Notes from Broadway: Seen on the Great White Way in the last week of May, what follows are brief reviews of more than a half dozen shows. I admonish you to google the NY Times for more detailed reviews should you feel the following are being given short shrift. Now, in order of their being seen:
May 27— PURPOSE: A so-called “straight” play of some significance and a multi-award winner from Chicago’s Steppenwolf, one of the finest theatre groups in America. It is this company that introduced us to August: Osage County and now, with Purpose, has come close to equaling that very good play. I cannot climb on board with the notion that it is a great piece of writing, but it is a most entertaining work and is important (I think) in that it makes a play about a black family very accessible to the primarily white audiences who attend Broadway plays.
May 28, Matinee— DEAD OUTLAW: My ex-wife’s uncle was the internationally famous jazz drummer, Buddy Rich. Late in his life, when he was being rushed on a stretcher to the emergency room at UCLA, a nurse trying to keep pace with the speeding gurney asked the patient if he had any allergies. “Country and western music,” Buddy replied.
I thought of that as I took my seat at the Longacre Theatre and viewed the set on stage which consisted of a bandstand with a banjo, a couple of guitars, a harmonica dangling from a music stand, an upright piano, and drums. I shook my head as I tried to remember why I had picked this show for my limited time in The Big Apple. Well folks, it was a most happy surprise. It could perhaps be my favorite show of the week. Andrew Durand, in the title role and Jeb Brown as the bandleader are both excellent, the music is a hoot and… believe it or not… this story about a mummified early 20thth century Oklahoma train robber turns out to be “based on fact.” I sat through most of the show with my mouth wide open. That’s a good thing.
May 28, Evening—Pirates! The Penzance Musical: My father never taught me any of the “manly arts.” I never learned how to fix a car, to hunt, to fish, or to build a decent bookshelf. My dad was a musician and a very top-notch music teacher. He could play just about every musical instrument, but his temperament was such that he was never able to teach either of his sons his skills. He did, however, succeed in imbuing me with a love of theatre and specifically the theatrical works of Gilbert & Sullivan as presented in those days by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company of Great Britain.
I grew up with the patter songs and eagerly awaited Martyn Green’s appearance in Los Angeles on… was it every even numbered year that they would come to America? Somewhere there is a home recording of me… at the age of three… singing every song from The Mikado. My kids know a bit of this. When they were pre-pubescent, I took them to Europe and the only theatre I remember attending with them was at D’Oyly Carte.
Gilbert & Sullivan had over a dozen shows produced by D’Oyly Carte over a hundred-year span until well into the 20th century. Then the copyright expired and it turned out anybody could present one of the Gilbert & Sullivan classics. The result was just about anybody and everybody did; and most of these companies are pretty awful. That is probably why younger folk cannot “…whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense, Pinafore.”
This production is billed as a “loving reinvention of Gilbert and Sullivan’s masterpiece, The Pirates of Penzance.” I steeled myself for the advertised “reinvention,” and went… alone. No one else in my party was the least bit interested, and I was not insisting that they join me.
The play opened with two actors (David Hyde Pierce and Preston Truman Boyd) as Gilbert and Sullivan themselves, explaining what we were about to see and why (those damn copyright issues) the play was now set in New Orleans instead of Penzance. A jazz saxophone was added to the mix for Sullivan’s music. I began to sag.
For the longest time I felt I was watching an undergraduate group of more than a little inebriated college students do an ad hoc version of a classic. The score of Penzance was infiltrated by important pieces from HMS Pinafore, Iolanthe, and The Mikado. I began to despair, but more than once David Hyde Pierce would come forward to present a relatively classic version of one of the patter songs which would resuscitate my interest.
And then I noticed something.
The theatre was packed; and the audience was having a very good time. W.S. Gilbert would be pleased. Sir Arthur? Probably not.
May 29— CALL ME IZZY: This is Jean Smart’s one woman show at Studio 54. My friends, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason first introduced me to Ms. Smart back in the 1980s in their very smart CBS sit-com, Designing Women. Ms. Smart was terrific then and still is. The play? Notsomuch…. but that could change. I saw this production in previews and there are some structural changes that could easily be made in the play itself that would make it clearer and better. Maybe that will happen, maybe not. I hate going to previews but that is all Ms. Smart was doing while I was in town.
May 30— SUNSET BLVD.: Arguably my biggest disappointment of the week, probably because of all the shows I had set for myself, this was the one I wanted to see more than any other. The word on Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond was “sure Tony Winner.” Turns out they were right about that… even though I would dissent. I found her very one-note as I did the so-called choreography and the very boring set design. The exception to all of that was the opening of Act II, which justifiably gets rave reviews from everyone as, on-camera, the leading man literally walks the streets of Broadway, singing the title song as he re-enters the theatre from a side entrance, continuing his aria, then appears on stage, still in sync, all the while being pursued by a steadicam and a sound technician to ensure, that we hear and see the entire imaginative presentation. Sunset Blvd. is a very good show… just not what I had hoped or had been hyped to believe it would be.
May 31, Matinee— The Picture of Dorian Gray: Kip Williams, who wrote and directed this production, should give a tutorial to Jaime Lloyd, the director of Sunset Blvd. The two productions… which utilize similar visual techniques… are worlds apart in terms of imagination and creativity. Bravo, Mr. Williams… and Brava, Sarah Snook, who shares the stage ONLY with the brilliant camera crew who both follow and precede her around her complicated path on stage. You might remember this leading lady from the HBO (or is it still Max?) presentation of Succession, as one of the siblings in line for the Murdoch-like empire. In Dorian Gray, Ms. Snook not only plays every part, but she is also the narrator and does this while constantly in movement for two hours without intermission. Forget the Tony, which she won a week after I saw the show… she probably deserves an Olympic Gold Medal for sheer athleticism.
May 31, Evening—BOOP! The Musical: Full disclosure… my senior most son-in-law has recently inherited a piece of Fleischer Studios from his father, Stan Handman, and therefore has a real interest (along with my eldest daughter) in the success of this venture.
That said, I had heard just “so-so” things about the show itself, yet did feel obligated to be supportive and attend. Hello!?! Along with Dead Outlaw… the second surprise of my week. BOOP! The Musical, is a very good, old-fashioned Broadway musical. The book by Bob Martin is clever, if only partially politically correct, the music by David Foster is damn good, and Jasmine Amy Rogers in the title role of Betty Boop is a revelation. That’s it. Go see it before it leaves the Broadhurst Theatre. The show will never be this well mounted again.
June 1— Oh, Mary!: It is the most ridiculous, yet uproarious stage presentation I can remember seeing… maybe, ever! Mary is Mary Todd Lincoln… a raging alcoholic; her husband is not only the U.S. President you think you knew, but a semi-closeted gay guy. Don’t even ask about John Wilkes Booth. Tony winner Cole Escola is the lead performer presenting Mrs. Lincoln as a wannabe Cabaret artist. The play that has been created by “they/them” Escola is an 86-minute, brilliant Saturday Night Live sketch on steroids. Hilarious.
An addendum: I opted to see Oh, Mary! and abandoned my pals who all attended Gypsy with Audra McDonald. I just didn’t wanna do it under the heading, been there and done that. I saw this show with Ethel Merman more than a half century ago and saw it again with one of my favorites in the world, Tyne Daly, who walked away with a Tony Award for one of the best performances anyone has ever seen on a Broadway stage. Who, indeed, could ask for anything more?
As to the Tony Award show itself… I thought the host, Cynthia Erivo, was amazing as was the synopsized version of Hamilton, but I thought the producers made some very poor choices in picking the shows to represent those currently on Broadway. The numbers from Operation Mincemeat and the Bobby Darin thing… even the number from the Tony Award winning Maybe Happy Ending did not compare to what they could have shown from the Betty Boop show or from what I have heard about SMASH, the musical.
That’s all folks, I’m back home in Miami. Give my regards to Broadway.
P.S. A personal Note: So many of you wrote with congratulations on the word of my book “A Life Without Cagney & Lacey” finding a publisher that I am compelled to thank you all without actually taking the time to answer each and every one of these very special-to-me emails. If each “congrat” turns into a book sale, McFarland publishing just may have a hit on its hands. By the way, although nothing is quite set, a good guess would be the book will be out sometime in 2026. Believe me, I will keep you informed.
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