Diane Paulus Unlocks a Joyful Innocence in Her Heaven-Sent ‘Pippin’ I have never been partial to “Pippin.” Originally, I found director-choreographer Bob Fosse’s dark, angry cynicism to be at odds with Stephen Schwartz’s Joni Mitchell–flavored score and Roger O. Hirson’s sketchy, jokey book for this awfully slight tale about a young man’s search for meaning in his life. Fosse’s work, impressive as it was, felt imposed and seemed to me to signal contempt for the material. Of course, that made me a minority of just about one, and I felt very lonely. So today my gratitude to director Diane Paulus is boundless. Thanks to her beautifully buoyant, intoxicatingly sensual revival, I am a convert. I finally love “Pippin” too.
In Schwartz’s iconic opening number, “Magic to Do,” a troupe of traveling players announces that it has “miracle plays to play” for us. The chosen tale is that of Pippin, the first-born son of the Roman emperor Charlemagne (800–814), and we begin with Pippin’s return home from university. Educated and anxious to begin his adult life, the young prince embarks on a quest to discover what to do with it, something, he says, that must be “completely fulfilling.” After all,
Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:00:00 -0400 ‘I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers’ Barely Scratches the Surface John Logan’s solo show “I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers” skips as lightly across its subject as a shard of shale whipping across a pond. Bette Midler, making her first Broadway appearance as someone other than herself in more than 40 years (she replaced as Tzeitel in the original production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in the late 1960s), is disappointingly content to reprise the Divine Miss M persona that she delivered so successfully in three Broadway concerts in the 1970s. Thanks to the lazy writing and acting, Mengers goes missing.
A quick tour of the Internet turns up a 1975 Mike Wallace “60 Minutes” profile of the famed Hollywood super agent—for which admittedly she must have been on her best behavior—that shows just how far off the mark Midler is. It also turns up a 2011 Deadline.com obit by Nikki Finke that offers a richer, more rounded portrait than Logan’s glossy caricature. This was one interesting lady, but not onstage at the Booth Theatre.
Set designer Scott Pask has stylishly re-created Mengers’ lush Hollywood digs. We are in her living room, where Midler is perched by director Joe Mantello on the couch for the entire 90-minute show,
Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:00:00 -0400 'The Trip to Bountiful’ Is a Not-to-Be-Missed Treasure The most heart-stopping moment of the Broadway season happens late in Act 2 of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.” As Carrie Watts stands once again on the now-sagging porch of the beloved home she was forced to abandon 20 years earlier, Cicely Tyson, framed by a wooden post and a flowering vine, radiates with quiet fulfillment as Carrie gazes out over what used to be her land. It is simple, silent, and stunning, proof, if any were needed, of Tyson’s magnificence as a stage actor. In director Michael Wilson’s impeccable revival of Foote’s masterwork, Tyson is giving a performance for the ages.
The script began life as a 1953 teleplay starring Lillian Gish that was so acclaimed that it spawned a Broadway stage production that same year, again featuring Gish, though the show only ran for a month. The 1985 film version won an Oscar for Geraldine Page.
The story begins in Houston in 1953. Carrie lives in a cramped two-room apartment with her henpecked son, Ludie, and his self-involved wife, Jessie Mae. Hymn-singing Carrie and movie-magazine-reading Jessie Mae are oil and water, with poor Ludie stuck refereeing. Carrie, who has a failing ticker, longs to return to her birthplace, Bountiful,
Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:00:00 -0400 ‘The Testament of Mary’ Would Achieve More With Less That Fiona Shaw is a force of nature is indisputable. As a very human Virgin Mary in playwright Colm Tóibín’s 90-minute monologue “The Testament of Mary,” Shaw prowls about Tom Pye’s object-strewn set declaiming her lines in everything from a whisper to a shriek and all stops in between while jangling large metal nails, hurling a hefty wooden ladder this way and that, stripping naked and plunging out of sight into a pool of water, and even at one point conveying a large yellow-beaked black vulture offstage. Working with longtime collaborator Deborah Warner as her director, Shaw is never less than a compelling presence. I’m not convinced, however, that all the symbolic clutter is the best elucidation of Tóibín’s simple, moving deconstruction of one of the world’s most beloved religious icons.
As the author points out in a program note, Mary barely speaks in the Bible, a shadowy figure, which allows believers to impose their needs upon her. Tóibín imagines her as a loving mother and wife. This Mary is no fan of her son’s activities as an itinerant preacher and healer—“I’m not one of his followers,” she insists when
Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:00:00 -0400 Inventive ‘Macbeth’ Provides New Perspectives on Shakespeare’s Tragedy There’s plenty of sound and fury in Alan Cumming’s near-solo adaptation of “Macbeth,” but it signifies a great deal more than nothing. This startlingly fresh approach to one of the Bard’s most produced works offers not only a sensational vehicle for the actor but also gives us new perspectives on a familiar classic.
Set in a bleak isolation ward of a mental facility—given an appropriately drab and depressing tone by scenic designer Merle Hensel—the bold staging casts Cumming as a patient acting out Shakespeare’s tale under the watchful eyes of several surveillance cameras and two attendants (Jenny Sterlin and Brendan Titley, in subtle turns), who occasionally take on minor parts in the drama. It would have been challenging enough for the star to enact all the major roles, which he does with dexterity, delivering a savagely conflicted Macbeth; a serpentlike, seductive Lady M.; a foppish Duncan straight out of a Noël Coward drawing-room comedy; a heroic MacDuff; and a brash, macho Banquo, among others. But in addition to this versatile display, Cumming also supplies a gripping subtext for the nameless patient.
We never find out where he got those bloody scratches on his chest
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