this week in broadway

BROADWAY WEEK 2013

New production of ROMEO AND JULIET, starring Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad, is one of nineteen Broadway shows offering two-for-one tickets September 2-15

Multiple venues
September 2-15, buy one, get one free
www.nycgo.com/broadwayweek

After the long, hot summer, the Great White Way looks to keep fans filling seats during the annual Broadway Week discount, when tickets for nineteen shows are available for half price for performances September 2-15. You can buy one ticket and get one free for such newer productions, some still in previews, as Big Fish, First Date, Forever Tango, The Glass Menagerie (with Cherry Jones and Zachary Quinto), Romeo and Juliet (with Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad), and Soul Doctor as well as such mainstays as Chicago, Jersey Boys, The Lion King, Rock of Ages, Wicked, The Phantom of the Opera, and Mamma Mia! Also available are seats to Once, The Trip to Bountiful, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Newsies, Annie, and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Quantities are limited, so you have to act fast.

SOUL DOCTOR: JOURNEY OF A ROCK STAR RABBI

Shlomo Carlebach (Eric Anderson) and Nina Simone (Amber Iman) develop an unusual friendship in SOUL DOCTOR (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 13, $39 – $135
www.souldoctorbroadway.com

The new Broadway musical Soul Doctor follows the unusual relationship between a gentle, soft-spoken Orthodox rabbi and a vivacious chanteuse who wind up having a lot more in common that either would ever think. Eric Anderson stars as Shlomo Carlebach, the real-life Singing Rabbi whose family left Nazi-occupied Vienna when he was a boy, making a new life in New York City. While trying to find his place in America, Carlebach meets singer and activist Nina Simone (Amber Iman), and the two develop a long-term friendship, becoming each other’s muse. As Simone goes on to become the High Priestess of Soul, Carlebach turns away from the rigid rules of his Orthodox background, which severely disappoints his rabbi father (Jamie Jackson), his worried mother (Jacqueline Antaramian), and his devout brother (Ryan Strand), who has fallen under the influence of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Schneerson (Jackson). But soon Carlebach, the King of Kosher Music, has a hit record, is playing in nightclubs, and forms his own, unique temple, the House of Love and Prayer, in hippie-era San Francisco. But he’s constantly trying to prove to himself and his family that what he is doing matters, that it is all part of the expansion of the Jewish faith.

The King of Kosher Music preaches love and peace in San Francisco temple (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Anderson, who left the Kinky Boots ensemble to reprise the role of Carlebach, which earned him a Drama Desk nomination for last year’s presentation at New York Theatre Workshop, brings a sweet innocence to the mild-mannered Rock Star Rabbi, displaying the kind of charm that established Carlebach’s success and reputation. And Iman is a force as Simone, dominating the stage with her bold, brash style. The book, by director Daniel S. Wise, glosses over too many details, including Carlebach’s relationship with follower Ruth (Zarah Mahler), and just skips over others, leaving too many unexplained holes, and Carlebach’s never-ending battle with his childhood teacher and later cantor, Reb Pinchas (Ron Orbach), who he calls the “holy heckler,” grows repetitive and tiresome. The script is filled with such platitudes as Carlebach telling Pinchas, “If I had two hearts, I could use one to love and one to hate. But I only have one heart, so . . . I use it to love!” Despite less-than-inspiring choreography by former Cedar Lake artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer, the musical numbers, from the Carlebach tunes (“Rosh Hashanah Rock,” “Ki Va Moed,” “Yerushalyim,” “Am Yisrael Chai”) to new songs with lyrics by David Schechter, are mostly a lot of fun, with the exuberant cast, dressed in Maggie Morgan’s period costumes, often running up and down the aisles. Mahler turns in a strong solo near the end, “I Was a Sparrow,” that will have audiences wondering why she wasn’t featured more. Although you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy the show, those who attend High Holiday services will be thrilled to hear many familiar liturgical melodies that were written by Carlebach. But Soul Doctor does more than merely preach to the converted, instead exploring a fascinating figure in American folk music.

VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE ON BROADWAY

Vanya (David Hyde Pierce) and Sonia (Kristine Nielsen) look back at their sad lives in Christopher Durang’s Chekhovian mashup (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Golden Theatre
252 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 28, $62 – $142
www.vanyasoniamashaspike.com

When he was at Yale in the 1970s, Christopher Durang teamed with Albert Innaurato and Jack Feldman on The Idiots Karamazov, a musical about a Russian translator that begins with a song titled “O, We Gotta Get to Moscow,” as the translator confuses Dostoevsky with Chekhov and other writers. Going to Moscow shows up again in Durang’s delightful satire, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which has made a successful transition from Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse to Broadway’s Golden Theatre. Durang sets his latest play in a Bucks County farmhouse by a lake where a blue heron stops by daily, based on the Bucks County farmhouse by a lake with a blue heron where Durang and his partner reside. Living in the fictional house are Vanya (David Hyde Pierce) and Sonia (Kristine Nielsen), a pair of fiftysomething siblings (one adopted) who have essentially sacrificed what lives they might have had by taking care of their ill, elderly parents while their sister, Masha (Sigourney Weaver), became a famous movie star gallivanting around the world with five husbands. Clearly, their parents had a thing for Chekhov; Masha is named after characters from The Seagull and Three Sisters, Vanya and the adopted Sonia from Uncle Vanya. Invited to a neighbor’s costume party, Masha arrives at the house in grand diva fashion, overemoting and unable to keep her hands off her hot new boy toy, Spike (Billy Magnussen), who enjoys taking off most of his clothes at a moment’s notice and striking muscular poses. Masha quickly grows jealous when Spike meets young, pretty ingénue Nina (played at Lincoln Center by Genevieve Angelson and now by Leisel Allen Yeager, the only cast change from the original production), a wannabe actress named after the young, innocent actress in The Seagull. Meanwhile, the cleaning lady, Cassandra (Shalita Grant), makes dire predictions that keep coming true, just like her namesake, the Greek mythological figure with second sight. As Vanya, Sonia, Masha, Spike, and Nina prepare for the party — Masha insists they all go as characters from Snow White, with Masha as the beautiful protagonist, slyly referencing Weaver’s portrayal of the evil stepmother in the 1997 television movie Snow White: A Tale of Terror — jealousy, fear, deception, childhood resentment, and more bubble to the surface and threaten to erupt, albeit in primarily wacky, hysterical ways.

Spike (Billy Magnussen), Masha (Sigourney Weaver), and Vanya (David Hyde Pierce) spend a crazy weekend together in Bucks County (photo by Carol Rosegg)

You don’t need to know anything about Chekhov and his searing dramas about seriously dysfunctional families to get a huge kick out of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which has a unique family feel itself — Weaver has been working with Durang since the Yale days, Hyde Pierce starred in the Broadway production of the playwright’s Beyond Therapy (as well as Peter Brook’s The Cherry Orchard), and Nielsen is Durang’s acknowledged muse, having appeared in many of his shows, in parts specifically written for her. Director Nicholas Martin, who previously helmed Durang’s Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them at the Public, keeps things relatively natural and grounded even with Weaver, Magnussen, and Grant playing things deliciously way over the top, as the story’s tender heart is wonderfully captured by the amazing Nielsen and Hyde Pierce, who agonize over their loneliness and advancing age, the importance of family, and, perhaps most Chekhovian, a world that seems to be passing them by. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a thoroughly enjoyable if often goofy and now, on Broadway, even bigger and broader mashup from one of America’s most engaging satirists at the top of his game. (And be sure to go here to read the fall 2012 issue of Lincoln Center Review, which includes Durang’s “My Life with Chekhov,” an essay detailing seven encounters he had with the Russian playwright, dating back to when he was fourteen.)

