Who Knew I Was Arriving Just In The Nick Of Time….

March 18, 2013

Come on along and listen to 

The lullaby of Broadway.

The hip hooray and bally hoo, 

The lullaby of Broadway.

The rumble of the subway train,

The rattle of the taxis.

The daffy-dills who entertain

At Angelo's and Maxie's….

Bernie Jacobs, Sam Cohn, Cy Feuer, David Merrick….

I’m sure readers of the blog will have figured out by now I’m a Broadway Romantic. 

As soon as I arrived in 1990, I took a space in Jim Freydberg’s office on Times Square.  Out my window, directly below me, I could see the lines at the TKTS booth, and I knew instantly I was finally where I’d always wanted to be. 

Walking around the district, seeing the audiences going into the theaters, being surrounded by the lights, gave me chills.

None of that was really unexpected. 

What I didn’t realize was that fate had brought me to Broadway just in time to see and work with the last of the old-timers, many of whom I came to think of as Broadway characters.  They had a bit of Damon Runyan in them, some of them, at least to me. 

I hope those who are left don’t find that insulting; I think it was wonderful.

If I’d waited until now to make the journey, I wouldn’t know what I’d missed, but I would have missed a lot.

Jimmy Nederlander, Eddie Colton, Barry Moss, Arthur Cantor….

Arthur produced for many decades, on and off Broadway.  When I had my first meeting with him, he kept breaking in on me.  Finally I said “You know, Arthur, I make a lot more sense if you let me finish my sentences.”.  He was stunned, but got over it, and I became a Cantor investor, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

Now, this paean to the old Broadway and its inhabitants is in no way a diminishment of today’s inhabitants. Shows get written for the audiences of the day, but the shows on Broadway now are every bit as good or bad as they’ve always been, and so are the people who create and produce them.

But we newbies aren’t as colorful as our counterparts used to be.  A few of the “new group” make attempts to be Broadway characters, but, unlike Lady Gaga, the old-timers weren’t working at being characters: they simply were who they were.

Jerry Schoenfield, Joe Stein, Dick Ticktin, Marvin Krauss….

Marvin was a top general manager and sometime producer for as long as anyone could remember.  One day, after we’d had lunch, Marvin led the way to a succession of theaters where shows were being loaded in.  Marvin seemed to know everyone, traded gossip with the stagehands, acted like a show loading in was the most exciting thing in the world.

Which it was.  Marvin asked me if I didn’t always go around like that, which I didn’t.  I’d never know the stagehands so we could trade gossip.  But Marvin did, and I knew Marvin.

Alexander H. Cohen, Joe Papp, Eli Wallach, Vincent Sardi, Jr….

One night just before half hour, I was walking past Sardi’s.  Bernard Hughes, who was about to play the first preview of a show – I wish I could remember which – walked up and give Vincent Sardi, Jr, a big hug.  I heard them both say how glad they were Hughes was back on Broadway. 

Chills.

Bob Kamlot, Biff Liff, Al Hirschfeld, Ernest Martin….

Ernie Martin took me to lunch to give me advice on how to produce.  He was wearing a suit – a lot of them did – and strongly advised me never to go into rehearsal with a script that was more than 10% too long.  I mean, come on, this was the man who produced GUYS AND DOLLS, the first musical I ever saw!  (When Miss Adelaide and the Hot Box Girls sang “Take Back Your Mink”, I was one riveted 11-year-old boy.)

Cy Coleman, Arthur Miller, Robert Whitehead….

I co-produced Bob Whitehead’s penultimate show, BROKEN GLASS.  Bob was one of the nicest men I’ve ever met, but we ended up fighting a lot over the show, I think because both of us knew we had a loser. 

At one point, Bob shouted at me over the phone, “You should go into television!”, which must have been the worst insult he could think of.  I loved him for it, even in the midst of the fight.

But Bob was wrong: I was doing what I’d always wanted to do, and it had nothing to do with television. 

There I was, an ex-banker from L.A., a suit, and I knew I could never have been one of them, but just sharing Times Square was enough. 

Writing this has put me squarely back in touch with my passion for Broadway.  I find that passion sometimes gets shoved aside by the pressures of the moment, but it’s the very best part of what we do.

I’ll end with the story that is entirely André Bishop’s.  André isn’t one of the old-timers, but his story has always moved me for reasons you’ll immediately see. 

André was five, I think, when he went to his first show, a production of PETER PAN. 

