the best of times,” Yegor pronounces. “But that’s Russia these days, isn’t it, Alexi?” Alexi responds, “Russia? I couldn’t tell you.” Anna holds court as her guests drink heavily, argue over politics and socioeconomic conditions, and flirt with one another, risking their friendships, marriages, and reputations in one misguided night of debauchery. “It’s so hard to do what you really, really desperately want in life,” Anna says. “It’s so much easier to do shit you don’t care either way about.”

Mikhail (Richard Roxburgh) and Anna (Cate Blanchett) wonder what might have been in Sydney Theatre Company’s THE PRESENT on Broadway (photo © Joan Marcus)

Chekhov’s play has previously been adapted by the likes of Michael Frayn, Lev Dodin, Trevor Griffiths, and David Hare, with such actors as Rex Harrison, James McArdle, and Stephen Rea playing Mikhail Platonov. Roxburgh (Rake, Hacksaw Ridge), who has been performing with Blanchett for more than twenty years — the duo has played Trigorin and Nina in The Seagull, Vanya and Yelena in Uncle Vanya, and Hamlet and Ophelia in Hamlet — is dynamic when he and Blanchett are together onstage, but it’s difficult to understand why all the other women are so enamored of him. Upton (The Maids, The Cherry Orchard) has made Mikhail, a disgruntled, disappointed schoolteacher who wanted to be a famous writer, and Anna much older than in Chekhov’s original, which works well for the parts of the play dealing with aging and death but leaves much to be desired regarding sexual chemistry and several far-fetched plot twists. The smoke-filled scene in which various women state their love for Mikhail is quite a sight but doesn’t make narrative sense. And while some elements of the anarchic narrative are exciting, particularly those involving Anna’s revolutionary spirit, the table-dancing scene is a bit ludicrous. The play is sort of Chekhov light, with aspects of Don Juan and A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy tossed in. Director John Crowley (Brooklyn, A Behanding in Spokane) can’t gain control of the overall chaos, although many individual scenes crackle and, figuratively and literally, explode. Over the course of the too-long three-hour show, you can’t take your eyes off two-time Oscar winner Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, Hedda Gabler), who wears three awesome outfits by Alice Babidge, who also designed the sets; even when Blanchett is in the background, her every movement is mesmerizing, lit beautifully by Nick Schlieper. When she is offstage, the play suffers, but when she is front and center, armed and dangerous, downing drinks, trying to nail down her future, The Present is a rather fine offering.

BROADWAYCON 2017

Josh Groban and other members of the creative team of NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 will be at second annual BroadwayCon on July 27 (photo by Chad Batka)

Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
655 West 34th St. (11th Ave. between 34th & 39th Sts.)
January 27-29, $250 General Pass, $65-$95 Day Pass
www.broadwaycon.com
www.javitscenter.com

BroadwayCon takes a major step up in its second year, moving from the New York Hilton to the Javits Center this weekend. The founders and presenters, which include Melissa Anelli, Anthony Rapp, Playbill, and Mischief Management, are discussing performance and payment details with Actors’ Equity, but whatever they decide, there is still an impressive roster of events. Gold passes ($600) are sold out, but you can still get a General Pass ($250) or single-day tickets ($65-$95) to see cast and crew members and/or participate in fan meetups for such shows as Annie, Kinky Boots, Wicked, In Transit, Hamilton, Les Misérables, Ragtime, Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, and many others in addition to autograph and/or photobooth sessions with Kelli O’Hara, Rebecca Luker and Danny Burstein, Michael Cerveris and Judy Kuhn, Carolee Carmello, Jane Houdyshell and Reed Birney, Chita Rivera, Jeremy Jordan, Donna Murphy, Alison Fraser, Mary Testa, and Chip Zien, Rapp, and many more. Below are only some of the highlights.

Friday, January 27
The Art of Perseverance with Melissa Errico, Programming Room A, 11:00 am

Cabaret and the Next Generation of Artists, with Shoshana Feinstein, Joe Iconis, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Julia Mattison, and Benjamin Rauhala, moderated by Jennifer Ashley Tepper, Programming Room E, 2:00

Women in the World of Sondheim, with Katie Welsh, Emily Whitaker, and Stacy Wolf, Programming Room A, 2:30

Chandeliers and Caviar: Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, with Brittain Ashford, Gelsey Bell, Nicholas Belton, Denée Benton, Nick Choksi, Amber Gray, Josh Groban, Dave Malloy, Grace McLean, Michael Paulson, Paul Pinto, and Lucas Steele, MainStage, 5:00

Annie Forty-Year Reunion, with Jennifer Ashley Tepper, Steve Boockvor, Shelley Bruce, Martin Charnin, Mary Jane Houdina, Andrea McArdle, Thomas Meehan, and Charles Strouse, MainStage, 8:00 PM

Saturday, January 28
Everybody Say Yeah: Three Years at Kinky Boots, with Killian Donnelly, Todrick Hall, Julie James, Taylor Louderman, and Jerry Mitchell, MainStage, 11:00 am

