this week in theater

OF MICE AND MEN

Chris O’Down and James Franco both make their Broadway debut in revival of John Steinbeck classic (photo by Richard Phibbs)

Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 27, $37 – $147
www.ofmiceandmenonbroadway.com

Chris O’Dowd steals the show as an endearing gentle giant who doesn’t know his own strength in Anna D. Shapiro’s riveting new production of John Steinbeck’s American classic Of Mice and Men, the first Broadway revival of the 1937 play in forty years. O’Dowd stars as Lennie Small, a large man with the mind of a child who has a penchant for petting nice things. He is out on the road with his best friend, George Milton (James Franco), a stand-up guy who takes care of him and finds work for them as migrant ranch hands. They had to leave their previous job in a hurry after Lennie caused trouble involving a young woman and her pretty dress, and they are now headed for another ranch, where they’re hoping to save up enough money bucking barley bags to get a little plot of land for themselves. George regularly makes Lennie tell them about their best-laid plans: “Some day we’re gonna get the jack together and we’re gonna have a little house, and a couple of acres and a cow and some pigs and . . .” George says before being interrupted by Lennie, who chimes in, “and live off the fat of the land! And have rabbits. Go on, George! Tell about what we’re gonna have in the garden. And about the rabbits.” Among the people they meet at the ranch are Candy (Jim Norton), an older man with a mangy dog; Slim (Jim Parrack), the jerk-line skinner who takes a liking to George and Lennie; Carlson (Joel Marsh Garland), a stout fellow who can’t wait to shoot Candy’s dog; Crooks (Ron Cephas Jones), a bitter black man whose color segregates him from the rest of the men; and the Boss (Jim Ortlieb), who just wants everyone to do their jobs with as few problems as possible. But the biggest danger is the Boss’s son, Curley (Alex Morf), a small, angry man with a chip on his shoulder, both about his size as well as how some of the guys look at his very attractive and flirty wife (Leighton Meester). However, despite trying so hard, Lennie finds himself in trouble yet again, leading to a tragic finale.

George (James Franco) and Lennie (Chris O’Dowd) share a rare laugh in OF MICE AND MEN revival (photo by Richard Phibbs)

Thoughtfully directed by Anna D. Shapiro (August: Osage County, Domesticated) with grace and tenderness, the show focuses on the concept of single-handedness, emphasizing the loneliness experienced by all of the characters. O’Dowd, as Lennie, uses his left hand almost like a conductor’s baton to help express himself and get his words out; while he remains by George’s side, he desperately wants something to pet and take care of, be it a mouse or a dog or other preferably living thing. Candy, played by the ever-dependable Norton, has only one hand, and he can’t imagine facing life alone if he allows Carlson to kill his dog. Crooks, so used to everyone steering clear of him because he’s black, is surprised when first Lennie, then others, suddenly come into his room, which is away from where the rest of the men stay. “You got no right to come in my room. This here’s my room. Nobody got any right in here but me,” he tells Lennie, who comes in anyway. When Curley attacks Lennie, it’s Curley’s hand, the one he keeps extra soft for his wife, that Lennie grabs. Even the “couples” in the play deal with the issue. Curley and his wife are never seen together, always looking for each other. And Slim makes a special note of Lennie and George’s relationship, which he alone seems to understand. “Hardly none of the guys ever travels around together. I hardly never seen two guys travel together,” he says to George. “You know how the hands are. They come in and go on alone. Never seem to give a damn about nobody. Jest seems kinda funny. A cuckoo like him and a smart guy like you traveling together.” Indeed, it’s no coincidence that the nearest town is Soledad, which means “loneliness” in Spanish and is where the men go to seek paid female accompaniment.

Lennie (Chris O’Dowd) and Curley’s wife (Leighton Meester) talk about their dreams in OF MICE AND MEN (photo by Richard Phibbs)

Film and television stars O’Dowd (Bridesmaids, Girls), Franco (127 Hours, Freaks and Geeks), and Meester (Country Strong, Gossip Girl) avail themselves well in their Broadway debuts; Meester adds a deep richness to Curley’s unnamed wife, who is often portrayed as more of a floozy, while Franco is smart and solid alongside O’Dowd’s mesmerizing performance, a pair previously played by such duos as Wallace Ford and Broderick Crawford, Kevin Conway and James Earl Jones, George Segal and Nicol Williamson, Robert Blake and Randy Quaid, Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr., and Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. The rest of the cast is stellar as well, with particularly fine turns by the ever-dependable Norton (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Seafarer) and the Texas-born Parrack (True Blood), Todd Rosenthal’s sets range from the bank of the Salinas River, where George and Lennie take a load off, to the bunkhouse, which looks more like a prison, representing the death of the American dream in the wake of the depression. Seventy-seven years after it first arrived on Broadway, Of Mice and Men is still a powerful, and relevant, examination of loneliness, friendship, and the struggle to survive in hard times.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOSH

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOSH: A 28-YEAR GENTILE BAR MITZVAH
The Players Theatre
115 Macdougal St. between Bleecker & West Third Sts.
May 16-18, $47.50 ($34.50 with code: FRIENDS)
866-811-4111
www.gospeljosh.com

Rocked by his father’s suicide, actor Josh Rivedal soon found himself on the ledge of a fourth-floor window, considering following his father’s lead. But he was able to right himself and get his life back on track, a journey detailed in his book and one-man show, The Gospel According to Josh: A 28-Year Gentile Bar Mitzvah. A comedy with musical numbers in which Rivedal plays thirty characters, including various family members and Maury Povich, Sammy Davis Jr., and Elvis Presley, the inspirational show has traveled across the country, raising awareness about suicide. It returns to New York City next month, with proceeds benefiting the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: The Gospel According to Josh: A 28-Year Gentile Bar Mitzvah will be at the Players Theatre for four special performances May 16-18, and twi-ny has two pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and most memorable play or movie that deals with suicide to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, April 30, at 5:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; two winners will be selected at random.

SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE: THE BROTHERS BOOTH

Competitive siblings John Wilkes Booth and Edwin Booth are at center of complex drama in THE BROTHERS BOOTH (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Competitive siblings John Wilkes and Edwin are at center of complex drama in THE BROTHERS BOOTH (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The Players Club
16 Gramercy Park South
Saturday, May 3, June 7, July 12, general admission $75, VIP $125, 8:00
www.brothersbooth.blogspot.com

A palimpsest of nineteenth-century theater history, 1920s cabaret, and the storied Players Club, Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth is the second of creator Cynthia von Buhler’s Speakeasy Dollhouse immersive theater pieces. Long fascinated by her family’s bootlegger past and the layers of stories in New York City, von Buhler crafts participatory theatrical evenings unlike any other, in which the actors and the audience inhabit the same set — the dollhouse — with everyone as the dolls. The set in The Brothers Booth is the Players Club on Gramercy Park, the exclusive private organization for thespians founded by Edwin Booth, a superstar of the nineteenth-century stage, son of the preeminent Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth — and brother to the less talented but far more notorious John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. (A statue of Edwin Booth resides in the center of Gramercy Park, across the street from the Players Club.) Von Buhler’s show, directed by Wes Grantom (Eager to Lose), invites ticket holders to dress up — going in costume is highly encouraged and pretty much essential to enjoying oneself — and join a 1920s Prohibition-era party in progress at the club, complete with ukulele players, magicians, singers, and a fabulous emcee, modern burlesque star Tansy.

Speakeasy Dollhouse creator Cynthia von Buhler in the Sargent Room at the Players Club, beneath John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Edwin Booth (photo by Maxine Nienow 2014)

But the party is haunted by the spirits of the brothers Booth (with Ryan Wesen as John and an excellent Eric Gravez as Edwin) and various characters in their lives, who reenact mysterious scenes from different decades in assorted rooms on multiple floors, recalling Sleep No More, involving sibling rivalry, the fight over John Wilkes Booth’s corpse, a traveling circus, a burned tattooed man (Dan Olson), and the murder of the president. There’s a battle over a coffin, a medium (Chrissy Basham) holding a séance, a sword fight, a puppet show, a spirit photographer, and a telling excerpt from Julius Caesar, all taking place over and over again as guests get drinks at various bars (credit cards only), ogle one another’s costumes, mingle with the various performers dressed as taxi dancers and gigolos, and snap photos to post on social media. (VIPs also get to watch Mark Twain [Lord Kat] play cards with Robert Todd Lincoln and hang out in the burlesque performers’ dressing room.) The layering of stories is murkier in this installment; unlike Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Bloody Beginning (which continues April 26 and May 10, 17, and 31 on the Lower East Side), it’s hard to tell who is who and when is when. Most of the guests are there to show off their 1920s garb and to drink, and the scenes are repetitive and often unclear. Still, the evening is theatrically ambitious, absolutely singular, and not to be missed by fans of New York City history willing to take a walk on the strange side, into the Players Club and into the dollhouse.

LIVE IDEAS: JAMES BALDWIN, THIS TIME!

