this week in broadway

BOB FOSSE’S DANCIN’

Dancin’ “revival” gets too much backward in looking forward (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

BOB FOSSE’S DANCIN’
Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 14, $114 – $318
dancinbway.com

The original Broadway production of Dancin’ was a thrilling celebration of music and movement as only Bob Fosse could do it. The superb cast included Sandahl Bergman, René Ceballos, Christopher Chadman, Wayne Cilento, Vicki Frederick, and Ann Reinking, shaking things up to a wide range of genres, from pop and jazz to classical and patriotic, with little or no plot. It was nominated for seven Tonys, with Fosse winning for Best Choreography and Jules Fisher for Best Lighting.

For the current reimagining of the show at the Music Box — there are too many changes to properly call it a revival — they have added Fosse’s name to the title, but that ends up being a disservice to the late, magnificent choreographer (and sometimes director) of Sweet Charity, Damn Yankees, The Pajama Game, Pippin, Chicago, and the film version of Cabaret, who is unlikely to have been thrilled with this 2023 iteration, which opened March 19 and has just posted an early closing notice of May 14 after receiving no love from the Tonys, coming up empty-handed.

Cilento is back, this time as director and musical stager, with Christine Colby Jacques credited with “reproduction of Mr. Fosse’s choreography” and David Dabbon with “new music and dance arrangements.” Cilento had his work cut out for him, as there was no script and no recordings of the original presentation, so he and Jacques, who understudied for the 1978 Broadway show, used muscle memory and YouTube videos of other productions. The result is a hot mess from start to finish, but it won’t tarnish Fosse’s legacy, as he can’t take any of the blame for this one. (Notably, however, Nicole Fosse, his daughter with Gwen Verdon, is one of the producers.)

Dancin’ will be closing early after coming up with no Tony noms (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The so-called Bob Fosse’s Dancin’ features a whole lotta hats, cigarette smoking, shoulder shimmying, sequins, and jazz hands as the cast prances and twirls in, on, and around tall metal scaffolding towers and in front of occasionally dizzying projections on a back screen. The imposing industrial set is by Robert Brill, with projections by Finn Ross, over-the-top sound by Peter Hylenski, excessive lighting by David Grill, and inconsistent costumes by Harriet Jung and Reid Bartelme.

“Recollections of an Old Dancer” kicks off with tone-deaf archival footage of Bill “Mr. Bojangles” Robinson. “Big City Mime,” which was understandably cut in 1978, returns, a sleazy depiction of New York as a town of hookers and pimps. “Big Deal” is a failed attempt at noir. “The Female Star Spot” goes woke on Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again.” The “America” segment, with such red, white, and blue tunes as “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and “Gary Owen,” feels today like parody. (At least they cut “Dixie”; other numbers were left out because of rights issues.) “The Dream Barre” has been banished.

The second act opens with the still-stellar “Benny’s Number,” a rousing performance of the Benny Goodman Orchestra’s “Sing, Sing, Sing,” with drummer Gary Seligson soloing up high on a platform, although it goes on too long; uncoincidentally, the original company performed the first part of the piece at the Tonys, so it is in this piece that Fosse’s choreography is most closely replicated in 2023.

And speaking of singing, we are told at the beginning that there will be some singing, but it turns out that there is a significant amount, and most of the vocals are undistinguished, delivered more like the performers are on The Voice or American Idol than on a Broadway stage. The individual scenes are like flashy MTV videos that have little to do with one another; Dancin’ 1978 worked as individual set pieces, but Dancin’ 2023 doesn’t trust the dancing enough and instead bombards the audience with posturing glitz and glamour to grab our attention. That continues during the curtain call, in which each dancer takes a bow with their name projected hugely on the screen, as if we need to remember who is who when we vote.

The only name we’d prefer not to see is Bob Fosse’s on the marquee.

PETER PAN GOES WRONG

The Jolly Roger poses problems for the cast in Peter Pan Goes Wrong (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

PETER PAN GOES WRONG
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 23, $74 – $165.50
pangoeswrongbway.com
www.mischiefcomedy.com

In 2017 at the Lyceum on Broadway, Mischief Theatre Company’s The Play That Goes Wrong documented the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society’s floundering presentation of the fictional Susan H. K. Bridewell’s British mystery The Murder at Haversham Manor, in which just about everything that could misfire did — except its ability to please audiences so much that the show is currently on an extended run at New World Stages. Cornley is now back on Broadway with its uniquely pathetic and hilarious production of J. M. Barrie’s children’s classic about (not) growing up, Peter and Wendy, in Mischief’s Peter Pan Goes Wrong at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Penned by the same trio who wrote The Play That Goes Wrong — Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields — and directed by Adam Meggido, this follow-up, which debuted in London in December 2013, is another laugh-out-loud comic romp filled with pratfalls, electronic failures, missed cues, dangerous props, and questionable costumes. Back for more disastrous fun are Henry Shields as society president Chris Bean, Lewis as the bearlike Robert Grove (hapless head of the Cornley Youth Theatre), Sayer as Dennis Tyde, Charlie Russell as Sandra Wilkinson, Greg Tannahill as Jonathan Harris, Nancy Zamit as Annie Twilloil, and Chris Leask as Trevor Watson, the ever-busy stage manager. New to the cast are Matthew Cavendish as Max Bennett, Bianca Horn as Gill Jones, Harry Kershaw as Francis Beaumont, and Ellie Morris as Lucy Grove, Robert’s niece.

