Tag Archives: Jessie Mueller

BEAUTIFUL: THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL

Don Kirshner (Jeb Brown) oversees intense songwriting competition between Goffin/King (Jake Epstein and Jessie Mueller) and Mann/Weil (Jarrod Spector and Anika Larsen) in BEAUTIFUL (photo by Joan Marcus)

Stephen Sondheim Theatre
124 West 43rd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 5, $75 – $252
www.beautifulonbroadway.com

Theatergoers are in for treat after treat as the hits just keep on coming in the first act of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Rising star Jessie Mueller (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) excels in the role of Manhattan-born, Brooklyn-raised Carole Klein, beginning as the teen dreams of becoming a successful songwriter (and changes her last name to King). That dream becomes a reality when she meets lyricist Gerry Goffin (Jake Epstein) at Queens College and soon the two have an office on Broadway, where they work for Don Kirshner (Jeb Brown), composing hit songs for such popular groups as the Drifters, the Shirelles, and others. The musical, directed by Marc Bruni (Old Jews Telling Jokes, The Explorers Club) and with a book by playwright and filmmaker Douglas McGrath (Bullets over Broadway, Infamous), soars as Goffin and King do battle with office neighbors Barry Mann (Jarrod Spector) and Cynthia Weil (Anika Larsen), competing over which team can top the Billboard charts more often. Derek McLane’s dazzling multilevel set feeds the Brill Building-era frenzy with nonstop action; the focus and the set narrow down when the talented ensemble performs full versions of songs the audience just watched Goffin/King or Mann/Weil put together, bringing their exacting craft to lovely life in scenes appealingly choreographed by Josh Prince.

Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s personal and professional partnership is the focus of new Broadway musical (photo by Joan Marcus)

Unfortunately, the second act is pretty much a bore, as Goffin and King suffer through marital problems and move to the suburbs as the audience waits and waits for the plot to finally get to King’s breakout masterpiece, Tapestry, but by the time it arrives, it’s too late, baby, it’s just too late. But that thrilling first act makes it all worthwhile, succeeding where such other jukebox musicals as Motown and A Night with Janis Joplin fail, combining a compelling (mostly true) story with electrifying music. The charming cast is led by engaging performances by Epstein, Larsen, Spector, and especially, of course, Mueller, who make palpable the excitement of creating a hit song, while Brown wonderfully captures Kirshner’s nuttiness running his musical asylum. Do yourself a favor and don’t read up on the hits that Goffin/King and Mann/Weil wrote, and skip the page in the Playbill that lists all the tunes in the show, because no matter how much you think you know about the songs, you’ll be surprised by the two duos’ vast, diverse catalog.

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

The audience gets to choose the ending and more in Roundabout revival of THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD (photo by Joan Marcus)

Studio 54
254 West 54th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 10, $42-$147
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is back on Broadway for the first time since the original production won five Tonys and nine Drama Desk Awards, and it’s as bawdylicious as ever. Featuring book, music, and lyrics by Rupert Holmes — yes, the man behind “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” — Drood is a brilliantly imagined take on Charles Dickens’s final novel, half of which was serialized in 1870 before the British writer died at the age of fifty-eight. Dickens’s Victorian tale is set in a frame story, told as if it were being performed by a troupe in London’s Music Hall Royale in 1895. The Drood story itself is regularly interrupted by the master of ceremonies, Mr. William Cartwright (a wonderful Jim Norton), who tries to keep order while directing the wild shenanigans, introducing the characters and their actors and speaking directly to the audience. (Almost everyone interacts with the crowd; be sure to arrive before curtain time, as the actors walk around the theater in character and chat with theatergoers.) Will Chase (Smash) stars as music hall actor Mr. Clive Paget, who plays John Jasper, the mustachioed villain of the show-within-a-show. Church choirmaster Jasper is in love with his student, young buxom blonde Rosa Bud (Betsy Wolfe as Miss Deirdre Peregrine), who is engaged to marry Edwin Drood (Stephanie J. Block as “famous male impersonator” Miss Alice Nutting; Drood is always played by a woman, including, in the past, Betty Buckley and Donna Murphy). Intrigue abounds when a pair of adult orphan siblings from Ceylon, Neville and Helena Landless (Andy Karl and Jessie Mueller as Mr. Victor Grinstead and Miss Janet Conover), are brought to the town by the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle (Gregg Edelman as Mr. Cedric Moncrieffe); the local drunk, Durdles (Robert Creighton as Mr. Nick Cricker), finishes a tomb for the mayor’s dead wife; and Jasper spends the night in an opium den run by the haughty Princess Puffer (Chita Rivera as Miss Angela Prysock, the role originated by Cleo Laine).

Chita Rivera, Stephanie J. Block, and Will Chase star in DROOD revival at Studio 54 (photo by Joan Marcus)

The story unfolds through such terrific production numbers as “There You Are,” “A Man Could Go Quite Mad,” “No Good Can Come from Bad,” and the music-hall troupe’s classic, non-Drood song, “Off to the Races,” but the Drood plot comes to a screeching halt when they reach the part where Dickens died. At that point, it all becomes even more fun as the audience votes on various aspects of the tale, including the identity of the strange detective who has been seen around town and, even more important, the murderer of Edwin Drood, who has disappeared. The plot proceeds from there, potentially different every night. (Try to show some compassion for poor Phillip Bax, amiably played by Peter Benson, who has little to do as Bazzard in the Drood retelling.) Director Scott Ellis (Harvey) and choreographer Warren Carlyle (Chaplin) keep things appropriately light and frothy, filled with playful humor and plenty of double entendres, making for an extraordinarily delightful night of theater.

