Tag Archives: Nathaniel Stampley

NOT A SENSATION: THE WHO’S TOMMY / LEMPICKA

The Who’s Tommy is back on Broadway in a bewildering revival (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

THE WHO’S TOMMY
Nederlander Theatre
208 West Forty-First St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 21, $89.75-$319.50
tommythemusical.com

Watching Lempicka at the Longacre, where it just announced an early closing date of May 19 — it was scheduled to run until September 8 — I was struck by how similar it was to The Who’s Tommy, which is packing them in at the Nederlander.

Each show focuses on a unique title character — one a fictional “deaf, dumb, and blind kid” who has been part of global pop culture since 1969, when the Who’s rock opera was released, the other a far lesser known real Polish bisexual painter named Tamara Łempicka, who was born in Warsaw in 1898 and died in Mexico in 1980.

Both musicals were presented at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego prior to opening on Broadway, both involve world wars and fighting fascism, both feature ridiculously over-the-top choreography, and both use empty frames as props that detract from the protagonist’s creative abilities. And as a bonus coincidence, Jack Nicholson, who portrayed the specialist in Ken Russell’s 1975 film adaptation of Tommy, is a collector of Lempicka’s work, having owned Young Ladies and La Belle Rafaela.

While there are elements to like in Lempicka, there is virtually nothing worth singing about in Tommy.

In his Esquire review, John Simon called Tommy “the most stupid, arrogant, and tasteless movie since Russell’s Mahler. To debate such a film seems impossible: anyone who can find merit in this deluge of noise and nausea has nothing to say to me, nor I to him.” Although I’m not as vitriolic as Simon, I felt similarly about the movie — and now about the current Broadway revival.

The Who’s double album is a masterpiece about a young boy who witnesses a violent death and loses the ability to see, hear, and speak. The record delves into Tommy’s mind as he is abused and harassed by relatives and strangers but finds surprising success at pinball. The loose narrative allows the listener to fill in the blanks by using their imagination.

That imaginative space was taken away by the bizarre film, but the original Broadway musical version from 1993, with music and lyrics by Pete Townshend of the Who and book by Townshend and director Des McAnuff, did an admirable job of bringing the somewhat convoluted tale to the stage, earning ten Tony nominations and winning five trophies, for director, choreographer, score, scenic design, and lighting. With McAnuff again directing, this iteration earned a solitary nod as Best Revival of a Musical, which is one too many.

Mrs. Walker (Alison Luff) tries to help her young son in The Who’s Tommy (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

It’s 1941, and Captain Walker (Adam Jacobs) goes off to war. His pregnant wife (Alison Luff) is devastated when the military arrives at her doorstep and tells her that her husband has been killed in action — even though he is actually in a prison camp. Four years later, Captain Walker returns home to find his wife has taken a new lover (Nathan Lucrezio); the men get into a scrap, and the captain shoots the lover dead. Four-year-old Tommy (Cecilia Ann Popp or Olive Ross-Kline) witnesses the scene, and his parents plead with him, “You didn’t hear it. / You didn’t see it. / You won’t say nothing to no one / Ever in your life.” The boy takes those words to heart.

As he grows up (played by Quinten Kusheba or Reese Levine at ten and Ali Louis Bourzgui as a teenager and adult), he is taken advantage of by his uncle Ernie (John Ambrosino) and cousin Kevin (Bobby Conte) while his mother and father try to cure him by taking him to a psychiatrist (Lily Kren), a specialist (Sheldon Henry), and a prostitute known as the Acid Queen (Christina Sajous). But he shows no interest in life — although he does spend a lot of time looking at himself in a large mirror — until he winds up at a pinball machine, where he proves to be a wizard and soon becomes a hero to millions, the modern-day equivalent of a YouTube gamer going viral. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean everything is suddenly coming up roses for him.

McAnuff, choreographer Lorin Latarro, set designer David Korins, projection designer Peter Nigrini, costume designer Sarafina Bush, lighting designer Amanda Zieve, and sound designer Gareth Owen bombard the audience with so much nonsense that it is impossible to know what to look at or listen to at any given moment; it’s like the London Blitz has taken over the theater for 130 overcharged minutes (with intermission), complete with dancing uniformed fascists. The orchestrations by Steve Margoshes and Rick Fox are fine, but this has to be about much more than just the Who’s spectacular songs, too many of which tilt here. The barrage of empty frames and projected images might hurt your neck and give you a headache, while the vast amount of unnecessary movement and strange costume choices will have you bewildered, as will the decision to have no actual pinball machines onstage, just a pretend table.