You’ll recall that at the end of the show, Peter turns to the audience and says: “Clap if you believe in fairies!”.

André said he just sat there clapping his hands like mad.

Me, too.

But It’s Really Not Al Pacino’s Fault!

          December 8, 2012

No one ever asked me to play Hamlet.

I don't think I'm right for the part,

but it would have been nice to be asked….Al Pacino

In GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, Al Pacino looks like he dropped into a manhole at the Haight/Ashbury intersection sometime in 1964, then popped out 20 years later and went straight to the office.

Al Pacino is one of the very few stars who could sell tickets if – as the ancient Broadway saw goes – if he were reading the phone book.  Since I haven’t seen a phone book in a decade or so, perhaps the saw should be changed to reading a database, but you get the idea.

Al sells tickets.

And he’s a powerful actor.  In GGR, the other actors, aside from Bobby Cannavale (see below) seem to fade from view in the Pacino scenes, entirely dominated by him.

This creates a terrible problem for him in GGR, and for the show, because he’s playing Shelly Levene, a real estate agent about to go under for the third time.  It calls for desperation, as it was portrayed in the movie by Jack Lemmon.  In this production, unfortunately, Al plays Shelly as if he were an aging Michael Corleone with an terrible do. 

Wouldn’t a broke salesman at least make an effort to look good?

If he tried to sell me a piece of real estate – buy that duplex, you SOB, or I’ll put your pussycat’s head in bed with you - I’d start signing anywhere he pointed.  In the second act, I pictured him taking George C. Scott’s place at the start of “Patton”, exhorting the troops.  Of course, by that point in the proceedings, he was chewing scenary like one in the Katie Finneran school of acting.

Movie stars, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, tend to play the character that made them a star, regardless of what later part they’re playing.  This works in the movies, kind of, the star giving the audience what they expect from him or her, but it doesn’t work on the stage.

Fine stage actors – think Michael Cervaris or Raul Esparza – submerge in the parts they play, and a few movie stars – think George Clooney – do, too, but most don’t.

Al doesn’t. 

Tell you who does: Bobby Cannavale.  If you saw him a couple of seasons ago as Jackie in THE MOTHERFUCKER WITH THE HAT, you won’t immediately recognize him as Richard Roma, ace deal-closer, with his slick-backed hair, confident patter, and impeccable suit. 

Cannavale may be the second banana on the GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS marquis, but he acts Al into the floor.

Shades of Lily Rabe in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

Other than Pacino’s being miscast – as an actor, I mean, not as a star draw – this is a pretty good production.  David Mamet’s seemingly gone-forever cadence is back in evidence, especially in Act I, and it comes from the entire cast, including Pacino.  GGR is greatly written as a series of two-character scenes, with one of the characters doing a monolog, and the other constantly trying to get a word in cadence-wise.

Mamet was a fresh, singular voice when he started writing.  Now he’s lost that, become a conservative, and fallen a bit in the theatrical firmament.  It was nice to re-experience that which took him so high in the beginning.

If there are holes in the plot, and there are holes in the plot, you’re inclined to overlook them as one powerful moment follows another.

As befits the star salesman, the afore-praised Bobby Cannavale could talk the floral print off wallpaper.  David Harbour gives the play a much-layered John Williamson, the office manager who’s alternately tough in demanding a cut from his salesguys for giving them the good leads, and then almost sheepish when one of them sneers that John has never actually been in the trenches.

As George Aaronow, Richard Schiff appears so guilty you’d pick him out of a lineup even if you didn’t know a crime had been committed.

Sets, clothes, and lighting are more workaday than inspired, but they get their respective jobs done.

If I were Al Pacino’s producer – and I sure wish I were, so you can pass him over anytime, Jeff and Jerry and Steve – I’d try to find him a powerful role in which he’d be the triumph he can be, but could never be as the essentially powerless Shylock, or the desperate Shelly Levene.

So hand him over…okay, guys…anytime at all…come on….

Rating (5 stars possible):  ***½

The bottom line:  Go to be in the room with Pacino, but stay to watch Cannavale 

Who should go?  Fans of the old-style Mamet

Do I recommend it?  Yes

THE NEW TAKE COMES UP CHOCOLATE WATER…!                                                                                                     

On the Broadway opening night of the original ANNIE, in 1977, producer Mike Nichols went to Dorothy Loudon, who played Miss Hannigan, and said “Whatever you do, never upstage Annie!

He then went to Andrea McArdle, who played Annie, and said “Whatever you do, never upstage the dog!