Madam Secretary Panel, with Sebastian Arcelus, Erich Bergen, Keith Carradine, Tim Daly, Željko Ivanek, Patina Miller, and Bebe Neuwirth, moderated by Anthony Rapp, MainStage, 1:00

William Ivey Long: A Lifetime in Theatre, Programming Room C, 3:00

Shaina Taub Performance, Marketplace Stage, 3:30

Joel Grey Q&A, MainStage, 4:00

Sunday, January 29
Born to Boogie: Broadway’s Choreographers, with Lorin Latarro and Spencer Liff, Programming Room C, 10:00 am

Raising Broadway Babies: Working Moms on Broadway, with Carmen Ruby Floyd, Blair Goldberg, and Erin Quill, moderated by Vasthy Mompoint, Programming Room C, 11:00 am

This Is A Bronx Tale Panel, with Richard H. Blake, Nick Cordero, Ariana DeBose, Chazz Palminteri, Glenn Slater, and Bobby Conte Thornton, MainStage, 12 noon

Judy Kuhn Q&A, with Judy Kuhn and moderator Ilana Levine, Marketplace Stage, 5:00

Geek Out — Freak Out: Our Favorite Songs, with Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Leigh Silverman, moderated by Mark Blankenship, Programming Room D, 5:00

NYC BROADWAY WEEK WINTER 2017

NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 are among shows participating in two-for-one Broadway Week promotion (photo by Chad Batka)

BROADWAY WEEK: 2-for-1 Tickets
January 17 – February 5, buy one ticket, get one free
www.nycgo.com/broadwayweek

Tickets are on sale for the winter edition of Broadway Week, which runs January 29 to February 5 and offers theater lovers a chance to get two-for-one tickets in advance to see new and long-running shows on the Great White Way. Nineteen shows are participating, but two are already sold out — Dear Evan Hansen and Oh, Hello — so you need to act fast. You can still grab seats, however, for Aladdin, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, A Bronx Tale, Cats, Chicago, Cirque du Soleil Paramour, The Front Page, In Transit, Jitney, Kinky Boots, The Lion King, Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan, The Phantom of the Opera, School of Rock, and Waitress. You can also get $20 upgrades by using the code BWAYUP.

LIVE FROM BARNES & NOBLE: JOSH GROBAN, DENÉE BARTON, DAVE MALLOY, AND CAST MEMBERS FROM THE GREAT COMET…

great-comet

Who: Josh Groban, Denée Barton, Dave Malloy, Steve Suskin, more
What: Live performance and book signing
Where: Barnes & Noble, 150 East 86th St. at Lexington Ave., 212-369-2180
When: Friday, January 13, free, 4:00 (priority seating with book purchase at B&N Upper East Side starting at 9:00 am)
Why: Steven Suskin’s new book, The Great Comet: The Journey of a New Musical to Broadway (Sterling, November 2016, $40), takes theater fans behind the scenes of the remarkable story of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on a seventy-page section of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace that began life in the eighty-seven-seat house Ars Nova in 2012, only to find itself a smash hit at the 1,200-capacity Imperial on Broadway four years later. The book includes a five-song CD (with three songs from the off-Broadway production and two from the Broadway edition) as well as a foreword by Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis. On January 13 at 4:00, Suskin will be at the Upper East Side B&N on Eighty-Sixth St. to sign copies of the book, joined by Denée Barton, who is exquisite as Natasha, Josh Groban, who has earned raves as Pierre, and Dave Malloy, the show’s creator, composer, librettist, orchestrator, music director, and original Pierre. The B&N event will include live performances along with a signing; the participants will only be signing copies of the new book that were purchased that day, starting at 9:00, at the store, which also gets you priority seating; no other memorabilia will be autographed.

IN TRANSIT

A cappella musical IN TRANSIT has pulled into Circle in the Square for its Broadway bow (photo by Joan Marcus)

Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 25, $89-$159
www.intransitbroadway.com

In the fall of 2010, Primary Stages premiered the a cappella In Transit at 59E59, nabbing a special Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble and earning a nomination for Outstanding Musical, losing out to a little show called The Book of Mormon. A new production of In Transit has now pulled into the Circle in the Square, where it has its ups and downs, stops and starts, just like the New York City subway system. The show is set in an imaginary train station watched over by Boxman (Chesney Snow and Steven “HeaveN” Cantor alternate in the role), a subway beatboxer with a speaker and a microphone who serves as a kind of Greek chorus / narrator, dishing out advice as well as beats. “Really, how you gonna get where you’re going if you don’t know how to be where you are?” he asks. Over the course of ninety-five minutes and sixteen a cappella songs — there are no instruments used; every sound is made by the human voice — various straphangers take stock of their lives while in transit or at their destinations, their stories rooted in genre clichés that seem tailored more for tourists than New Yorkers yet delivered with energetic charm by a very likable cast. Jane (Margo Seibert) is working as a temp while going on auditions, looking for her big acting break. At a bar, she hits it off with Nate (James Snyder), who recently lost his job because of a major “reply all” faux pas. Nate’s sister, Ali (Erin Mackey), has just taken up running to deal with her breakup with Dave (David Abeles), the doctor she moved cross-country to join in New York. Trent (Justin Guarini) and Steven (usually played by Telly Leung, but we saw understudy Arbender Robinson), are planning their wedding, but Steven insists that Trent must stop hiding his sexual orientation from his Bible-thumping mother (Moya Angela) in Texas. The excellent cast also includes Gerianne Pérez, Mariand Torres, and Nicholas Ward; all of the actors except for Snow play multiple roles.

