Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Translated from stage to screen: Mart Crowley’s THE BOYS IN THE BAND and Kenneth MacMillan’s ROMEO & JULIET

• By drediman
• October 12, 2020
• No Comments

Over the last week, I had the opportunity to assess the recent screen adaptations of two iconic stage works. Happily, both have made the jump successfully and augment the current bevy of streamed performing arts content — most of them scrappily presented on Zoom — with some more elaborate cinematic flair.

THE BOYS IN THE BAND
Netflix

For theatergoers, one of the most anticipated television events this fall was the release of Ryan Murphy’s Netflix adaptation of the late Mart Crowley’s 1968 play The Boys in the Band (RECOMMENDED). This latest incarnation of the seminal gay drama (which was previously adapted into a film in 1970) about a birthday party gone awry is helmed by Joe Mantello, who also directed the play on Broadway in 2018 to Tony-winning effect. For the small screen rendering, he utilizes the same deluxe cast – including the likes of Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, and Matt Bomer – that had made the 50th anniversary stage revival such a hot ticket. As on the Great White Way, the all-male ensemble’s work onscreen is uniformly excellent, particularly with respect to these actors’ ability to balance, exquisitely, the work’s amusingly biting, dance-like repartee with the raw pain and self-loathing which colors many of the characters’ inner lives. For me, the main difference between stage and screen lies in their respective tones. Whereas the 2018 revival gives the impression of being set in some sort of vaguely menacing, “No Exit”-like purgatory (courtesy of David Zinn’s sleek but claustrophobic set design), the Netflix adaptation comes across more overtly as a period piece, notably in its rich visual realization of late-1960s New York; this also extends to the numerous flashbacks sprinkled throughout. Although the stage version strikes me as the more harrowing of the two experiences, I credit the underlying humanity of Mr. Crowley’s writing for being able to accommodate both approaches.

ROMEO AND JULIET
PBS Great Performances

One of the most iconic and popular classical story ballets in the international dance canon is Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, which was originally choreographed for the Royal Ballet in 1965. Since then, the ballet has gone on to capture the imagination of ballet and Shakespeare fans around the world (New Yorkers will be familiar with the MacMillan staging, which is performed regularly by American Ballet Theatre). And why not, since Mr. MacMillan’s beloved production, for me at least, represents the apotheosis of theater within the classical ballet vernacular. Set to Prokofiev’s memorable music – one of the most ravishing ballet scores ever written – the work uses steps and gestures for the concerted purpose of enriching characterizations and advancing the plot, which Mr. MacMillan seamlessly truncates into a series of smartly structured scenes. As such, his Romeo and Juliet is a perfect candidate for a cinematic treatment, as exemplified by the 2019 film of the ballet (RECOMMENDED) (which I was able to stream via PBS’s invaluable, long-running Great Performances series). Directed by BalletBoyz’s William Trevitt and Michael Nunn and featuring dancers from the Royal Ballet, the film is stunningly shot on-location with painstaking attention to swooning naturalism. However, at a speedy 90-minutes, the film does feel just a tad rushed, especially as it approaches its famously tragic conclusion. As the titular lovers, soloist William Bracewell and principal Francesca Hayward are refreshingly youthful, and both act with sensitivity and abandon, as needed. More importantly, their chemistry is palpable and stirring throughout. Of particular note as Tybalt is the sensational Royal Ballet principal Matthew Ball (who himself makes for a very fine Romeo), whose striking presence and brooding, intense performance recalibrates the balance of the work in a fascinating way.