It’s opening night for Bridewell’s adaptation of Peter and Wendy, and the merriment is already underway as the audience enters the theater. Various characters greet guests, taking selfies and completing technical work. Chris, who channels John Cleese as Basil Fawlty, took pictures with a couple, then looked over at me and snidely said, “Oh, what do you want?! A photo? A cuddle?” I answered, “A cuddle would be nice,” but he gave me an imperious “No!” as he looked down his aquiline nose and squeezed past me first to help Gill fix the “death chair” in the row in front of me, then to playfully frighten the young girl a few seats to my right, who knew it was all a joke.

Annie Twilloil (Nancy Zamit) plays four roles in Cornley production of J. M. Barrie classic (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The show within the show begins in London, in the home of the Darlings: father George (Chris), mother Mary (Annie), daughter Wendy (Sandra), and her younger brothers, John (Dennis) and Michael (Max). Also present are Lisa (Annie) the housekeeper and Nana (Robert) the shaggy nursemaid dog. The story is narrated by Francis (Harry Kershaw), who slides on- and offstage in a regal chair, often tossing glitter over himself upon exiting.

After the kids go to bed one night, Peter Pan (Jonathan) and Tinker Bell (Annie) arrive and fly them off to Neverland, where they meet a Lost Boy known as Tootles (Lucy) and attempt to rescue another Lost Boy, Curly (Annie), from a gang of pirates led by Captain Hook (Chris), who rules with a plastic fist over Smee (Dennis), Cecco (Francis), and Starkey (Robert). Hook is also on the prowl to find and kill the ticking crocodile (Max) that maimed him.

Peter Pan Goes Wrong is a rousing good time, almost to a fault. Some jokes are repetitive, within the show itself (Francis’s battle with the chair, Robert’s troubles with a doggie door, Dennis needing his lines fed to him through headphones) and for people who have seen The Play That Goes Wrong, while others go too far over the top (Annie being plugged in via an extension cord as Tink, the sound board operator accidentally broadcasting snippets from actors’ auditions and backstage chatter instead of sound effects).

Meggido, who has previously directed the Olivier-winning Showstopper! The Improvised Musical and Magic Goes Wrong (Mischief has also done A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong), keeps up a relentless pace that could use more than a few breathers (for the audience) and would benefit from being a 90-minute one-act instead of a 125-minute two-act with an intermission during which, alas, there is no tomfoolery. However, as with The Play That Goes Wrong, the split-second timing is masterful, particularly evident in numerous precarious stunts, from a wired Jonathan to a collapsing bunk bed, and at times you can hurt yourself from laughing so hard.

The cast of Peter Pan Goes Wrong rehearses in the studio (photo by Danny Kaan)

Simon Scullion’s revolving set is a marvel, especially when it starts spinning out of control like a runaway zoetrope. Roberto Surace’s costumes are amusingly silly, as is Richard Baker and Rob Falconer’s original music, while Matt Haskins’s lighting and Ella Wahlström’s sound expertly balance the incompetence of Cornley with the excellence of Mischief.

The courageous cast is a blast, with memorable turns by Zamit doing impossible quick changes between Mary and Lisa, Leask coming to the rescue time and time again as the beleaguered Trevor, and Cavendish smiling impishly as Max, who can’t hold back his excitement at being in the show. Russell’s calmness as Sandra nicely offsets the unpredictability of Shields’s Bean, who, as Hook, gets into booing fights with the audience.

Be sure to check out Cornley’s four pages in the Playbill, in which Annie seeks a date, the company touts its upcoming production of Wind in the Pillows, and Robert apologizes for leaving two students behind in a forest.

SHUCKED

Ashley D. Kelley and Grey Henson serve as our narrators and guides in Shucked (photo by Mathew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman)

SHUCKED
Nederlander Theatre
208 West Forty-First St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 14, $69-$247
shuckedmusical.com

When I was a kid, I watched a syndicated television show called Hee Haw, which originally ran on CBS from 1969 to 1971 and was hosted by celebrated American musicians Roy Clark and Buck Owens, both of whom are in the Country Music Hall of Fame. The variety series took place in the fictional community of Kornfield Kounty, combining great music with satirical sketches and purposely silly jokes poking fun at themselves and rural living. In the opening credits, a cartoon donkey emerged from a row of corn and barked out the title several times.

The new musical Shucked honors its forebear in the second act when, during the song “The Best Man Wins,” a group of guys repeatedly declares, “Yee haw hee haw.” Like Hee Haw, Shucked never passes up a chance at a corny joke; it seems to be why it exists in the first place. And there’s definitely still an appetite for corn: Shucked has quickly become a cult favorite at the Nederlander Theatre, where some attendees have taken to showing up in costume, attending performance after performance.