Luff (Waitress, Les Misérables) and Jacobs (Aladdin, Les Misérables) avail themselves well amid the maelstrom, as do the younger Tommys, but Bourzgui, in his Broadway debut, fails to bring any nuance to the character, whether he is patrolling the stage following his younger selves or being chased by Sally Simpson (Haley Gustafson). He’s certainly no Roger Daltrey, on the record or in the film.

This hyperkinetic mess is no sensation, lacking emotional spark as it takes the audience on a less-than-amazing journey for which there appears to be no miracle cure.

Tamara de Lempicka (Eden Espinosa) examines her work in biographical Broadway musical (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

LEMPICKA
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 19, $46-$269
lempickamusical.com

Many of the technical aspects of Lempicka are oddly similar to those of Tommy. Just as Tommy never plays an actual pinball machine, Tamara de Lempicka (Eden Espinosa) never actually paints; she often stands in front of an easel with no canvas, carefully moving a brush in her hand. Riccardo Hernández’s set is laden with empty frames much like those in Tommy. Paloma Young’s costumes for the fascists are overwrought, like Sarafina Bush’s in Tommy.

However, Bradley King’s lighting makes sense, playing off Lempicka’s Art Deco style and angular figuration, while Peter Nigrini’s projections provide necessary historical context and spectacular presentations of her work.

But the biggest difference is in the two leads. Espinosa gives a powerful, yearning performance as Lempicka, a woman caught between her traditional family — husband Tadeusz Lempicki (Andrew Samonsky) and daughter Kizette (Zoe Glick) — and her lover, Rafaela, beautifully portrayed by Amber Iman. (Rafaela is a conglomeration of Lempicka’s girlfriends rather than any one of her individual historical lovers.) She is also trapped by her desire to become an artist and go out clubbing at a time when women were expected to stay home and take care of the household.

The story is bookended by an older Lempicka sitting on a park bench in Los Angeles in 1975 with an easel; at the beginning, she recites a kind of mantra: “plane, lines, form. / plane, color, light.” A moment later, she sings, “Do you know who I am? . . . An old woman who doesn’t give a damn / that history has passed her by / History’s a bitch / but so am I / How did I wind up here?”

In 1916, during WWI, Lempicka marries lawyer Tadeusz, whose prominent family wanted him to wed a woman of higher status. (The book, by Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould, plays fast and loose with some of the facts for dramatic purposes.) Tadeusz is arrested in the Bolshevik Revolution, and Lempicka goes to extreme lengths with a commandant (George Abud) to get him released. After losing everything, they start all over in Paris, where Tadeusz takes a job at a small bank and Lempicka mops floors. While he is obsessed with finding out what she did to get him freed, she explores her art, experiencing Paris’s nightlife and meeting Rafaela, a prostitute, at a lesbian club run by Suzy Solidor (Natalie Joy Johnson), who later opens the hot La Vie Parisienne.

Lempicka is energized by her new lifestyle, but her husband is growing suspicious — and jealous when, helped by the Baron Raoul Kuffner de Diószegh (Nathaniel Stampley), his wife (Beth Leavel), and Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Abud), Lempicka’s art career starts taking off. “We do not control the world,” Marinetti tells Lempicka. “We control one flat rectangle of canvas.”

When using Kizette as a model, Lempicka can’t differentiate between art and life. Kizette pleads, “mama, look at me / mama, look at me / see me / keeping so still / while your eyes dart back and forth / me / the canvas / me / the canvas / me / me / mama, look at me.” But all Lempicka can offer is, “eyes, Paris blue . . . flecked Viridian green . . . my daughter / shape and volume / color and line.”

Rafaela (Amber Iman) creates a sensation in Lempicka (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

Lempicka garnered well-deserved Tony nominations for Espinosa (Rent, Wicked) for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical, Iman (Soul Doctor, Shuffle Along) for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical, and Hernandez and Nigrini for Best Scenic Design of a Musical. In key supporting parts, Johnson (Kinky Boots, Legally Blonde) and Abut (Cornelia Street, The Visit) overdo it, while Glick (Unknown Soldier, The Bedwetter) is sweet as Kizette and Tony winner Leavel (The Drowsy Chaperone, Crazy for You) stands out as the Baroness, but both could use more to do.