MACBETH

Alan Cumming gives a multifaceted whirlwind performance as an institutionalized man obsessed with Shakespeare’s Scottish play (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Thursday – Tuesday through July 14, $69.50 – $145
www.macbethonbroadway.com

As audience members arrive at the Barrymore Theatre to see the Scottish Play, they’re greeted by a warning on the outside doors: “The producers ask that you please refrain from speaking the name of the play you are about to see while inside these walls.” Once this fascinating, intense reimagination of William Shakespeare’s 1606 tale of bloodlust and blind ambition gets under way and star Alan Cumming says the name of the eponymous character out loud, there’s an audible hush in the theater, as if he’s broken the cardinal rule. For this is no ordinary Macbeth, and Cumming is no ordinary lead actor. Instead, he plays a deeply troubled man locked up in an asylum after some kind of tragic event. A doctor (Jenny Sterlin) and an orderly (Brendan Titley) set him up in his room and watch him carefully through a door and a window as he deals with his psychological crisis by getting lost inside Macbeth, speaking only lines from the play as guilt and fear envelop him. Directors John Tiffany (Once, Black Watch) and Andrew Goldberg (The Bomb-itty of Errors, Betwixt) have Cumming examine himself in a mirror, sit proudly on a chair like it’s a throne, huddle meekly under a stairway, and take a bath as he goes from Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, and Macduff to the three witches, King Duncan, Fleance, and Malcolm. The stark, surreal goings-on are enhanced by Ian William Galloway’s surveillance cameras and video monitors and Fergus O’Hare’s powerful sound design, as loud noises echo through the patient’s head and across the theater. Cumming gives a tour-de-force performance as the man coming undone in one hundred breathtaking minutes, mixing in humor with tragedy as his breakdown continues. “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face,” Duncan says in the first act. In this bold, daring take on the Bard’s classic story, there is plenty of art in the destruction of one mind’s haunted memory.

THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL

Tony nominees Cicely Tyson and Condola Rashad bond on a bus in Broadway revival of THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL

Stephen Sondheim Theatre
124 West 43rd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 1, $42 – $142
www.thetriptobountifulbroadway.com

For its sixtieth anniversary, Horton Foote’s simply lovely The Trip to Bountiful, about an elderly woman’s search for home, has found its own home again on Broadway for the first time since 1953. Cicely Tyson, making her return to the Great White Way after a thirty-year absence, is unforgettably sweet as Carrie Watts, a dream role previously played by Lillian Gish in the original Broadway production, Lois Smith in a 2005 off-Broadway revival, and, most famously, by an Oscar-winning Geraldine Page in Peter Masterson’s 1985 film. Carrie is tired of living in Houston with her henpecked son, Ludie (Cuba Gooding Jr.), and his demanding wife, Jessie Mae (Vanessa Williams). While Carrie sits in her rocking chair reading a book, Jessie Mae complains about not receiving her mother-in-law’s pension check, and Ludie continually allows her to walk all over him and his mother. Fed up with the situation, Carrie decides to take off one day, boarding a bus back to her hometown, Bountiful, which she is desperate to see one last time before she dies. In the bus station, she is befriended by Thelma (Condola Rashad), a young woman who finds Carrie to be charming, even taking pleasure when the older woman starts singing hymns, something that drives Jessie Mae crazy. But little things keep getting in Carrie’s way, jeopardizing her journey. Tyson is delightful as Carrie, whether shuffling in and out of the kitchen of Jeff Cowie’s cramped Houston set or telling station agent Roy (Arthur French) and the sheriff (Tom Wopat) about her youth in Bountiful. Williams is excellent as the domineering daughter-in-law, bossing around her wimp of a husband. Directed by Michael Wilson (Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, Talley’s Folly) with an easy-flowing grace, The Trip to Bountiful has indeed made a bountiful return trip to Broadway.

I’LL EAT YOU LAST: A CHAT WITH SUE MENGERS

Bette Midler makes her long-awaited return to Broadway in one-woman show about Hollywood superagent (photo by Richard Termine)

Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Friday – Wednesday, $87 – $152
www.illeatyoulast.com