I’ve heard this story from several sources, but still suspect it’s apocryphal.  Whether or not it’s true, it neatly sums up what constitutes the heart and soul of the show, and….

The new production demonstrates that if you use water and chocolate instead of milk and chocolate, you don’t end up with chocolate milk.

Open kimono time: Terri and I partnered with Rodger Hess to produce the first Broadway revival of ANNIE in 1996, and the three of us joined Ken Gentry/Networks to tour the show for nine of the following twelve years. 

We did very well with ANNIE.  It played cute, and a succession of generations of little girls flocked to see the show when it came to their city.  We made Madison Square Garden one of our tour stops, and broke box-office records.

Martin Charnin directed our production, and it was said he’d directed every major commercial production of the show, worldwide.  So the director of the new production, which opened last night at the Palace Theater, James Lapine, must have felt under the gun to do something quite different this time, and – regrettably – he’s done just that.

ANNIE is perhaps the most classic show in musical theater.  Iconic.  The little girls who flock to see it, and their mothers, and their grandmothers, walk into the theater expecting what they and their predecessors have enjoyed for the past 35 years.  I have doubts they’ll feel they’re getting it with Mr. Lapine’s new production.

The score and book are virtually unchanged: Annie and six other little girls live in an orphanage run by Miss Hannigan; Annie runs away, meets Sandy (the dog, not the hurricane), gets caught, then becomes the guest of Oliver Warbucks, the world’s richest man, whose P.R. people think having an orphan stay with him over Christmas will improve his image.  But one thing leads to another leads to another and the rich bald man comes to love the little redhead.

(I wonder if this plot device could be used in a new show today without raising the specter of child molestation.)

When Martin Charnin was at the helm, the show was frothy and fun.  It’s a well-constructed book, and a good score, but nothing about ANNIE is intended to be taken seriously.  Annie, after all, started out as a comic strip. You know from the first note of the overture that the bad guys are going to get theirs at the end, and Annie will live happily ever after.

But in the James Lapine version, for reasons that simply elude me, ANNIE is made as realistic as it can be made, given the unchanged underlying material.  Realism is great for 17^th Century Dutch paintings, downtown plays, and fine wines, but….

For ANNIE???!!!

Charnin’s orphans were cute.  Somehow Lapine has managed to make his orphans look and feel like real orphans who seem more confused than cute. 

The girl who plays Annie, Lilla Crawford, has a terrific voice, and acts the part accurately, if a bit perfunctorily.   She has a kind of an odd look for Annie (I’m not saying unattractive, just unusual for the part), and now and again effects an accent reminiscent of Muggs McInnis in the old Dead End Kids movies (look it up in Wikipedia, kids).  The accent disappears for long periods, then comes jarringly back.  It’s an interesting twist, or would be if it were used consistently.

Maggie Smith is credited with saying I may be over the top, but at least I know where the top is”.  I’m sorry to report Ms. Smith didn’t point out the top to Katie Finneran, who’s chews so much scenary I wondered if she went down the street at intermission to gnaw on the EVITA balcony.

As Daddy Warbucks, Aussie Anthony Warlow is entirely humorless throughout.  I remember John Schuck playing the role with a bit of tongue-in-cheek, which worked much better, at least for me.

His choice of tone aside, James Lapine does his usual fine directing job. 

When it comes to choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, though, I was once again baffled.  A lot of the impact of the “original” version came from the Peter Gennero choreography, which lit up the stage each time it occurred.  Mr. Blankenbuehler reduces the choreography throughout, so that “Easy Street”, one of my favorite moments, has very, very little dancing in it.  

Minimalist choreography?

I’ve asked myself seriously a dozen times if my negative reaction to this new approach to ANNIE simply is a product of my having seen and enjoyed the original version so much.  To the best of my soul-searching ability, I don’t think this is the case, but I’m often unsure what goes on in the deep recesses of my psyche.

Go see it and let me know what you think.

Rating (5 stars possible):  ***

The bottom line:  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Who should go?  Little girls, of course

Do I recommend it?  Not enthusiastically

Close But Only Half A Cigar….

June 20, 2012

But I’m not complaining….

And in the evening at my window

As I watch Jersey growing dim

I feel this troubling emotion

Summed up in this notion

I wished I’d stayed with him

Lord knows each day with him was madness

As I have spent my life maintaining

But more and more I recall the joy

My golden dreamer 

My lost boy

Our life was life in the twightlight zone

But no worse then a life alone

But oh,

Well I chose my way...