Tony-winning director Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812) has too much going on, unable to get a firm grip on the action, while Raja Feather Kelly’s choreography brings too much attention to itself. Kreitzer’s music, with orchestrations by Cian McCarthy, meanders too much, often feeling out of place as the narrative changes locations and emotional depth, while Gould’s lyrics range from the absurd (“The Beautiful Bracelet,” a love song to a piece of jewelry; “Women,” in which the ensemble declares, “Suzy / You’ve made an Oasis / we live through the days / till we can be Here / Where Everything — and Nothing / is Queer”) to the obvious (“Pari Will Always Be Pari,” “The New Woman”) to the heartfelt (a pair of lovely duets between Espinosa and Samonsky on “Starting Over” and Iman and Samonsky on “What She Sees”).

“I can see the appeal,” Rafaela sings, and it is easy to see the appeal in a show about Tamara de Lempicka. Unfortunately, this one is not it.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE

Jim Parsons stars as a parishioner directing his church’s next play in A Man of No Importance (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
Classic Stage Company, Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East 13th St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 18
www.classicstage.org

Tony winner John Doyle says farewell to Classic Stage after six years as artistic director with the humbly titled A Man of No Importance. At a talkback following the performance I saw, six of the actors couldn’t stop gushing about Doyle’s unique style and, of course, his importance.

At St. Imelda’s, a small parish church in Dublin in 1964, fortysomething Alfie Byrne (Jim Parsons) has decided that instead of staging Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest again, he and the amateur church theater company will put on Wilde’s controversial 1891 play, Salome, which troubles Father Kenny (Nathaniel Stampley, but I saw Benjamin Howes).

Talking about the choice of play, Father Kenny tells Alfie: “I went to the archbishop myself.” “‘Don’t put him out,’ I said. ‘That little theater is a holy place to Alfie Byrne. He loves Saint Imelda’s the same way some men love women.” Alfie, who is a bus conductor, replies, “I’m sure he had a fine smirk on him when he heard that one.” Father Kenny answers, “The truth be told: You brought this on yourself, Alfie, no one else did. You should have told me this Salome was a dirty play.” Alfie retorts, “It’s not. It’s art, Father, art!”

Father Kenny’s analogy will resonate later when Alfie brings up “the love that dare not speak its name” with an apparition of Oscar Wilde himself.

Characters hang out in the back as the action happens out in front at Classic Stage (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

In a rousing first musical number, we meet the rest of the cast on the bus driven by Robbie Fay (A. J. Shively), including Mr. Carney the butcher (Thom Sesma), mother-of-nine Mrs. Curtain (Kara Mikula) former all-Ireland gymnast Ernie Lally (Joel Waggoner), Peter Pan portrayer Miss Oona Crowe (Alma Cuervo), onetime Saint Joan star Mrs. Grace (usually played by Mary Beth Peil but I saw Beth Kirkpatrick), acting newbie and temporary church janitor Peter Linehan (Da’Von T. Moody), Sodality stalwart Mrs. Patrick (Jessica Tyler Wright), and stage manager Baldy O’Shea (William Youmans).

Everything stops when a fresh face boards the bus, the young, shy, and beautiful Adele Rice (Shereen Ahmed), a country lass arriving from Roscommon; she especially captures the attention of Alfie, who instantly decides she must play Salome, a casting choice that takes a lot of convincing, as Adele has never acted before and appears to be escaping a past she prefers not to discuss.

Alfie lives with his sister, the matronly Lily (Mare Winningham), who is being courted by Mr. Carney. But she refuses to settle down with a man until Alfie weds. When Alfie tells her about Adele, Lily erupts with happiness, singing, “The girls at Sodality / Call me a martyr / But that’ll be all in the past / Now heaven has lifted / The burden of life: / And has brought you a sweetie at last! / Oh . . . / You had better propose to her fast!” Little does Lily know but Alfie has his heart set on someone very different.

As opening night approaches, the revelation of deep-held secrets threatens the production and various characters’ personal lives.

Several actors also play instruments in A Man of No Importance (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

A Man of No Importance features a terrific book by Terrence McNally, who wrote several plays about theater making, including It’s Only a Play, And Away We Go, and Golden Age. McNally captures just the right impression of amateur theatrics, focusing on people for whom theater might not be central to their lives but absolutely necessary.

Composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens, who have previously collaborated on such musicals as Once on This Island, Anastasia, and Ragtime, contribute lovely songs that celebrate theater (“Going Up” “First Rehearsal”), examine everyday Irish life (“The Streets of Dublin,” “Princess”), and delve into the power, and intolerance, of religion (“Books,” “Our Father,” “Confession”). The unerlying theme is professed by Alfie in “Love Who You Love.”

The score, orchestrated by Bruce Coughlin, is performed by conductor Caleb Hoyer on keyboards, Michael Blanco on bass, Justin Rothberg on guitars and mandolins, and Tereasa Payne on flutes, Irish flutes, recorders, and pennywhistles, playing at the back of the stage balcony; they are joined by many of the actors on acoustic guitar, accordion, violin, drum head (which also double as plates of invisible food), and other instruments on Doyle’s thrust set, where the cast constantly rearranges chairs and other furniture as the story moves from the church and the bus to a bar and a kitchen. At times it is like Doyle is navigating everyone in an adult version of musical chairs.

Parsons is an exceptionally warm and amiable actor, whether he is playing a man throwing a snarky gay party in The Boys in the Band, a gentle soul living in his own alternate reality in Harvey, or the Supreme Being himself in An Act of God. His natural demeanor is so appealing in A Man of No Importance — which debuted at Lincoln Center in 2002 with Roger Rees as Alfie, based on the 1994 film starring Albert Finney — that you want to be his friend, even giving him a break when he occasionally loses his Irish accent. Throughout the show, several actors go into the audience, taking a seat, walking up the aisle, or hanging out in a landing; I was actually disappointed when Alfie did not come up to my row, but I did get a close-up look at Moody and his guitar.

Although all casts attempt to achieve this, this one feels like an inclusive family, with Oscar/Tony nominee and Emmy winner Winningham and Tony nominee Shively standing out; at the talkback, a half dozen of the other actors spoke about how well they were getting along and that Parsons might be the star but he insists on being treated just like everyone else. Saying goodbye to CSC, Doyle makes the audience feel that they’re all part of something important as well.

PARADISE SQUARE

Races and dance styles mix it up in Paradise Square (photo by Kevin Berne)

PARADISE SQUARE
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 17, $39 – $250
www.paradisesquaremusical.com

Paradise Square gets off to a rousing start, with exciting choreography by Bill T. Jones, a fabulous set by Allen Moyer, a terrific cast led by Joaquina Kalukango, splendid period costumes by Toni-Leslie James, historical projections by Wendall K. Harrington and Shawn Boyle that establish the time and place, and thrilling music by Jason Howland and Larry Kirwan. But once Nathan Tysen and Masi Asare’s lyrics and the book, by Christina Anderson, Craig Lucas, and Kirwan, kick into full gear, the whole thing falls apart, leaving us to wonder what could have been. Not even two-time Tony-nominated director and National Medal of Arts recipient Moisés Kaufman can put it back together.

It’s 1863, the middle of the Civil War, and Nelly Freeman (Kalukango) is running the (fictional) Paradise Square pub in Five Points, at the corner of Baxter and Worth Sts., what she proudly calls “the first slum in America!” It’s a place where everyone, regardless of race, gender, or religion, can come for a “little bit of Eden.” As she sings, “All we have is what we are / Inside here we all feel free / We love who we want to love / With no apology / If you landed in this square / Then you dared to risk it all / At the bottom of the ladder / There’s nowhere left to fall.”

Nelly is married to Willie O’Brien (Matt Bogart), an Irishman who is captain of the Fighting 69th Infantry. Willie’s right-hand man is Lucky Mike Quinlan (Kevin Dennis); Nelly runs the saloon with Willie’s sister, Annie (Chilina Kennedy), who is married to the Reverend Samuel Jacob Lewis (Nathaniel Stampley). Willie and Mike are about to head back to the war. “We’ll be back before ya blink,” Mike promises. “On me word, Nelly. I’ll bring him to ya with all his workin’ parts still workin’.”

Annie’s nephew, Owen Duignan (A. J. Shively), arrives, looking to make a fresh start in a new land where the streets are supposedly paved with gold. Also showing up is Washington Henry (Sidney DuPont), an escaped slave seeking shelter until he is reunited with his wife, Angelina Baker (Gabrielle McClinton), who was separated from him in the woods. Meanwhile, a drunk piano player named Milton Moore (Jacob Fishel) comes in looking for a job; Nelly does not realize that he is actually Stephen Foster, who has already written some racist anthems (and who really did live — and die — in Five Points).

Broadway musical looks at slavery, immigration, war, and personal sacrifice (photo by Kevin Berne)

Keeping a close watch on everything that happens at the Paradise is uptown party boss Frederic Tiggens (John Dossett), who wants to close the establishment because it is the center of Black and Irish anti-South and anti-business voters, “a haven of social depravity and political ascension.” He confronts Nelly, calling her “a facilitator of prostitution, gambling, and drunken mayhem.” She humbly replies, “I am just one woman who runs a saloon.” He bites back, “Don’t play coy. A degenerate who somehow wields power in New York politics doesn’t get to be coy.” To which she responds, “But enough about you —.”

It all devolves quickly once Nelly decides to hold a dance-off in which the winner will get three hundred dollars, the exact amount needed to buy one’s way out of President Lincoln’s newly implemented draft for the Union army. “Three hundred dollars?! That’s more than a year’s wage!” an Italian longshoreman declares. “I won’t go,” a German longshoreman adds. “If you do not go, you will be considered a deserter and a criminal,” a provost marshal explains. “This is a rich man’s war that the poor and immigrant will have to fight,” an Irish longshoreman says. When two Black longshoremen are ready to sign up, the marshal tells them, “No coloreds. Only citizens and immigrants.”

The contest and its aftermath turns what was a compelling drama about immigrants, slavery, poverty, and war into a cliché-ridden narrative that will leave you exasperated, as Tiggens becomes more and more like cartoon villain Snidely Whiplash and the lines between good and evil might as well be drawn with a giant crayon, eliminating any nuance or subtlety. It really is a shame, since so many of the individual elements are outstanding; Anderson, Lucas, and Black 47 leader Kirwan don’t have enough faith that the audience will be able to weave its way through a more complex and realistic story, instead opting for the lowest common denominator. I nearly screamed at a plot development late in the show that still has me seeing red.

Two-time Tony nominee Kalukango (Slave Play, The Color Purple) is almost reason enough to see Paradise Square, but I had to wonder whether the showstopping standing ovation she received for her blazing solo “Let It Burn” was genuine or was at least partly egged on by an excerpt of a review on the theater’s facade that highlights the standing O from the Chicago production. The song includes such mundane lyrics as “I know why you have come here / What you want to erase / But I know that our spirit / Is bigger than this place.”

Paradise Square wants to make serious statements about issues that are still relevant a century and a half after the Civil War, but it can’t stop stepping on its own toes, unable to leap beyond the obvious.

SYMPHONY SPACE 2021 GALA CONCERT

Who: Kate Baldwin, Roz Chast, Britney Coleman, Jane Curtin, Nikki Renée Daniels, Santino Fontana, Jason Gotay, Melora Hardin, Jane Kaczmarek, Jeff Kready, Colum McCann, Patricia Marx, Laura Osnes, George Saunders, Rashidra Scott, Nathaniel Stampley, Sally Wilfert, Meg Wolitzer, Tony Yazbeck, more
What: Virtual gala fundraiser
Where: Symphony Space Zoom
When: Thursday, May 13, $35, 7:00
Why: On January 7, 1978, conductor Allan Miller and playwright and director Isaiah Sheffer staged the free twelve-hour concert “Wall to Wall Bach” at an Upper West Side building on Broadway that was formerly the Astor Market, the Crystal Palace Skating Rink, and the Symphony Theatre. The event was such a success that they decided to start Symphony Space, an arts venue that for more than forty years has hosted music, storytelling, film, theater, readings, lectures, dance, and much more. The pandemic lockdown had closed the institution’s doors, but they will reopen for the 2021 annual gala fundraiser on May 13 in a hybrid livestream featuring an all-star lineup performing onstage at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater and sharing memories from home over Zoom. “When I got a text that the first rehearsal for the dance piece in the space had happened and gone well, it was thrilling — we had arrived at that long-awaited moment when artists were once again gracing our stages,” executive director Kathy Landau said in a statement. “Before the pandemic, every corner of our building pulsated with art and ideas, with people meeting in the hallways and the wings. The theater itself is almost its own character in the life of Symphony Space — and what makes it come alive is the community we have built in and around it. And while we had so much engaging virtual programming, the theater had been sitting almost entirely empty. For the gala, there was a lightbulb moment where we realized, ‘Wait, there’s a way to safely and responsibly and comfortably bring this energy back,’ for this event to be our first step before bringing audiences in. It had to be quintessential Symphony Space: to be multidisciplinary, to have that unique-to-this-one-evening, in-the-moment immediacy, to have that magical alchemy that occurs when artists come together at Symphony Space to create, collaborate, and celebrate.”