The life and career of James Baldwin will be celebrated at second annual Live Ideas festival at New York Live Arts this week

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St.
April 23-27
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org

Last year, New York Live Arts presented its inaugural Live Ideas festival, honoring Dr. Oliver Sacks with a series of dance performances, special talks, and other programs. For the 2014 edition, as part of the citywide Year of James Baldwin celebration, NYLA is hosting “Live Ideas: James Baldwin, This Time!,” which runs April 23-27 at its home on West Nineteenth St. Every day at twelve o’clock, “Jimmy at High Noon” (free with advance RSVP) will feature actors, musicians, artists, and others reading from Baldwin’s works, which include Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, The Amen Corner, Another Country, and Jimmy’s Blues; among those scheduled to participate are Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Laurie Anderson, André DeShields, Kathleen Chalfant, Jesse L. Martin, Tonya Pinkins, Vijay Isher, and Toshi Reagon. In addition, Hank Willis Thomas’s free video installation, A person is more important than anything else…, will play continuously in the lobby, where the mural “Letter from a Region of My Mind,” incorporating the text of a piece Baldwin wrote for the November 17, 1962, issue of the New Yorker, will be on view. On April 23 at 2:30 ($15), Live Ideas curator Lawrence Weschler will moderate the discussion “Baldwin’s Capacious Imagination & Influence” with Roberta Uno and Margo Jefferson. That night the Opening Keynote Conversation ($40-$70, 8:00) brings together the impressive trio of choreographer and NYLA executive artistic director Bill T. Jones, photographer Carrie Mae Weems, and author Jamaica Kincaid. On April 23 at 5:00 and April 24 at 8:00 ($15-$40), director Patricia McGregor and actor Colman Domingo will premiere Nothing Personal, a stage adaptation of the collaboration between Baldwin and Richard Avedon, who went to high school together. The festival also includes “Baldwin & Delaney” (April 24, $10, 2:00), consisting of a reading by Rachel Cohen and a panel discussion about Baldwin’s encounter with painter Beauford Delaney; the multidisciplinary conversation “After Giovanni’s Room: Baldwin and Queer Futurity” (April 25, $10, 2:00) with Kyle Abraham, Rich Blint, Matthew Brim, Laura Flanders, and Jones; and “Jimmy’s Blues: Discussing the Poetry of James Baldwin,” comprising discussion and readings by poets Nikky Finney, Edward Hirsch, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ed Pavlić, Meghan O’Rourke, and Nathalie Handal.

LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR AND GRILL

Audra McDonald channels Billie Holiday in LADY DAY (photo by Evgenia Eliseeva)

Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 10, $97 – $252
www.ladydayonbroadway.com

Watching — nay, experiencing — the astonishing Audra MacDonald inhabit Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, one might think that the show was created specifically for the five-time Tony winner. In fact, it’s been around since 1986, and earlier off-Broadway and out-of-town versions have featured such stars as Lonette McKee, Eartha Kitt, S. Epatha Merkerson, Loretta Divine, and Jackée Harry. Inspired by one of Holiday’s final performances, at a small club in South Philadelphia a few months before her death in 1959 at the age of forty-four, Lanie Robertson’s (Nasty Little Secrets) ninety-minute show focuses on a brittle but still immensely talented Holiday as she performs classic songs while sharing tales from her difficult life, which was riddled with physical and sexual abuse, failed marriages, rape, prostitution, and drug and alcohol addiction. Backed by Shelton Becton as pianist Jimmy Powers, George Farmer on bass, and Clayton Craddock on drums (get there early, as the trio starts performing well before curtain time), McDonald nails Holiday’s unique phrasing and thrilling voice on such numbers as “I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone,” “Crazy He Calls Me,” and “Easy Living” as well as “God Bless the Child,” which she cowrote, “T’aint Nobody’s Business If I Do,” and “Strange Fruit,” giving them added emotional resonance in relation to Lady Day’s tragic downfall. The audience sits around the thrust stage on three sides, with a “Circle Club” section in the middle, where patrons sit at tables and drink during the show and Holiday occasionally stumbles through, slurring her words, needing help just to stay upright. Directed by Lonny Price, who previously worked with McDonald on 110 in the Shade, Lady Day is a poignant, passionate look at one of the greatest singers who ever lived, magnificently portrayed by one of Broadway’s very best.

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY: THE MUSICAL

Helen Sinclair (Marin Mazzie) tells David Shayne (Zach Braff) not to speak in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY (photo by Paul Kolnick)

Helen Sinclair (Marin Mazzie) tells David Shayne (Zach Braff) not to speak in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY (photo by Paul Kolnik)

St. James Theatre
246 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 28, $52 – $152
www.bulletsoverbroadway.com