In her long-awaited return to the Great White Way, the Divine Miss M inhabits the role of Hollywood superagent Sue Mengers in the one-woman show I’ll Eat You Last. Midler, making her first nonconcert Broadway appearance since 1967, when she played Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof, is, well, simply divine as the aggressive, ultra-determined Mengers, who was both loved and hated while tirelessly working for such big-time clients as Julie Harris, Steve McQueen, Ali McGraw, Gene Hackman, Faye Dunaway, and Ryan O’Neal. Midler spends ninety minutes as Mengers, wearing a lovely sparkly blue caftan designed by Ann Roth, lounging on a couch in Scott Pask’s elegant living-room set, drinking, smoking, and cursing as she shares intimate moments from her life and career while waiting for a critical phone call from her number one client, Barbra Streisand. She even invites an audience member onstage to get her some booze and a cigarette, revealing her power to get men to do her bidding. Unfortunately, John Logan has not given Midler much of a play to work with. The show is subtitled A Chat with Sue Mengers, and that’s pretty much exactly what it is: a mere chat, not a Broadway production. Logan, who has penned such films as The Last Samurai, Hugo, Rango, Star Trek: Nemesis, and The Aviator in addition to Red, for which he won a Tony, was inspired to write I’ll Eat You Last after meeting Mengers at a 2008 dinner party. His script contains plenty of funny one-liners but is primarily superficial and reverential, paying tribute to Mengers, who died in 2011 at the age of seventy-nine, in a series of worshipful anecdotes that don’t quite come full circle. Midler is delightful gossiping about such Hollywood celebs as McGraw, McQueen, producer Bob Evans, and director William Friedkin, but this chat is more of a pleasing appetizer than a full, satisfying meal.

PIPPIN

Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 22, $59 – $148
www.pippinthemusical.com

Inventive director Diane Paulus, who has staged wildly successful revivals of Hair and Porgy and Bess in recent years, now lovingly resurrects Roger O. Hirson’s and Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary. “We’ve got magic to do, just for you,” the cast announces in the dazzling opening number, and the first act of this self-described “anecdotic revue” is indeed magical. The show, which was directed by Bob Fosse back in 1973, is hosted by the Leading Player (usually played by Patina Miller but performed by Stephanie Pope when we saw it) à la the Emcee in Fosse’s Cabaret, both addressing the audience directly and running things onstage. It’s the early Middle Ages, and King Charlemagne (a beautifully bearded Terence Mann) is sitting on the throne, denying peasants’ wishes and leading his empire through a series of wars. Meanwhile, his prodigal son, Pippin (Matthew James Thomas), has returned from his studies, trying to figure out what to do with his life. “Why do I feel I don’t fit in anywhere I go?” he asks in the ballad “Corner of the Sky,” continuing, “Rivers belong where they can ramble / Eagles belong where they can fly / I’ve got to be where my spirit can run free / Got to find my corner of the sky.” He considers becoming a warrior like his half brother, Lewis (Erik Altemus), which delights his stepmother, Fastrada (Charlotte d’Amboise), who envisions Pippin getting killed, making Lewis next in line to be king. But that doesn’t quite work out, and soon Pippin finds himself in the midst of a difficult moral quandary as he considers the sins of the father and the needs of the common people.

Berthe (Andrea Martin) gives life lessons to her grandson (Matthew James Thomas) in Broadway revival of PIPPIN (photo © 2013 Joan Marcus)

The first act is spectacular as the fictionalized story plays out within a circus setting featuring thrilling acrobatics by members of the Montreal-based troupe Les 7 Doigts de la Main, who juggle fire, slide across rolling balls, impossibly balance on objects and one another, and literally jump through hoops as they display life’s unlimited potential. Andrea Martin (SCTV, Young Frankenstein) amazes in a showstopping acrobatic number of her own as Pippin’s grandma Berthe, agelessly performing “No Time at All.” The second act bogs down significantly as Pippin spends time on a farm with the motherly Catherine (Rachel Bay Jones) and her young son, Theo (alternately played by Andrew Cekala and Ashton Woerz), considering a more ordinary life, but he still knows there’s something special out there for him. “Every so often a man has a day he truly can call his,” he sings. “Well, here I am to seize my day / if someone would just tell me when the hell it is.” Understudy Pope is luscious, leggy, and lascivious as the Leading Player, a star-making role originated on Broadway by Ben Vereen, who won a Tony for it, and currently played by Tony nominee Miller. Chet Walker’s choreography has Bob Fosse written all over it, and indeed it’s credited to Walker (Fosse) “in the style of Bob Fosse.” Paulus has managed to transform Pippin, an obvious product of its era, coming in the early 1970s following a tumultuous decade that included the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and free love, into a more timeless tale of generational change as the son both embraces and rebels against the father, trying to find his place in the world.