Featuring a book by Tony winner Robert Horn (Tootsie, 13) and music and lyrics by eight-time Grammy nominee Brandy Clark (no relation to Roy) and three-time Grammy winner Shane McAnally, Shucked takes place in Cob County, an insulated hamlet surrounded by a wall of corn, where puns grow nearly as fast as the international dietary staple that the USDA says is both a vegetable and a grain.

The self-described “farm to fable” is narrated by two nameless storytellers, played by Ashley D. Kelley and Grey Henson, who watch (or participate in) the proceedings with a wink and a nod.

“Now, I know when some of you think ‘small town,’ you think gun totin’, rusted truck hayseeds who think ‘liberal’ is how you pour your whiskey and ‘fluid’ belongs in your gas tank. But I want you to open your minds and think — even smaller,” Kelley says near the beginning.

Cob County is preparing for the wedding of Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler), a play on “maize,” what Native Americans call corn, and prominent farmer Beau (Andrew Durand). It’s not just a celebration of true love but of corn, which brought the two of them together.

The cast of Shucked has never a met a pun it would turn its back on (photo by Mathew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman)

As the storytellers proclaim, “Sweet corn, street corn / It’s really hard to beat corn / Hands or feet no wrong way to eat corn / It’s a resource that’s always renewable / Bring it to a briss / Or a wedding / Or a funeral / Cook it on the cob / Or in a tortilla / You can even make it an onomatopoeia / Candy corn, kettle corn, put it in your mouth / It’s the same goin’ in comin’ out.” Yes, when it comes to corn pone, they leave no quip or double entendre to dry out in a drought.

The wedding is stopped when rows of corn suddenly start dying on the spot. The town’s future is now in jeopardy, from Beau’s farm to Maizy’s cousin Lulu’s (Alex Newell) whiskey.

Despite knowing that no one has ever left Cob County — and returned — Maizy asks Peanut (Kevin Cahoon), Beau’s not-too-bright brother, “Don’t you think someone should leave to get help?” Peanut, who has never been asked a question he couldn’t answer with ridiculous non-sequiturs (or, later, suggestive references involving sexual organs and bodily functions), responds, “I think . . . if your lawyer has a ponytail on his chin, you’re probably goin’ to prison. I think if you can pick up your dog with one hand, you own a cat. I think people in China must wonder what to call their good plates. And I think we need answers. I just don’t think leaving is one of them.”

Even worse than leaving the county is allowing a stranger in, but Maizy heads to the big, scary city — Tampa, Florida — seeking help, which she finds in Gordy (John Behlmann), a desperate con artist in debt to gangsters and who’s been posing as a strip mall podiatrist who treats such foot ailments as bunions and . . . corns. Maizy doesn’t quite get it so convinces Gordy to come back with her to save the town crop.

Sniffing an opportunity to make a fortune by stealing Cob County’s heretofore undiscovered mineral wealth, Gordy goes with Maizy, even pretending to fall in love with her to gain better access to the rocks and abscond, leaving the hapless hamlet to its fate.

Shucked is like a scrumptious piece of salty, hot buttered corn at a summer barbecue, but there’s only so much you can eat at one sitting: Bits get stuck in your teeth, and the rest can be tough to digest. The show is a nonstop barrage of puns that can be hysterical but also overwhelming. And as playfully absurd as the plot is, it sometimes goes haywire, pushing the bounds of credulity, but always with a smile.

Scott Pask’s multilevel wooden set is a ramshackle barn, with raggedy furniture and scene-setting props like small cornrows and neon signs that wheel on and off. Japhy Weideman’s lighting glows magnificently through the gaps in the wood, offering blue and purplish skies and red and yellow sunlight. Tilly Grimes’s costumes would make Roy Clark and Buck Owens proud, with plenty of overalls, baseball caps, boots, dungarees, and patches.

Three-time Tony winner Jack O’Brien’s (The Invention of Love, The Full Monty) direction goes from a sweet simmer to a full-tilt boil, allowing just the right amount of space for Sarah O’Gleby’s merry choreography. Jason Howland’s music supervision, music direction, orchestrations, and arrangements won’t frighten off audience members who think they won’t appreciate country music.

In her Broadway debut, Innerbichler (Frozen, Little House on the Prairie) is charming as the naive and innocent Maizy, while Durand (Ink, Head Over Heels) goes through a tumultuous series of emotions as the determined but heartbroken Beau. Kelley (Eve’s Song, Bella: An American Tall Tale) and Tony nominee Henson (Mean Girls, The Book of Mormon) are a hoot leading us through this hilarious hootenanny, particularly the latter, who offers such prime kernels of truth as “Like the guy with the lifejacket said: ‘It’s foreboding’” and “Like the personal trainer said to the lazy client: ‘This is not working out.’”

