I took two weeks off from my Wall Street Journal drama column, but now I’m back this morning with reviews of Under the Bridge, the new Kathie Lee Gifford-David Pomeranz musical, and Daniel Goldfarb’s Modern Orthodox, which stars Craig “Music Man” Bierko, Jason “American Pie” Biggs, and Molly “Pretty in Pink” Ringwald.
Regarding Under the Bridge, grab your hat and hold on tight:
When the word got out that Kathie Lee Gifford had written the book and lyrics for a “family-friendly” musical that was all set to open Off Broadway, the resulting rumble of lip-smacking anticipation reminded me of nothing so much as the way many Manhattanites felt when it first hit them that Martha Stewart might actually do time. This, after all, is the town that brought you “Avenue Q,” a show so cynical that it contains a number called “Schadenfreude” (“Right now you are down and out and feeling really crappy/And when I see how sad you are/It sort of makes me…happy!”). I don’t have any strong opinions either way about Mrs. Gifford, but most of my friends affect to find her relentlessly cheery peppiness revolting, so much so that I couldn’t find anyone to accompany me to “Under the Bridge,” which opened last night at the Zipper Theatre.
Well, folks, I hate to disappoint you, but…I liked it.
“Under the Bridge” is a musical adaptation of Natalie Savage Carlson’s “The Family Under the Bridge,” the still-popular 1958 children’s book in which Armand, a homeless Paris bum (played in the show by Ed Dixon), comes to the rescue of the freshly widowed Madame Calcet (Jacquelyn Piro) and her three children (Alexa Ehrlich, Maggie Watts and Andrew Blake Zutty), whose landlord has put them out on the street because they can no longer pay the rent. It’s a sentimental heartwarmer of a tale, complete with the expected happy ending, and for the most part Mrs. Gifford has transferred it to the stage efficiently….
My feelings about Modern Orthodox were rather more complicated:
Daniel Goldfarb’s “Modern Orthodox,” now playing at Dodger Stages, is a very commercial comedy about a very interesting subject: the squirmy discomfort that certain secular Jews feel in the presence of their believing brethren….
Ben and Hershel are at once contemptuous of and oddly attracted to one another. Just as Ben is repelled by Hershel’s straight-from-the-shoulder vulgarity, so is Hershel horrified by Ben’s “ersatz” Jewishness: “Are you conservative?” “Reform. Er, secular, really. Whatever you’d call a high holiday Jew.” “A gentile.” (Pow!) Yet each sees in the other something he lacks–and for which he longs.
All this might well have added up to scaldingly hot stuff, but Mr. Goldfarb has opted for Neil Simon-type punchlines over Philip Roth-type satire….
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