In 2001, director-choreographer Susan Stroman struck gold collaborating with Mel Brooks on the musical adaptation of his 1968 comedy, The Producers, about a pair of schlemiels looking to finance a Broadway flop. The show itself was no flop, running for six years at the St. James Theatre and winning twelve Tonys. Unfortunately, Stroman’s current collaboration with another comedy genius, Woody Allen, also at the St. James and also about trying to get a show produced, ends up shooting mostly blanks. Allen wrote the book and Stroman serves as director and choreographer for Bullets over Broadway, the musical version of Allen’s hit 1994 film, which earned him and cowriter Douglas McGrath an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. (The film earned seven Oscar nominations in all, with Dianne Weist winning for Best Supporting Actress.) The play is set in 1929, as serious playwright David Shayne (Zach Braff in his Broadway debut) is offered a chance to get his latest work produced on the Great White Way — but only if he casts mobster Nick Valenti’s (Vincent “Big Pussy” Pastore) girlfriend, Olive Neal (Heléne Yorke), in a major role. Shayne’s agent, Julian Marx (Lenny Wolpe), convinces him to take the deal, but when they quickly discover how talentless, annoying, and just plain dumb Olive is, they have their work cut out for them, especially after building an otherwise impressive cast that includes the dapper but always hungry Warner Purcell (Brooks Ashmanskas), the dependable Eden Brent (Karen Ziemba), and fading diva Helen Sinclair (Marin Mazzie). Valenti has assigned one of his goons, Cheech (Nick Cordero), to watch after Olive, but soon he is spending most of his time rewriting Shayne’s play — and making it much better, which excites, confuses, and terrifies Shayne as opening night approaches.

Opening night beckons in Woody Allen’s musical version of BULLETS OVER BROADWAY (photo by Paul Kolnik)

Cordero is excellent as Cheech, a role played in the film by Chazz Palminteri, but the rest of the cast never quite reaches the levels necessary to make this story of art and ethics, love and money, and the business of show rise above the mundane. Allen’s jokes, so potent in the film, continually fall flat onstage, and the songs, which primarily consist of old-time classics adapted and with additional lyrics by Glen Kelly, are often repetitive (how many brief reprises can one take?), unnecessary, and unmemorable, with a few exceptions: Cheech’s “Up a Lazy River,” is fun, and Warner and Olive have a ball with “Let’s Misbehave,” which was the theme song of Allen’s ”Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask.” In addition, the Atta-Girls, who sing and dance at Nick’s club and play various background roles, are always welcome, as are William Ivey Long’s glamorous period costumes. Ultimately, Bullets over Broadway is about how far a person will go for their art; in the case of this musical, the answer is not far enough.

LA SOIRÉE

English Gent Hamish McCann dazzles at LA SOIRÉE (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Union Square Theatre
100 East 17th St.
Thursday – Monday through June 1, $37.95 – $127.95
www.la-soiree.com

If you don’t like La Soirée, well, then you just don’t know how to have fun. The raunchy, risqué mixture of burlesque, cabaret, vaudeville, circus, and Coney Island sideshow that has been touring the world for the last several years — an earlier iteration called Absinthe ran in the Spiegeltent at the South Street Seaport back in 2006 — is playing at the misty Union Square Theatre, where the audience is seated in the round, centered by a small circular platform where most of the often mind-blowing action takes place. Hosted by emcee Aidan O’Shea (among others, depending on which night you go), the two-hour evening features a core group of performers along with special guests. Singer-comic Amy G gets intimate with audience members and uses an unusual part of her body to play an instrument. Rhythmic gymnastics champion Lea Hinz contorts her arms and legs while suspended in the air in a hoop. The self-deprecating Marcus Monroe juggles a home-made combination of dangerous items. Jeans-wearing Joren “Bath Boy” Dawson splashes plenty of water while engaging in acrobatics in and around a claw-footed tub.

LA SOIRÉE is a raunchy romp at the Union Square Theatre (photo by Carol Rosegg)

LA SOIRÉE is a deliciously twisted raunchy romp at the Union Square Theatre (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Marawa the Amazing shimmies with a vast array of Hula hoops. Scrawny, wild-haired Ringling Bros. Clown College graduate Manchego offers a different take on the male striptease. The English Gents (the dapperly dressed — and undressed — Denis Lock and Hamish McCann) dazzle with breathtaking feats of skill and strength, balancing on each other’s bodies; the highlight of the night might just be McCann’s gravity-defying one-man “Singing in the Rain” pole dance. Burlesque star Julie Atlas Muz somehow gets inside a large balloon bubble. Other performers you might catch at La Soirée, which was first presented by Brett Haylock, Mark Rubinstein, and Mick Perrin in London in 2010, include Bret Pfister, Scotty Blue Bunny, Miss Ekaterina, Mooky Cornish, Le Gâteau Chocolat, Ursula Martinez, Cabaret Decadanse, Meow Meow, Jess Love, Miss Behave, and Mario, Queen of the Circus. There’s also free popcorn, a bar that remains open throughout the show, lots of audience participation, and surprises galore in this randy, very adult romp that isn’t afraid to go too low, or too high, to get a laugh, a smile, a gasp, or even a groan.