Behlmann (The 39 Steps, Significant Other) is deliciously evil as the mustache-twirling villain, but Newell (Glee, Once on This Island) steals the show as the philosophical Lulu, who shakes the rickety rafters belting out the feminist anthem “Independently Owned,” in which she declares, “I’m independently owned and liberated / And I think sleeping alone is underrated / Don’t need a man for flatteries / I got a corn cob and some batteries.”

She also shares this gem: “Men lie all the time. Hell, one tried to convince me you could suck out a kidney stone.”

You never would have heard that joke on Hee Haw.

A DOLL’S HOUSE

Jessica Chastain remains seated for most of A Doll’s House revival on Broadway (photo by Emilio Madrid)

A DOLL’S HOUSE
Hudson Theatre
141 West Forty-Fourth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 10, $70-$357
adollshousebroadway.com
www.thehudsonbroadway.com

The beginning and ending of Jamie Lloyd and Amy Herzog’s Broadway revival of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Hudson Theatre are unforgettable, for significantly different reasons. What happens in between is fairly memorable as well.

About fifteen minutes prior to showtime, the curtain rises, revealing Oscar-winning actress Jessica Chastain, alone on a barren stage, the lower part of the back brick wall behind her painted white, the wings visible. Arms folded, legs crossed, wearing a long black dress and black heels, Chastain is elegantly seated in a chair on a set that slowly revolves, staring out directly at the audience, making as much eye contact as possible as people file into the theater, chatter away, and check their phones. Most of the crowd pays little attention to what’s happening onstage, except for those eagerly snapping photos and taking video, then turning away to do other things.

I have to admit that I took a few photos and a video, but then I put my smartphone in my pocket and couldn’t look away from Chastain, playing Nora Helmer in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, as she continued her seemingly endless circling. She occasionally crosses and uncrosses her legs, but otherwise she resembles a life-size doll, the rotation out of her control, being manipulated by unseen forces.

It’s an intense performance, every slight body move and eye shift a work of art while preparing the audience for what they are about to experience. One by one, the rest of the cast takes a chair and begins rotating on one of several other circles. They’re all dressed in Soutra Gilmour and Enver Chakartash’s mournful black costumes; Gilmour also designed the empty set, which, as Chastain rotates, includes the year “1879” projected on the back wall, the only signifier of when the play takes place, although it soon becomes clear that it could be any time in the past, present, or future.

Nora, a wife and mother of three unseen but heard children, is slowly joined onstage, one at a time, by her husband, Torvald (Arian Moayed), a lawyer who has just been named manager at his bank; Dr. Otto Rank (Michael Patrick Thornton), a close family friend; Kristine Linde (Jesmille Darbouze), a schoolmate of Nora’s; Nils Krogstad (Okieriete Onaodowan), a lawyer with secretive ties to several other characters; and Anne-Marie (Tasha Lawrence), the Helmers’ devoted nanny.

A Doll’s House cast is dressed in black and cast in shadows and silhouettes throughout (photo by Emilio Madrid)

About seven years prior, when Nora was pregnant with her first child, Torvald became seriously ill, and Nora financed a trip to Italy that doctors said would cure him. Everyone assumed she got the money from her dying father, but she’s been hiding an ugly truth while scrambling to pay back her debt. She’s been treated like a kid her entire life, so no one believes she can fend for herself or is responsible for any of her family’s success.

“Nora, you’re basically still a child,” Kristine tells her. Torvald calls Nora his “baby” and his “headstrong little bird,” but it’s not spoken like a loving, amorous husband. Dr. Rank suggests she dress for next year’s Halloween as Fortune’s Child. And Nora recalls how her father referred to her as “his little doll and he played with me just like I played with my dolls,” comparing that to how Torvald treats her, particularly when he makes her put on a fisher girl costume and dance like a young fairy at a party. But she wants more, even if she doesn’t know how to express her adult desires.

“You can see how being with Torvald is a lot like being with Papa,” she tells Dr. Rank.

Explaining to Kristine how she has been paying off her debt, she says, “I’ve had some jobs here and there, like I said. Last Christmas I got a big copying job; I stayed up late writing every night for weeks. It was exhausting, but it was also fun, to work hard and make money! I felt kind of like a man.”

As Kristine and Nils jockey for a position at the bank and Torvald worries about how his wife’s actions could jeopardize his reputation, Nora comes to an understanding about who she is and what she wants out of life in a dramatic turnabout that is a statement for women and marginalized people everywhere.

Pulitzer finalist Herzog’s (Mary Jane, 4000 Miles) adaptation focuses directly on Nora, who sits front and center nearly the entire play. Tony nominee Lloyd knows what to do with movie stars on spare sets; his recent productions of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac at BAM, starring James McAvoy, and Harold Pinter’s Betrayal at the Jacobs on Broadway, with Tom Hiddleston, were both compelling, unique character-driven interpretations that mostly eschewed bombast. In A Doll’s House, all of the actors speak in an even-keeled manner free from sentimentality, save for one outburst by Moayed that feels out of place.