Characters share their hopes and dreams, trials and tribulations on the subway in IN TRANSIT (photo by Joan Marcus)

Directed and choreographed by three-time Tony winner Kathleen Marshall (The Pajama Game, Anything Goes), In Transit works best when it is taking place in the subway, on Donyale Werle’s set, which features familiar train seats and platform and a clever conveyer belt that suggests subway car movement while the characters share classic subway thoughts: “I should’ve hailed a cab.” “This aroma’s unique.” “Is that lady pregnant or fat?” “Crap, why is the seat all wet where I just sat?” “Did I just miss my stop?” When the location moves to Texas, to a bar, and to Jane’s office, it’s like someone pulled the emergency cord on the train and we did indeed get off on the wrong stop. The cast displays an endearing chemistry not only in the major storylines but in the playful subplot involving Trent and angry token clerk Althea (Angela). Overseeing it all like a mythological god is Snow, the only actor from the original 2010 production; the sounds that come out of his mouth are hard to believe, like a full band accompanying the rest of the cast’s lovely, soaring voices. The problem, however, is in the writing, which does not feel adult enough, unwilling to take any real risks, so it is not surprising that the book, music, and lyrics were written by a quartet — Kristen Anderson-Lopez, James-Allen Ford, Russ Kaplan, and Sara Wordsworth — whose resumes include Frozen, Finding Nemo: The Musical, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie & Other Story Books, and the NYC Children’s Theatre’s Dear Albert Einstein. It could have been a much-loved express train, but instead it’s merely a likable local.

A BRONX TALE: THE NEW MUSICAL

Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 19, $50-$187
abronxtalethemusical.com

Chazz Palminteri’s autobiographical A Bronx Tale started life as a one-man show in 1989, telling the story of a young Belmont boy, Calogero, who witnesses a murder involving local crime boss Sonny but keeps his mouth shut, earning Sonny’s respect and ultimately a job with the mobster, which deeply angers his bus driver father, Lorenzo. Four years later, the film version arrived, directed by Robert De Niro and starring Palminteri — whose real first name is Calogero — as Sonny, Francis Capra and Lilo Brancato Jr. as Calogero (at different ages), and De Niro as Lorenzo. The show made it to Broadway in the fall of 2007, directed by four-time Tony winner Jerry Zaks. At De Niro’s urging, A Bronx Tale has now been turned into a Broadway musical at the Longacre, codirected by Zaks and De Niro, who should have left well enough alone. The best parts of the new show, and they’re very, very good, are the spoken dialogue scenes, which book writer Palminteri has expanded from his solo show, making excellent use of the expanded cast. However, the musical numbers, by a pair of Disney veterans, bring the show to a screeching halt, filled with syrupy sentimentality that neither enhances the development of the characters nor forwards the plot, instead restating what the audience already knows and feels. Composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater, who have previously collaborated on The Little Mermaid, Sister Act, and Leap of Faith, should have known better, too.

Ariana DeBose steals the show as Jane as a race war threatens in A BRONX TALE (photo © Joan Marcus, 2016)

Tony-winning designer Beowulf Boritt (Act One, The Scottsboro Boys) has created a cool, hip set, centered by a street sign that turns from Belmont Ave., where the Italians live, to Webster Ave., a black community, with storefronts and tenement buildings that also rotate to indicate a change of location; the two neighborhoods are close to each other but couldn’t be further apart. The show is narrated by Bobby Conte Thornton, in his engaging Broadway debut, as the adult Calogero, who looks back at the choices he and his father made; Hudson Loverro plays the nine-year-old Calogero, nicknamed “C” by Sonny. Tony nominee Nick Cordero (Bullets over Broadway, Rock of Ages) is impressive as Sonny, forming an intimate chemistry with both Calogeros while battling against Lorenzo (a rock-solid Richard H. Blake of Jersey Boys). The real stand-out is Ariana DeBose (Hamilton, Pippin) as Jane, an African American high school student whom Calogero is interested in, which threatens to set off a local race war. She has a mesmerizing stage presence, with the voice and moves to match. But the real problem is the music, a mix of doo-wop and ballads, and Sergio Trujillo’s (On Your Feet, Jersey Boys) choreography, which together range back and forth between pale imitations of Grease and West Side Story. The film featured classic songs by the Impressions, John Coltrane, the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Dion, the Moonglows, and others, helping set the proper mood; in the musical, the orchestrations by three-time Tony winner Doug Besterman (Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Producers) are drab and dull, unfortunately matching the music and lyrics, sapping the energy out of the show. If one more song focused on the word “heart,” I might have had to run out of the theater screaming. Without the production numbers, A Bronx Tale is compelling and intriguing; with them, it embodies the critical advice Lorenzo gives young Calogero: “The saddest thing in life is wasted talent. Promise me you won’t waste yours.”