SONDHEIM IN THE PARK: INTO THE WOODS

INTO THE WOODS is given dazzling new life at the Delacorte (photo by Joan Marcus)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Extended through September 1, free, 8:00
Family-friendly matinee August 22, 3:00
Tickets available day of show at the box office and online here
shakespeareinthepark.org

The Public Theater’s revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Tony-winning Into the Woods has made a marvelous transformation to the Delacorte, as if it were the place it was always meant to be performed. Adapted from the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production, the fairy-tale mosh-up, directed by Regent’s artistic director Timothy Sheader with codirection by Liam Steel, has been given a more adult touch, darker and sexier than previous versions. On John Lee Beatty and Soutra Gilmour’s beautiful stage of multiple wooden ladders, walkways, and a tower constructed right into the actual woods of Central Park, a young boy (played alternately by Jack Broderick and Noah Radcliffe) creates the story of a childless couple, the Baker (Tony winner Denis O’Hare) and his wife (Oscar nominee Amy Adams), who are given a chance to have a baby if they collect four items for a wicked witch (Tony winner Donna Murphy): a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold. So off they go on an adventure into a magical land populated by such characters as Little Red Ridinghood (Sarah Stiles) and the Wolf (Ivan Hernandez), Cinderella (Tony nominee Jessie Mueller) and a prince (also Hernandez), Rapunzel (Tess Soltau) and her prince (Cooper Grodin), and Jack (Gideon Glick) and his mother (Kristine Zbornik), who are forced to sell their cow because they are in desperate need of money. There’s also a mysterious man (Chip Zien, who played the Baker in the original Broadway production) wandering through the woods, popping up now and again to offer advice. As they strive toward their goal, the Baker and his wife must decide just how far they’re willing to go to have a child, and at what cost.

The Witch (Donna Murphy) and Rapunzel (Tess Soltau) face some surprisingly hard truths in INTO THE WOODS (photo by Joan Marcus)

The first act is an utter delight, highlighted by Stiles’s raunchy turn as Little Red Ridinghood, dressed like a hip skater chick, O’Hare’s self-examination as he considers doing things he never would have imagined, Jack’s cow, a skeletal figure carried around by another actor, and Murphy’s star turn as the Witch, walking with canes in a frightening get-up courtesy of costume designer Emily Rebholz. But things reach another level in the second act, which reveals what happens when happily ever after is not necessarily the end of the story. Such songs as “Into the Woods,” “Hello, Little Girl,” “Stay with Me,” “Witch’s Lament,” and “Your Fault” are brought to life by a live orchestra playing in the back of the fanciful tree house and a stellar cast that is game for just about anything, making the three-hour show breeze by in, well, a breeze. Nominated for ten Tonys and winning three back in 1988 (including Best Score and Best Book), Sondheim and Lapine’s show, which is essentially about the art of storytelling itself, feels as clever and fresh as ever. Rechristened Sondheim in the Park, this wonderful Shakespeare in the Park presentation, part of the Delacorte’s fiftieth anniversary, is everything that free outdoor summer theater should be.

ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER

Jessie Mueller and Harry Connick, Jr., star in Broadway reincarnation of ON A CLEAR DAY

St. James Theatre
246 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tickets: $35 – $162
www.onacleardaybroadway.com

Falling firmly into the “What in the world were they thinking?” category, Michael Mayer’s reincarnation of the middling 1965 Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner Broadway musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is a convoluted mess, one that clearly should not have been brought back to life. Previously nominated for a Tony for his performance in The Pajama Game, Harry Connick, Jr. is all stiff shoulders as Dr. Mark Bruckner, a psychiatrist detailing a bizarre case at a 1974 industry convention. Bruckner addresses the audience directly, describing his unorthodox treatment of a young, gay florist, David Gamble (a rather limp David Turner), who came to him requesting hypnosis to help him stop smoking. But while the subject is under, Dr. Bruckner, who has not gotten over the death of his wife several years before, falls in love with 1940s chanteuse Melinda Wells (the dazzling Jessie Mueller), whom he believes to be David’s previous incarnation. As the doctor romances Melinda, David begins to wonder if Bruckner is falling in love with him, Dr. Bruckner’s colleagues at the institute, including Dr. Sharone Stein (Kerry O’Malley), who believes she is the right one for him, start thinking he might be going off the deep end, and the audience is left to consider just how this “revival” made it back to Broadway for another life. With a book by Peter Parnell adapted from the original, which starred Tony nominees John Cullum and Barbara Harris and featured Harris playing Daisy Gamble and an eighteenth-century Melinda Wells, this new version is more confusing than ever, adding songs from the 1970 Vincente Minnelli film that paired Yves Montand and Barbra Streisand as well as from Lane and Lerner’s 1951 MGM musical, Royal Wedding, performed by Mueller in the 1940s scenes. While Mueller is a standout belting away at such numbers as “Open Your Eyes” and “Too Late Now,” the rest of the production falls flat, with uninspired choreography by Joann M. Hunter, silly optical designs by Christine Jones, and a plot that can’t decide whether it’s serious or camp. This is one Clear Day that is overcast and gray.