Jon Clark’s superb lighting casts long shadows across the stage and against the back wall, where he illuminates only part of it in a long white horizontal bar, keeping the rest in darkness. Ben and Max Ringham’s sound is highlighted by the offstage voices of Nora’s three children, Ivar, Bob, and Emmy, which emphasizes the kind of pretend world Nora has been thrust into and might not be able to escape from. When Dr. Rank asks Torvald for one of his good cigars and Nora offers to light it for him, there is no cigar and no lighter; a later exchange of objects is also made without actual props. It’s like Nora is play-acting in a doll house. The eerie score, by Alva Noto and the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, keeps an intriguing mystery hanging over everything.

Oscar winner Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Zero Dark Thirty), whose only previous appearance on Broadway was in 2012’s The Heiress, is mesmerizing as Nora, commanding the stage with her bold presence for each of the 105 minutes; her character’s ultimate transformation is a bit sudden but powerful nonetheless. The rest of the cast is strong, but this is Chastain’s show, from its unusual start to its radical climax, which will leave some audience members cheering, some laughing, and others gasping.

“After all these years I still haven’t been able to teach Nora how to make a dramatic exit,” Torvald says to Kristine.

Well, she knows now.

PARADE

Lucille (Micaela Diamond) and Leo Frank (Ben Platt) fight for justice in Parade (photo by Joan Marcus)

PARADE
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 6, $84-$288
paradebroadway.com

At intermission of the first Broadway revival of Parade, based on a true story of anti-Semitism, racism, and a terrible miscarriage of justice, several colleagues and I asked the same question: “Why is this a musical?” We found out in the far superior second act.

The show, directed by Harold Prince, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Oscar and Pulitzer Prize winner Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy), debuted at the Vivian Beaumont in 1998, running for thirty-nine previews and eighty-four regular performances, earning nine Tony nominations and winning for Best Book and Best Original Score. It is now playing at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, in a version directed by Tony winner Michael Arden that transferred from Encores! at City Center and uses the 2007 Donmar Warehouse production, which included a few different songs from the original.

Parade begins with a prologue set in Marietta, Georgia, in 1862, as a young Confederate soldier (Charlie Webb) sings goodbye to his love and prepares to fight “for these old hills behind me / these old red hills of home. . . . in the land where honor lives and breathes.” The action then shifts to Atlanta in 1913, where the soldier (Howard McGillin), who lost a leg in the Civil War, is determined to help the South rise again, “honor” be damned.

It’s Confederate Memorial Day, and Lucille Frank (Micaela Diamond) wants to go on a picnic with her husband, Leo (Ben Platt), but he instead decides to go to work at the National Pencil Company, her father’s factory where Leo is superintendent. Thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan (Erin Rose Doyle) arrives to collect her pay and is later found murdered in the basement. The police arrest Leo for the crime, but he doesn’t take them very seriously, since he is innocent — but when power-hungry district attorney Hugh Dorsey (Paul Alexander Nolan) starts building a strong case against him, constructed on a series of lies, Leo suddenly faces reality as Lucille seeks to uncover the truth and reveal the conspiracy to railroad her husband.

Mary Phagan (Erin Rose Doyle) enjoys one final moment of life with Frankie Epps (Jake Pedersen) in based-on-fact musical (photo by Joan Marcus)

Among those participating in the frame-up led by Dorsey are National Pencil night watchman Newt Lee (Eddie Cooper), janitor Jim Conley (Alex Joseph Grayson), and Frank family maid Minnie McKnight (Danielle Lee Greaves), all of whom are Black and manipulated because of the color of their skin; Governor Jack Slaton (Sean Allan Krill), who is more concerned with his upcoming reelection campaign than the fate of one perhaps innocent man; Mary’s friend Frankie Epps (Jake Pedersen), who wants to see the murderer “burn in the ragin’ fires of hell forevermore”; right-wing newspaper editor and publisher Tom Watson (Manoel Felciano), who calls out, “Who’s gonna stop the Jew from killin’? Who’s gonna swing that hammer?”; Judge Roan (McGillin), who’d rather be fishing than in court; and Britt Craig (Jay Armstrong Johnson), an ambitious reporter who declares, “Take this superstitious city / Add one little Jew from Brooklyn / Plus a college education and a mousy little wife / And big news! Real big news! / That poor sucker saved my life!” Mary’s distraught mother (Kelli Barrett) is the only one considering forgiveness.

The focus of the show shifts dramatically after intermission, during which Leo remains onstage, in his jail cell, contemplating his fate; while the first act was all over the place, squeezing in too much information alongside oversized production numbers, the second act zeroes in on the touching relationship between Lucille and Leo as they desperately try to prove his innocence. It’s a beautiful, romantic love story, highlighted by a prison picnic Lucille brings to Leo in which she first chastises him for not accepting her assistance. “Do it alone, Leo — do it all by yourself. / You’re the only one who matters after all. / Do it alone, Leo — why should it bother me? / I’m just good for standing in the shadows / And staring at the walls, Leo,” she sings. Later they duet on “This Is Not Over Yet,” as Leo proclaims, “Hail the resurrection of / the south’s least fav’rite son! / It means I made a vow for better! / Two is better than one! / It means the journey ahead might get shorter. / I might reach the end of my rope! / But suddenly, loud as a mortar, there is hope!”