And I’m not complaining….

Determination.  Doubt.  Certainty.  Regret.

Next to my desk I have a short list of “rules to live by”, the first of which is from Satchel Paige – How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?– that I try to keep in mind whenever (daily) I find myself considering the question of my aging.

But also on the list is a reminder…

Work as deeply as Richard Maltby

…reflecting my enjoyment (and respect) for the lyrics Maltby wrote over the years for songs composed by long-time partner David Shire, especially those in CLOSER THAN EVER, the themed-review currently being revived in a hit-and-miss production at the York Theater. 

CLOSER THAN EVER contains 24 songs, each of which looks deeply into the emotions of those who used to be termed “middle-aged”, meaning in their 40s and 50s, who face situations universal to those of their age, and sing about them in ways that delight or touch us.

In a Maltby-Shire show, you don’t get over-produced special effects (GHOST), or lines of muscular young guys dancing ever-more vigorously (NEWSIES), or oft-repeated ballads of Gaelic/Czech heartbreak (ONCE).  

Nor do you get a musical book as such.

What you do get are intimate songs that provide a window into the events and feelings that make up our lives. 

All of our lives, in one way or another. 

Love requited or not, love breaking down, being a parent, being a child suddenly faced with having to be a parent to your parents, emotions hidden, emotions shouted from the rooftops.

Each song tells a story that – properly performed – connects us to the singer/story-teller with a closeness we hope to feel once or twice in a typical musical, but which appears in nearly every one of CLOSER THAN EVER’s 24 song-stories.

Which adds up to a different kind of musical book.

This intimacy and universality are both the strengths and weaknesses of the show.  The challenge for director and cast is to pull the audience into a new story 24 times.  Not unlike seeing 24 short one-acts.  If a song fails to draw in the audience, they may never come back, so near-perfection is called for.

Some of the cast and numbers in the current revival, which is the first for CLOSER THAN EVER in New York, approach this lofty objective, but not all. 

I found myself wondering if the show would have been better served with a director other than Maltby, someone who could see each song with new eyes, and could be more successful in getting some of the cast to act the songs in the way they need to be acted for the show to completely work.

Christiane Noll is easily the standout in the four-actor cast, simply because she’s an outstanding actor.  All the voices are strong, but Noll has learned the power of stillness, and of “feeling” the story she’s telling us. 

The quote at the top of this review is from a song called “Life Story”.  Noll sings it while sitting quietly in a chair, with a minimum of gestures, telling us of her unhappy marriage, that she ended it to pursue the liberated life, and that – many years later – she still isn’t sure she made the right decision.

Ring any bells?

George Dvorsky – who, like Noll, looks age-appropriate – can also act, and knows the power of stillness.  His telling of how his father passed down his love of music, in a song called “If I Sing” (with lyrics credited to both Maltby and Shire), is beautifully told, concluding with:

My dad grew old.

His hands were numb.

And now he cannot play.

 

I came to visit.

He sat and asked me

"How can it be this way?"

 

I couldn't find an answer.

I played this tune for him instead.

My father sat there smiling

for he knew what it said.

 

If I sing you are the music.

If I love you taught me how.

Every day your heart is beating

in the man that I am now.

The other half of the cast, Jenn Colella and Sal Viviano, are less successful, the stories in their songs often lost in too much presentation, and confused by too many gestures and too much movement.  Since Kurt Stamm is credited as choreographer, I’ll give him the rap on the knuckles. 

In the theater, less is often more.

Colella and Viviano also appear to be too young, though pinpointing age based on a person’s appearance these days is admittedly tough to do.  When Viviano sings of “now” being 44 in “One of the Good Guys”, I couldn’t begin to buy into it.

The sets (James Morgan) and costumes (Nicole Wee) served the piece well, and the lighting (Kirk Bookman) often did more than that.

I enjoyed the York production, but made the mistake of listening to the original cast album afterwards.  Some of the songs shoulda, coulda, woulda been better if all the current cast members had told their stories as well as the originals did. 

Still, I was glad I went, as was Terri.

Rating (5 stars possible):  ***½

The bottom line:  Wonderful show; good not great revival of it

Who should go?  Anyone who’s 40 or above

Do I recommend it?  Yes

Just Possibly The Funniest Show In Town…!