The evening of cocktails, concert, and conversation, produced and directed by Annette Jolles and Joel Fram, will feature performances by Kate Baldwin, Britney Coleman, Nikki Renée Daniels, Jason Gotay, Jeff Kready, Laura Osnes, Rashidra Scott, Nathaniel Stampley, Sally Wilfert, and Tony Yazbeck in addition to a new dance piece by Sara Brians (performed by Saki Masuda, Michelle Mercedes, and Devin L. Roberts) as well as appearances by Roz Chast, Jane Curtin, Nikki Renée Daniels, Santino Fontana, Melora Hardin, Jane Kaczmarek, Patricia Marx, Colum McCann, George Saunders, Meg Wolitzer, and others. The house band consists of conductor Fred Lassen on piano, John Romeri on flute, Keve Wilson on oboe, Nuno Antunes on clarinet, Eric Reed on horns, Nanci Belmont on bassoon, Laura Bontrager on cello, George Farmer on bass, and Clayton Craddock on drums. Tickets for the concert are $35 and go up to $1,000 to $40,000 for special breakout rooms and tables with guest artists and a Party in a Box.

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES

The Daughters of Mary worship the Black Madonna in musical version of The Secret Life of Bees (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 21, $106.50-$126.50
866-811-4111
atlantictheater.org

In a readers guide interview for her 2001 novel The Secret Life of Bees, author Sue Monk Kidd explains, “I began my bee education by reading lots of books. There’s a mystique about bees, a kind of spell they weave over you, and I fell completely under it. I read bee lore and legend that went back to ancient times. I discovered bees were considered a symbol of the soul, of death and rebirth. I will never forget coming upon medieval references which associated the Virgin Mary with the queen bee. I’d been thinking of her as the queen bee of my little hive of women in the pink house, thinking that was very original, and they’d already come up with that five hundred years ago!”

The Virgin Mary / queen bee symbolism lies at the heart of the story, which was made into a 2008 film by Gina Prince-Bythewood starring Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, and Sophie Okonedo and has now been turned into a skillfully rendered musical continuing at the Atlantic through July 21. It’s the summer of 1964 in South Carolina, and twenty-two-year-old black maid Rosaleen (Tony nominee Saycon Sengbloh) is determined to exercise her brand-new right to vote. Fourteen-year-old white girl Lily (Elizabeth Teeter) insists on accompanying her. Rosaleen has been helping take care of Lily and her father, T-Ray (Chris Stack), ever since the tragic loss of Lily’s mother. Rosaleen gets attacked by two white racists and is arrested. Lily, after another fight with the angry T-Ray, goes on the run with Rosaleen, spurred by a postcard in her mother’s things of a black Madonna statue in Tiburon. “Not a damn thing in this town / I’m gonna miss / Wherever I’m goin’ / It’s gotta be better than this,” Lily and Rosaleen sing.

When they get to Tiburon, they find a pink house where a group of women make Black Madonna Honey and, as the Daughters of Mary, worship a statue of the black virgin; while August Boatwright (Tony winner LaChanze) immediately wants to take Lily and Rosaleen in, June (Obie winner Eisa Davis) is not so sure, and May (Anastacia McCleskey) is somewhere in between, stuck in mourning for July. Lily is soon working with Zachary (Brett Gray), a black teenager, and learning some life lessons, but T-Ray is trying to track her down — and the horrors of racism await around nearly every corner.