Parade features archival projections throughout (photo by Joan Marcus)

Dane Laffrey’s set is centered by a large wooden platform on which most of the action takes place, evoking a gallows as well as a coffin. There are scattered chairs and pews on either side, where many of the characters sit when they’re not in the scene, which can get confusing, especially for actors who play multiple roles. Susan Hilferty’s period costumes put us right in the 1910s, while Sven Ortel’s projections feature archival photographs of the real people and locations involved in the story, along with newspaper articles and a memorial plaque, a constant, and effective, reminder that this really happened — along with a final shot providing one last shock. Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant’s choreography thankfully calms down in the second half. Heather Gilbert’s lighting and Jon Weston’s sound maintains the dark mood surrounding the events. Music director and conductor Tom Murray handles three-time Tony winner Brown’s (The Last Five Years, Mr. Saturday Night) compelling score with a rousing touch, while director Michael Arden (Spring Awakening, Once on This Island) ably navigates through Uhry’s (Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night of Ballyhoo) busy book. (Notably, Atlanta native Uhry’s great-uncle owned the National Pencil Company at the time of the killing.)

Tony winner Platt (Dear Evan Hansen, The Book of Mormon) and Diamond (The Cher Show, A Play Is a Poem) are wonderful together, portraying a Jewish couple in the Deep South facing bigotry; Platt captures Leo’s unrealistic belief that justice will triumph in the end, while Diamond embodies Lucille’s growth as she confronts what is happening in her beloved hometown. Grayson (Into the Woods, Girl from the North Country) brings down the house with “Feel the Rain Fall,” although, in 2023, it teeters on the edge of appropriation. Courtnee Carter (Once on This Island, Sing Street) as Angela and Douglas Lyons (Chicken & Biscuits, Beautiful) as Riley provide necessary perspective in their duet, “A Rumblin’ and a Rollin’,” in which they assert, “I can tell you this, as a matter of fact, / that the local hotels wouldn’t be so packed / if a little black girl had gotten attacked.” Also providing strong support are Cooper (Assassins, The Cradle Will Rock), Tony nominee Krill (Jagged Little Pill, Honeymoon in Vegas), and Greaves (Hairspray, Rent).

The final projection as the musical ends is a potent reminder that this country still has a long way to go when it comes to entrenched racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism, in states such as Georgia and too many others that appear determined to continue a legacy of bigotry and hatred, although there is hope with such political stalwarts as Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, the reverend who tells us, before the show starts, to silence our cellphones but, implicitly, not our voices.

BAD CINDERELLA

Bad Cinderella (Linedy Genao) rises up in Andrew Lloyd Webber Broadway musical (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

BAD CINDERELLA
Imperial Theatre
249 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 4, $48-$298
badcinderellabroadway.com

At last Friday night’s performance of Bad Cinderella at the Imperial, a boisterous trio of big men sat behind us, their belly laughs and rousing cheers shaking our row throughout the first act. During intermission, I turned to my friend and said, “I want to watch what they’re watching.”

Indeed, what show were they watching?

I am not going to jump on the bandwagon and take advantage of the American retitling of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella, which has added the word Bad, but it’s hard not to. I found the two-and-a-half-hour musical more insulting and embarrassing than downright bad; I knew we were in trouble when my musical-loving friend wasn’t giving even perfunctory applause after songs. “You’ve ruined theater for me forever,” she told me outside at intermission, as if it was my fault for taking her. “I might never see another show.”

Bad Cinderella is everything you’ve heard and worse.

Lloyd Webber, whose composer son Nick tragically died from gastric cancer on March 25 at the age of forty-three, has some fierce competition in the alt-fairy-tale Broadway musical realm. Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s Wicked has been packing them in on the Great White Way since 2003. The recent limited-run revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods was spectacular. And musical minions are still kvelling over Douglas Carter Beane’s 2013 family-friendly adaptation of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s more traditional Cinderella.

Bad Cinderella is ostensibly about being proud of one’s personal identity and defying the populist adherence to conventional ideas of beauty and success. But in its attempts to be clever, unpredictable, and, dare I say, woke, it steps all over itself, fumbling its themes and confusing its basic principles.

The Queen (Grace McLean) and the Stepmother (Carolee Carmello) do battle in Bad Cinderella (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

The show opens with the innocuous “Buns ’n’ Roses / Beauty Is Our Duty,” in which random characters at the Belleville Market revel in their hotness amid garish sexual innuendo. “Hot buns! Check out my hot buns!” the hunky baker declares. “True, there are not buns / Equal to mine.”

Various townspeople blast out, “Our town Belleville is a place so picturesque, / Makes every other town jealous. / So exquisite, every other seems grotesque. . . . Every single citizen’s a cut and chiseled god, / Beauty is our duty. / Everyone among us has a ripped and rockin’ bod. . . . We’re quite shallow, / We’re obsessed with how we look. / It’s quite OK if you’re dumb here. / Every lawn is manicured / As well as every hand.”

“Wrinkles are not tolerated, torsos must be tanned. / Acne is a misdemeanor, / Cellulite is banned. . . . So what if we’re a bit snooty” is about as sophisticated as Tony winner David Zippel’s lyrics gets.

The book, by Oscar winner Emerald Fennell and adapted by playwright Alexis Scheer for the Broadway run, is a “hot mess,” which is what the townspeople call Cinderella. Cinderella is ripe for interpretation; the Brothers Grimm and Rodgers & Hammerstein are only two of thousands who have told a similar tale going back two millennia. The most famous version was written in 1697 by Charles Perrault, the basis for the 1950 animated film by Walt Disney, a rags-to-riches story of magic, abuse, discrimination, misogyny, and outmoded ideals of what makes a person attractive and desired.

Director Laurence Connor and choreographer JoAnn M. Hunter hit a brick wall just a few minutes in, after the unveiling of a statue in honor of the missing Prince Charming (Cameron Loyal) reveals that Cinderella (Linedy Genao) has defaced it with a graffiti-esque banner declaring, “Beauty Sucks.” The townspeople call her a “psychopath” who “should be arrested,” but a moment later the hunky men are lifting her up as if she’s a hero, not a villain, and she proudly proclaims, “I’m a loner, I’m a freak, a rebel. . . . a girl from the gutter, unpleasant peasant, no one, a nutter, unwelcome present.”

Cinderella is badly mistreated by her stepmother (Carolee Carmello) and two gorgeous but hollow and dimwitted stepsisters, Adele (Sami Gayle) and Marie (Morgan Higgins). Her only friend is Prince Sebastian (Jordan Dobson), now heir to the throne, a shy young man with no kingly aspirations who the women in the town deride, complaining, “What a disappointment is this prince! / Look at him! My heart can’t help but wince! / He’s not the type on which girls set their sights.”

It doesn’t help that Sebastian is handsome, even in his militaristic outfit, even if he is dour, unhappy to be thrust into the limelight, while Cinderella, in her long black leather jacket, tight-fitting shirt, and maroon pants, is not only cool but hot, at least to the audience if not to the vain citizens of Belleville. “I’m the opposite of ev’rthing you are!” she sings. So why, about halfway through the show, does she go to Godmother (Christina Acosta Robinson), a nasty plastic surgeon, wanting her to transform her into a beauty, to be just like everyone else so the prince will choose her for his bride at the ball?

“The damsel wants to save the prince in distress. How very modern
of you,” Godmother says, but there’s nothing modern about it. No longer a fairy, Godmother doesn’t work magic, so her assertion that Cinderella’s makeover will last only until midnight is absurd, as is Sebastian’s inability to recognize Cinderella at the dance.

Bad Cinderella is laden with huge plot holes and incongruities galore; while there’s no need to stick close to any of the familiar versions, it feels like Connor (Les Misérables, School of Rock), Lloyd Webber (Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera), Fennell (Promising Young Woman, Killing Eve), Scheer (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Laughs in Spanish), and Zippel (City of Angels, The Woman in White) choose the least reasonable turn at each crossroad as they teeter back and forth between old-fashioned values and contemporary mores.

Gabriela Tylesova’s sets, dominated by the forest’s ominous tree branches, serve their purpose, although her costumes leave something to be desired, specifically, men’s shirts, as several male dancers are bare-chested every step of the way. Luc Verschueren’s hair and wigs are fun, Bruno Poet’s lights are bright, and Gareth Owen’s sound is loud. The title song might stick with you for a while, but you’ll try hard to get it out of your head; the British show earned a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theater Album, naming Andrew, Nick, and Greg Wells as producers.

Carmello (Scandalous, Lestat) and McLean (Cyrano, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812) go too far over the top, especially in what should have been a classic duet in which they battle each other (“I Know You”). Dobson (Hadestown, West Side Story) lacks style and energy as Sebastian but is still likable, while Genao (On Your Feet, Dear Evan Hansen) fares well as Cinderella despite the inconsistencies built into the character.

Ultimately, Bad Cinderella is unable to figure out what story it wants to tell and who its audience is. The creative team should talk to those three men sitting behind me, even if they did quiet down significantly in the second act.

PICTURES FROM HOME

Danny Burstein plays real-life photographer Larry Sultan in Pictures from Home on Broadway (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

PICTURES FROM HOME
Studio 54
254 West 54th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 30, $65-$312
212-719-1300
picturesfromhomebroadway.com

Even an all-star cast and an award-winning director can’t prevent Sharr White’s Pictures from Home from feeling like you’re watching people you don’t know show you their home movies and vacation photos; you can only care so much. The play, continuing at Studio 54 through April 30, has its share of touching and funny moments, but it’s primarily a bumpy, inconsistent trip through strangers’ family albums.

The show is adapted from photographer Larry Sultan’s 1992 book of the same name, the result of an eight-year project in which Larry (Danny Burstein) took pictures of his parents, Jean (Zoё Wanamaker) and Irving (Nathan Lane), primarily at their home in the San Fernando Valley. Larry lives in the Bay Area with his pregnant wife and child but spends many weekends visiting his mother and father to take photos, most of which are posed.

The three characters are aware of the audience’s existence, occasionally addressing them directly. The play begins with Larry explaining that he is a distinguished professor of photography at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and that “this project will become one of my hallmark achievements — I know that’s not a modest thing to say. Regardless, this isn’t about me, it’s about them.” Irv interjects, “Larry may say it’s about us, but trust me. It’s about him.”

Larry admits, “My wife, Kelly, and I joke that no matter how much respect I get in the outside world, stepping inside these walls is my Kryptonite. I turn to mush when I try to get the shots I’m looking for.”

After finding a dusty box in his parents’ garage filled with hundreds of reels of Super-8 film, “thirty years of folktales,” Larry decides to start photographing Irv, who is not in favor of the project and hates nearly all the pictures his son takes of him, and Jean, who is not so upset but doesn’t quite understand why Larry is making such a fuss.

Larry (Danny Burstein) documents his parents’ (Zoё Wanamaker and Nathan Lane) life in Pictures from Home (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Asking the unseen projectionist to play a clip from one of the reels, Larry tells us, “You can’t watch this movie without getting the impression of, of . . . a family living in a small apartment in Brooklyn projecting its dreams onto film emulsion.” He adds, “Knowing the disparity between the actual circumstances of the movie versus the hopes you nurtured when you made the movie . . . can’t you then imagine the possibility that a home movie could be more than, as you call it . . . ‘a record of actual events?’” (The projections are by Ben Pearcy at 59 Productions.)

Irv doesn’t want the memories to be treated like some kind of psych evaluation, so he answers, “What I’m saying is, why am I not allowed to just have my home movies?” Larry responds, “I’m not saying you’re not! But did you ever think that my examining them is perhaps my way of getting to know . . . a different version of you?” Irv declares, “Larry, I think you know me perfectly well. And if you’d like, I’ll introduce you to a version of your mother.”

It’s a very funny exchange, but it’s an argument that runs throughout the play repeatedly, offering little that is new. Irv is a realist who did whatever he had to in order to support his family, from working in clothing stores to becoming an executive for Schick razors. Jean raised the kids and, later in life, began a successful career as a Realtor, which the retired Irv considers a hobby.

We don’t learn much about Larry’s siblings, or his wife and kids; it’s like they are an afterthought, not that important as Larry instead digs into his parents’ lives, whether they want him to or not. He tells his bewildered father, “What I’m doing, Dad? Is looking for the, the . . . life beyond the frame.” He wants to preserve them, particularly as they get older, but he appears to be sacrificing his own present to accomplish that.

Michael Yeargan’s set is a comfy, relatively spare California living room, with a flowery couch, a desk, and glass doors leading to a backyard where Irv gardens and barbecues. The space is cantilevered, with the back wall painted an ugly green. I initially thought that it was done that way for effect, a metaphor for their off-tilt, colorless life. (I can already hear Irv saying, “I don’t think that’s a metaphor,” which he barks at Larry early on.)

Irving (Nathan Lane) gives his son (Danny Burstein) another talking-to as his wife (Zoё Wanamaker) watches (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

But it turns out that it very much matches Irv and Jean’s actual home, which is not a candidate for House Beautiful; it’s more like my great-aunt Sylvia’s old Florida place from that same era. All the photos and videos are taken from Larry’s collection; they are of the real Irv and Jean, not Lane and Wanamaker, which is both good and bad. While it’s exciting to see the actual pictures, several of which are warmly Rockwellian, it also forces us to compare how much the actors do or don’t look like the people they are portraying, Lane in his white wig, Wanamaker in a poufy hairdo. Burstein, in an obviously fake ill-fitting wig, looks more like Jerry O’Connell than Larry.

Thus, it is hard to lose yourself in the production, as the artifice stands out. Complaining about one of the photos of him, Irv tells his son, “The picture shows how strained and artificial the situation was that you set up.” The play cannot escape that same feeling.

Three-time Tony winner Lane (It’s Only a Play, Angels in America) plays, well, Nathan Lane, using his trademark boisterous bravado. When he shouts at Jean, “I can’t interject? I’m just doing a little interjecting!,” we see Lane, not Irv. Four-time Tony nominee and two-time Olivier winner Wanamaker (Loot, Awake and Sing!) is underused, usually kept in the background except when they are discussing a photo of Jean in the garage. And Tony winner Burstein (Talley’s Folly, Fiddler on the Roof) is ever likable, but his character is severely underdeveloped, leaving too many holes about his life away from his parents. It’s also hard to believe he’s playing their son, as Lane and Wanamaker are only eight and fifteen years older than Burstein, respectively.

White (The Other Place, The True, The Affair) and Sher (My Fair Lady, Oslo) can’t get past the general stagnation of an audience watching actors look at photos on a wall. You keep wanting the show to go somewhere, to offer more than one man’s attempt to ensure his parents live forever, at least on film. Instead, it’s too slight, 105 minutes of studying a family album I had only mild interest in.