Interludes

THE STATE OF THE ARTS – March 18, 2015

• By drediman
• March 18, 2015
• No Comments

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

• A Second Life for One of the Season’s Best. Stephen Adly Guirgis’s magnificent Between Riverside and Crazy, which was first staged earlier this season by the Atlantic Theater Company, has been given a second life by Second Stage. The play remains a stunner, as does Stephen McKinley Henderson’s monumental and layered central performance.
• Flawed but Powerful Stuff. The Hunchback of Notre Dame has a soft spot in my heart as one of my favorite Disney animated features. The stage adaptation currently running at the Paper Mill Playhouse (a co-production with La Jolla Playhouse) retains the thrilling pseudo-operatic grandeur of the film while making a conscious, albeit awkward, effort at fleshing out the film’s more adult themes. Tone and other book problems aside, the production boasts two excellent performances from Patrick Page and Michael Arden as Frollo and Quasimodo, respectively.
• There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Fun. It’s hard to keep that smile off of your face while watching Roundabout’s giddy, polished revival of the musical On the Twentieth Century. That’s because stars Kristin Chenoweth and Peter Gallagher ham it up to the stratosphere like there’s no tomorrow. Appropriately, Scott Ellis’s production itself barrels ahead with the same exhilarating momentum as the titular train to musical comedy heaven.
• A Musical Gem Shines Bright. 54 Below has carved a niche for itself by performing songs from lesser-known shows with cult followings in its elegant, intimate space. Their unexpectedly moving rendition of songs from Ahrens and Flaherty’s absolutely lovely A Man of No Importance distinguished itself from the pack by recreating much of the stage experience in the supper club, including much of the dialogue. The A-list cast, all fantastic, included Christopher Fitzgerald, Marin Mazzie, Douglas Sills, and James Snyder.
• Star Vehicles, Mixed Results. Two highly-anticipated Broadway productions – the revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles with Elisabeth Moss and Peter Morgan’s The Audience with Helen Mirren – are opening to mixed results. Ms. Moss seems to be lost at sea in Wasserstein’s extraordinary, seminal play (particularly in the heavier second act). Meanwhile, Ms. Mirren is magnificent (if a bit too broad for my taste) as Queen Elizabeth II in a play that’s just plain dull if you’re not an Anglophile.
• The Play’s the Thing. The Metropolitan Playhouse has saved their best for last in their current revival of George H. Broadhurst’s rarely-performed The Man of the Hour. I enjoyed how this production places absolute trust in the play – the acting here is the most honest I’ve seen from the Metropolitan Playhouse and play is performed almost without scenery (when you’ve got a shoestring budget, most of the time less is more).