Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.
Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.
BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)
• August: Osage County (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
• Boeing-Boeing (comedy, PG-13, cartoonishly sexy, reviewed here)
• A Chorus Line (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Cry-Baby (musical, PG-13, mildly naughty and very cynical, reviewed here)
• Grease * (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)
• Gypsy (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• In the Heights (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)
• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)
• Macbeth * (drama, PG-13, unsuitable for children, closes May 24, reviewed here)
• November (comedy, PG-13, profusely spattered with obscene language, reviewed here)
• Passing Strange (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)
• Sunday in the Park with George (musical, PG-13, too complicated for children, closes June 29, reviewed here)
OFF BROADWAY:
• Adding Machine (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, too musically demanding for youngsters, closes Aug. 31, reviewed here)
• From Up Here (drama, PG-13, closes June 8, reviewed here)
CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Endgame (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes May 18, reviewed here)
• The Four of Us (comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes May 18, reviewed here)
CLOSING SOON IN MILLBURN, N.J.:
• Kiss Me, Kate (musical, PG-13, far too sophisticated for children, closes May 18, reviewed here)]]>
I can't tell you how "Top Girls" looked in 1983, but today it is a creaky period piece, by turns clever-clever and brutally heavy-handed, in which Ms. Churchill strenuously endeavors to portray the upwardly mobile career women of the Thatcher era as bitchy, self-hating beasts who have fallen victim to the virus of American individualism and so lost their souls. Marlene (Elizabeth Marvel), the head of the bitch pack, runs an employment agency that finds high-paying jobs for monsters of ambition. In due course we learn that she has deserted her working-class family--and her illegitimate daughter--in order to come to London to shinny up the greasy pole. At play's end she visits her home in Suffolk, where her sister (Marisa Tomei) spits venom in her eye: "I suppose you'd have liked Hitler if he was a woman. Ms. Hitler. Got a lot done, Hitlerina." No doubt Ms. Churchill meant for us to be stunned into agreement by the pungency of this assault on the evils of Thatcherism, but all it did was make me look at my watch....
Many Broadway shows have closed after just one night, but only a few have been musicals. The last new musical to explode as soon as the key was turned was Alan Jay Lerner's "Dance a Little Closer" in 1983. Thus "Glory Days" has won itself a place in history: Henceforth it will be mentioned alongside such famous flops as Leonard Bernstein's "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" (seven performances), Mickey Leonard's "The Yearling" (four performances), Stephen Sondheim's "Anyone Can Whistle" (nine performances) and "Merrily We Roll Along" (16 performances), Charles Strouse's "Nick & Nora" (nine performances) and Jule Styne's "The Red Shoes" (five performances).
What all these older flops have in common is that, like "Dance a Little Closer," they were the work of distinguished artists, and some had memorable scores to boot. "The Yearling" actually yielded up a standard, "I'm All Smiles," while "Anyone Can Whistle" and "Merrily We Roll Along" have both turned out to be much hardier than they looked at first glance. As for Nick Blaemire and James Gardiner, the authors of "Glory Days," they are 23 and 24 years old respectively, young enough to someday earn themselves a second grab at the brass ring of theatrical success. Stranger things have happened: Six years after "Anyone Can Whistle" blew up in Mr. Sondheim's face, he wrote "Company" and became immortal. So I'll keep my opinion of "Glory Days" to myself and instead wish its makers the best of luck in their future endeavors. They'll need it, and maybe they'll get it.
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Read the whole thing here.]]>
Let us now praise farce, the most ruthless form of comedy, in which a hubristically self-satisfied character (usually male) is faced with the prospect of imminent humiliation (usually sexual) and does all he can to avoid it, thereby making matters worse. I love farce, but for some reason New York producers steer clear of it, and it's been some years since a slamming-door farce last played on Broadway. Now the drought is over: "Boeing-Boeing," which was a hit in London last year, has crossed the Atlantic in time for this year's Tony nominations, of which it will surely receive a hatful.
"Boeing-Boeing" is a seven-door farce set in the Paris bachelor pad of Bernard (Bradley Whitford), a businessman with three fiancées, all of them stewardessses. They're never in town at the same time, which permits him to bed them seriatim. This being a farce, such well-laid plans are naturally predestined to collapse into a heap of smoking rubble. The dégringolade begins when Bernard's mousy buddy Robert (Mark Rylance) drops by for a visit just as Fiancée No. 1, a cheerfully promiscuous New Yorker named Gloria (Kathryn Hahn), departs through Door No. 4, making way for Fiancée No. 2, a jealous Italian babe named Gabriella (Gina Gershon). Then Fiancée No. 3, a German giantess named Gretchen (Mary McCormack), shows up--her plane landed early--and within mere minutes things are way, way, way out of hand.
The plot of "Boeing-Boeing" is a skein of silliness and the characters ethnic cartoons, meaning that the show must be flawlessly cast and directed with ultra-finicky timing in order to work. The good news--make that great news--is that these conditions are seen and raised in Matthew Warchus' staging. Top honors go to Mr. Rylance, a Shakespearean actor-director whose lunatic performance as Robert startled the hell out of the London critics. Imagine (if you can) a balding, adenoidal milksop with mismatched eyebrows who strolls into Bernard's ménage à quatre, sees what he's been missing and decides that the time has come for him to embrace the more abundant sexual life....
The last time I saw "Endgame," 9/11 loomed three years nearer in the rear-view mirror, which added an extra twist of relevance to Samuel Beckett's post-apocalyptic 1957 comedy about four people who appear to be all alone in what is left of the world. I use the term "comedy" loosely, but much of "Endgame" really is supposed to be laughable--if grimly so--which is what gives the play its mordant punch.
Rightly or wrongly, though, New Yorkers are feeling rather less anxious these days, and I wonder whether that might explain why I found BAM Harvey's star-studded new production of "Endgame" to be somewhat less compelling than the potent revival mounted by the Irish Repertory Theatre in 2005. Or perhaps the play itself isn't quite as good as I once thought it was. Nobody ever accused Beckett of being obvious, but "Endgame," much to my surprise, now seems to me to border on heavy-handedness in its portrayal of the dark encounter that awaits us all...
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Read the whole thing here.]]>
Watching Chasing Amy put me in mind of the brief gaudy hour when sharp-witted indie and indieish flicks like Clerks, Election, Ghost World, Kicking and Screaming, Living in Oblivion, Metropolitan, Next Stop Wonderland, Panic, Pi, Swingers, and You Can Count on Me seemed to be coming out every month or so. Back then I was writing about movies regularly, and I went so far as to predict in 1999 that the independent film was the wave of the narrative future: