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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for April 12, 2018

Travels with Beatriz

April 12, 2018 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review two musicals, Miss You Like Hell and Mean Girls. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Most of today’s hit musicals are fluffy romances based on hit movies—but there are other ways to draw a crowd. So far, the Public Theater has rung the gong twice with a pair of shows, “Fun Home” and “Hamilton,” that flew in the face of all the rules of contemporary box-office success. Now it’s trying again with “Miss You Like Hell,” a new musical by Quiara Alegría Hudes and Erin McKeown that has a timely political edge, an ethnically diverse cast and a score by a singer-songwriter who knows how to rock. What’s more, it’s good—really good.

“Miss You Like Hell” is the story of Beatriz (Daphne Rubin-Vega), an undocumented immigrant who shows up one morning on the doorstep of Olivia (Gizel Jiménez), her eggheady, long-estranged daughter. Beatriz wants Olivia to join her on a cross-country road trip, but she isn’t just looking to tighten the ties that bind: She urgently needs a character witness to testify at her deportation hearing….

Based on a play by Ms. Hudes, who wrote the book for “In the Heights” and won a Pulitzer for “Water by the Spoonful,” “Miss You Like Hell” is in no way a piece of pamphleteering (set in 2014, it makes no mention of Donald Trump). Its real subject is the tattered relationship between Beatriz and her wholly deracinated child, who lost her mother in a custody battle and cannot forgive Beatriz for giving in so easily…

Like “Water by the Spoonful,” “Miss You Like Hell” steers a bit erratically between sentiment and sentimentality, but it scarcely ever descends to outright tearjerking, and Ms. McKeown’s score heightens every emotion so skillfully that you’d think this was her third or fourth show instead of her theatrical debut….

Every generation has its own what-high-school-is-like movie. For the millennials, it’s Tina Fey’s “Mean Girls,” a softened-up 2004 variation on “Heathers” that retells the old, old story of the pretty but nerdy girl who sells her soul to the most popular girl in town. It’s funny enough, and so, I suppose, is the new musical version, which stars Erika Henningsen and Taylor Louderman and into which Ms. Fey has inserted a shovelful of once-over-lightly topical references (“I liked your post about Intersectional Veganism”) but which is otherwise hard to distinguish from the film…

* * *

To read my review of Miss You Like Hell, go here.

To read my review of Mean Girls, go here.

Erin McKeown and Gizel Jiménez perform “Sundays,” a song from Miss You Like Hell:

So you want to see a show?

April 12, 2018 by Terry Teachout

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.

BROADWAY:
• Angels in America (two-part drama, R, most shows sold out last week, alternating in repertory through July 1, reviewed here)
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, nearly all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Lobby Hero (drama, PG-13, virtually all shows sold out last week, closes May 13, reviewed here)
• Three Tall Women (drama, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, closes June 24, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Symphonie Fantastique (abstract underwater puppet show, G, closes June 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Pygmalion (comedy, PG-13, closes Apr. 22, reviewed here)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND OFF BROADWAY:
• Good for Otto (drama, PG-13/R, closes Sunday, reviewed here)
• Later Life (drama, PG-13, closes Saturday, reviewed here)

Almanac: Winston Churchill on the futility of recriminations

April 12, 2018 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Of this I am certain, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”

Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, June 18, 1940

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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