                                                                                                            May 20, 2012

Sheldon goes to a psychiatrist: “Doc, I gotta talk to someone!  I work in a pickle factory and for three months I’ve had an overpowering desire to put my schlong in the pickle slicer.”  The psychiatrist’s a little shocked but just nods, and says to come see him five times a week and they’ll get right to work solving the problem. A few weeks later, Sheldon comes in for a session, says that he couldn’t take it anymore and that morning he finally did it - put his schlong right in the pickle slicer. The psychiatrist says, “Oh my god, man! What happened? Are you all right?” Sheldon says, “I got fired.” The shrink says, “No, no, I mean what happened with the pickle slicer?”  “She got fired, too.”

This has been a good Broadway season for laughter – I’m thinking of ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS and NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT – but nothing in town is funnier than OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES at the Westside Theater/Downstairs.

Side-splittingly, laughing-out-loud, gasping-to-get-your-breath-back funny.

A guy goes to a doctor.   The doctor says, ‘I’m afraid you have Alzheimer’s and cancer,’ and the guy says, ‘Well, at least I don’t have cancer.’

The show runs 80 minutes, the jokes are non-stop, and there isn’t a clunker in the bunch.  My attention never for a moment strayed, because the show movs so well, and the stories are consistently strong throughout.

This isn’t easy to do, and much credit goes to Peter Gethers and Daniel Okrent, who conceived OLD JEWS, and to director Marc Bruni.  This is as tight and smooth a production as you’re likely to see,.  Using projections that enrich the stories, and scattering a few songs in to vary the show’s texture, OLD JEWS always feels like a real stage show, taking the humor far beyond standup.

I’ll admit that when we walked into the theater with our hosts, producer Steve Baruch and his lovely wife, Eda, I wondered whether I’d feel excluded in my WASP-ness.  Of course, having grown up in L.A., lived for 22 years in New York, and worked all that time in the theater, I’d heard a lot of Jewish humor, but the title made the show feel exclusionary, which it emphatically is not.

(ROGER, JOHN, AND IRVING, ALL ARE WEARING COWBOY HATS.)

ROGER (To JOHN): How ya doin’? My name is Roger, I own 250,000 acres. I have 1,000 head of cattle and they call my place the Jolly Roger.          

JOHN:  Well, hey there! My name is John. I own 350,000 acres.  I have 5,000 head of cattle and they call my place Big John’s.           

(They both look at IRVING.)           

IRVING:  My name is Irving and I own only two acres.      

ROGER:  Two acres? What do you raise?

IRVING: I don’t raise nothing.           

JOHN:  Well then, what do you call it?           

IRVING:  Times Square.        

The five actors include three old Jews – Marilyn Sokol, Todd Susman, and Lenny Wolpe – and two younger Jews: Audrey Lynn Weston and Bill Army. (PC note: Terri says I can’t assume the actors are all Jewish, and she’s right, but I’m going to, anyway.)  All five are terrific, but – perhaps inevitably – it’s the older trio who really shine.  Sokol can roll her tongue in ways I hadn’t thought possible, Susman looks like a bemused, stereotypical CPA who’d wandered onto the stage by mistake, and Wolpe personifies everybody’s harmless Uncle Morty.  They effortlessly switch parts, with the kids often playing older “characters”.

Goldstein goes into an old New York restaurant and says to the Maitre d’, “Pardon me, how do you prepare your chicken?”. The maitre d’ says “We tell ‘em right up front they ain’t gonna make it.”

The jokes I’m including in this review aren’t the best in the show, because I hope you’ll follow my advice and go to OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES, yourself, and don’t want to tip off too much.  Just as a tease, here are the punch lines from the three funniest (to me) jokes in the show:

Who fucks the stork?

Granite countertops

The bad news is the Rabbi is a goner

I was touched by a speech near the end of the show about the importance of humor in the Jewish culture:

[My father would] tell the old jokes and I’d laugh. He thought he was doing it for me.  But I know he was doing it to hold onto a little bit of himself.  Now, of course, the Yiddish of even 40 years ago has largely disappeared from our society, except in wisecracks and insults and jokes. It’s these jokes that have made my connection to the past a lot easier. I tell ‘em to my gentile wife. She laughs and I pretend I’m doing it for her. But I know different.  I’m doing it for myself.  And for my dad.  Now that I’m an old Jew myself, it’s the jokes that make me feel as if I’ve come home….

Try it, you’ll like it!

Rating (5 stars possible):  ****

The bottom line:  Hilarious, whether or not you’re Jewish

Who should go?  Anyone who wants to laugh

Do I recommend it?  Mach Shnel!