LaChanze belts one out as August Boatwright in world premiere musical at the Atlantic (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Directed by Tony winner Sam Gold (Fun Home, A Doll’s House, Part 2) and featuring music by Tony and Grammy winner Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening, Alice by Heart) — who was raised in South Carolina — lyrics by two-time Tony nominee and Drama Desk winner Susan Birkenhead (Jelly’s Last Jam, Working), and a book by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (Sweat, Ruined), The Secret Life of Bees is a poignant, hard-hitting tale that feels all too real as voter suppression of people of color is still a major issue in America. The story loses its way near the end as it gets bogged down in religious fervor and treacly melodrama, but the majority of the show is smart and entertaining; especially notable is the creative way the bees flock around Lily. Mimi Lien’s homey set includes a nine-piece band on the periphery of the stage playing a mix of country, folk, blues, pop, and R&B, led by pianist, music director, and conductor Jason Hart and percussionist and associate music director Benjamin Rahuala.

LaChanze (The Color Purple, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical) is absolutely lovely as August, a strong woman asserting her power, while Sengbloh (Eclipsed, In the Blood) is warm and becoming as Rosaleen, and Teeter (The Crucible, The Hard Problem) is impressive as Lily, a tough kid making grown-up decisions. The cast also includes Romelda Teron Benjamin as Queenie, Vita E. Cleveland as Violet, and Jai’Len Christine Li Josey as Sugar Girl, three Daughters of Mary who serve as a kind of Greek chorus, and Nathaniel Stampley as Neil, a principal who has his heart set on marrying the cold and distant June. The musical might be set fifty-five years ago, but it feels all too real given the racial, economic, and political divides that are tearing this country apart, buzzing around us like so many angry hornets, delivering poisonous stings instead of sweet honey.

BIG LOVE

Thyona (Stacey Sargeant), Lydia (Rebecca Naomi Jones), and Olympia (Libby Winters) strut their stuff in Tina Landau’s new production of Charles Mee’s BIG LOVE at the Signature (photo by T Charles Erickson)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 15, $25
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org
www.charlesmee.org/plays.shtml

The night we went to see the new production of Charles Mee’s 2000 play, Big Love, at the Signature, technical difficulties delayed the start of the show, but it didn’t bother us one bit. Instead, we enjoyed extra time to take in the glorious beauty of Brett J. Banakis’s breathtaking set. The Irene Diamond theater is dazzlingly bright, mainly white and aglow in shimmering colors, with Austin Switser’s projection of a calm blue ocean at the back of the stage and smaller projections of hummingbirds, flowers, and other heartwarming scenes popping up at various places on the walls and floor. Above, dozens and dozens of flower arrangements hang from the ceiling, a heavenly garden in the sky. Meanwhile, romantic music plays, as gentle as the waves lapping gently out at sea. Onstage is a white claw-foot tub and a white door. Eventually the show got under way, as Lydia (Rebecca Naomi Jones) enters, removes her dirty wedding dress, and settles into the bath. She is interrupted by Giuliano (Preston Sadleir), a young man who is somewhat surprised to find a naked woman in the bathroom. Lydia explains that she is part of a contingent of women who have escaped their native Greece, where their fathers had signed a deal to marry them off to their cousins, and they are now seeking asylum in Italy as refugees. Lydia is joined by Olympia (Libby Winters) and Thyona (Stacey Sargeant), while first Giuliano’s grandmother, Bella (Lynn Cohen), shares some thoughts about husbands and sons with the young women, followed by the arrival of Giuliano’s uncle Piero (Christopher Innvar), a wealthy, slick-talking Mediterranean man who is not so sure he wants all of the women staying at his expansive villa; he finally relents, letting them stay for dinner. The three women are very different; Lydia is the most realistic, Olympia is an immature dreamer, and Thyona is the tough one, ready to take on the world if she has to. “The male is a biological accident, an incomplete female,” she says, “the product of a damaged gene, trapped in a twilight zone somewhere between apes and humans, always looking obsessively for some woman.” Lydia responds, “That’s maybe a little bit extreme,” to which Thyona argues, “Any woman, because he thinks if he can make some connection with a woman that will make him a whole human being! But it won’t. It never will.” Just as she is completing her rant, the women’s prospective husbands, Constantine (Ryan-James Hatanaka), Nikos (Bobby Steggert), and Oed (Emmanuel Brown), show up looking for their brides, and all hell is about to break loose.

Three cousins fly in from Greece, having followed their prospective brides to an Italian seaside villa in Charles Mee’s Aeschylus update (photo by T Charles Erickson)

Big Love is a contemporary restructuring of Aeschylus’s The Suppliant Maidens, one of the oldest known plays and the only existing section of the Danaid Tetralogy by the Father of Tragedy. Mee, whose other classicist works include Iphigenia 2.0, Trojan Women 2.0, and Orestes 2.0 and who has cited German dance-theater guru Pina Bausch as a major influence, throws just about everything he possibly can at this tale of fifty brides-to-be being chased by fifty determined cousins, from cake and tomatoes to Tiffany boxes and the heads of Ken and Barbie dolls. The potentially kissing cousins serve as their own Greek chorus, occasionally breaking out into song, a conceit that works best the first time around, when Lydia, Olympia, and Thyona suddenly grab microphones and, under hot spotlights, deliver a rousing rendition of the recently deceased Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” The play is directed with a controlled abandon by frequent Mee collaborator Tina Landau (A Civil War Christmas, Old Hats), who holds nothing back in this kitchen-sink production where anything can happen. The uniformly solid cast, sporting Anita Yavich’s delightful costumes, also includes Piero’s house guests Eleanor (Ellen Harvey) and Leo (Nathaniel Stampley), who are excited by all the festivities, but it’s Jones, Winters, and Sargeant who clearly command the center of attention. Big Love, which is part of Signature’s Legacy Program — Mee was the theater’s 2007-8 playwright-in-residence — doesn’t always hit its ambitious targets, but it’s an awful lot of fun, taking advantage of every little detail it can, from the way Oed, Constantine, and Nikos enter in helicopters to the absurdist use of a movable door to the appearance of a trampoline for no apparent reason. But what, no cake for the audience?

THE GERSHWINS’ PORGY AND BESS: THE BROADWAY MUSICAL

Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis deliver terrific performances in memorable new version of PORGY AND BESS (photo by Michael J. Lutch)

Richard Rodgers Theatre
226 West 46th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tickets: $40-$145
877-250-2929
www.porgyandbessonbroadway.com

Forget the controversy; the new Broadway production of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess — the full title of which is actually now The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess — is one for the ages. Based on the DuBose Heyward 1925 novel Porgy, the show has been undergoing constant change since its debut in 1935, facing cries of racism, plot and music tinkering, and other criticisms as it went from opera to musical theater to film and television. But pay no attention to all the naysayers who are furious that alterations have been made yet again; the current production of Porgy and Bess, which opened January 12 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, is a wonderful evening of outstanding theater that hopefully enjoys a much-deserved long run. Adapted by award-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and composer Diedre L. Murray at the behest of the Gershwin estate, the A.R.T. production stars Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald as the ill-fated titular characters, he a poor cripple, she married to the strong-armed town bully, Crown (Philip Boykin). They live on South Carolina’s dilapidated Catfish Row, a poverty-stricken wharf area where the close-knit residents can’t even afford to bury their dead. After Crown kills Robbins (Nathaniel Stampley), the brute takes off, leaving Bess behind. With her husband gone, Bess moves in with Porgy, an older, wise man who needs to walk with a cane, dragging his feet horribly as he moves around. The townspeople might have no money, but temptation is always in their midst, in the form of slick city gambler and drug dealer Sporting Life (David Alan Grier). As Porgy and Bess grow closer and closer, situations both within and beyond their control threaten to tear them apart forever.

NaTasha Yvette Williams and David Alan Grier offer solid support in stellar PORGY AND BESS (photo by Michael J. Lutch)

With music by George Gershwin and lyrics by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin, Porgy and Bess is chock-full of memorable songs, from “Summertime,” “I Got Plenty of Nothing,” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” to “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “I Loves You, Porgy,” and “I’m on My Way,” delivered by a stellar cast headed by beautiful performances by the two leads, four-time Tony winner McDonald, whose operatic voice soars, and Lewis, whose dulcet tones rumble through the soul. The pair makes the iconic roles — previously played by such duos as Todd Duncan and Anne Brown on Broadway in 1935, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on a 1948 record, William Warfield and Leontyne Price in a 1952 touring company, Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne on a 1959 album, Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier in Otto Preminger’s 1959 movie, Simon Estes and Grace Bumbry at the Met in 1985, and Clarke Peters and Nicola Hughes in Trevor Nunn’s 2006 adaptation — their own, energizing the theater for a mesmerizing two and a half hours. Diane Paulus directs the show with just the right mix of humor and heartbreak, enhanced by Ronald K. Brown’s exciting, fast-paced choreography. Controversy? What controversy? This is a don’t-miss Porgy and Bess, making a very memorable and welcome return to Broadway.