By Jeffrey Sweet
At the moment there are two fire escape musicals on Broadway. One is a hit, one is struggling. Neither matches up to the great fire escape musical, of course -- West Side Story. But, though I understand why the hit is a hit, it's the struggling show that's won a piece of my heart.
The hit is In the Heights. Many years ago, I remember having a conversation with the writing team of Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford (authors of the off-Broadway hit, I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road) during which they theorized that a substantial percentage of the reason a musical succeeds is that it depicts a romanticized version of a world the audience wants to be immersed in. I don't know if their theory is different after some decades of working, but I have to come to believe there is some sense in it.
What is Grease, for instance, but a theme park of the American 1950s? Or Guys and Dolls but an engaging cartoon of Times Square a few minutes after they swept up the confetti after V-J Day? And it is the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows with the most vivid portraits of ways-of-life unfamiliar to New York theatergoers -- the royal court of Siam, tropical islands in the south seas, the flat plains of the west, the fishing villages of New England and a mansion in Austria -- that proved to be their most enduring hits.
In the Heights is about life in Washington Heights. The George Washington Bridge is in the background. In the foreground are a handful of buildings on a neighborhood street. The show concentrates on the characters associated with three businesses -- a taxi service, a fast food stand and a hair salon. By the end of the evening, two of these businesses will be closed and the third will have avoided closing only by the providential hand of a winning lottery ticket. The show was conceived by, features a score by and stars Lin-Manuel Miranda with a book by Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes, and it clearly means to document an endangered way-of-life.
There is energy to burn here, largely due to the choreography of Andy Blankenbuehler which embraces the sensuality of the Latin-influenced score. I suspect that this one of the shows that will be popular with Japanese tourists because you don't need to understand the dialogue in order to get the essence of what is going on.
Understanding the dialogue and the lyrics didn't enhance my experience much. The characters are pushed around by coincidence and the needs of the writers rather than being driven by their individual personalities. In the lyrics of song after song, Miranda has characters exhaustively explain their pasts. The repetitiousness of this tack wearied me swiftly.
And I am very much in the minority. The audience around me reacted as if the show were one big street party to which they were pleased to have access. In the Heights was successful off-Broadway last season and that success has apparently accompanied it to its Broadway incarnation. And I don't much mind being one of the few grinches who didn't enjoy it.
Much of the New York press was similarly grinchy about A Catered Affair, a musical based on a TV play dating from the Fifties by Paddy Chayefsky and the film adaptation written by Gore Vidal. A few of the press (including the Times's first-string critic, Ben Brantley) thought that at 90 minutes the show was too long and drab. Though I have some quibbles, I was pretty much enthralled throughout.
Largely set in and around a cramped New York apartment, the story concerns a middle-aged couple whose daughter Janey decides to marry. Janey and her intended want a simple and cheap civil ceremony, but Aggie, the girl's mother, is intent on throwing a big splashy event, largely as a way to compensate for the constrained life she's led since pregnancy forced her to marry cabdriver Tom. Tom watches the plans get ,more ostentatious and more expensive and realizes that every dime he has saved will disappear in feeding a ton of strangers at the reception. Also in the mix is Aggie's aging gay brother, Winston, who triggers the tension when he's told that there would be no room for him at the smaller civil service since he's not "immediate family" (though he's slept on the sofa for years).
These are buttoned-up people who have mostly had to choke back their disappointments and compromises. What John Bucchino's songs frequently offer is an escape valve for these pent-up feelings, none lovelier than Aggie's quiet rhapsody about all things apricot while helping her daughter shop. It helps that the orchestrations are by the masterful Jonathan Tunick and suggest the warmth of Elmer Bernstein's underscoring for films like Love with the Proper Stranger and The World of Henry Orient, both of which were love letters to New York.
Harvey Fierstein does double duty here, as the author of the book and playing Uncle Winston. He is an audience-pleaser as a performer, but his work on the book is a little less successful. Fierstein sets up Winston as the catalyst for the show's central dilemma, but he misses the audience's need to see Winston evolve to the point at which he can contribute to resolving the situation. Many of the other scenes play with understated power, though.
The performances, under the direction of John Doyle, are among the best on Broadway. Faith Prince has left her Adelaide of Guys and Dolls far behind and skillfully depicts the inner turmoil of the mother. Even when we disagree with her actions, we can't help but understand the years of frustration that fuel them. When the sound of grief comes pouring out of her, the moment is almost shockingly private. Tom Wopat finds an original take on husband Tom, managing to sustain a quiet strength even as he is bullied for much of the evening. His aria "I Stayed" is an explosion of pent-up feelings, simultaneously a defense, an indictment and a plea for justice. Leslie Kritzer avoids the trap of generic sweetness as the daughter.
Yes, as I say, aspects of Fierstein's plotting seem to me to be lacking, but I felt the evening achieved a good 80% of what it was shooting for, and so far it's the musical of the season a CD of which I most eagerly anticipate.
Incidentally, notwithstanding its mixed reception in the press, It is nominated for more Drama Desk Awards than any production this season. I hope it wins its share and that it has a chance to run long enough to reach a wider audience.
Jeffrey Sweet is a playwright, journalist and teacher, probably best known for his play THE VALUE OF NAMES, the musical WHAT ABOUT LUV? (which played the Orange Tree many years ago), and a history of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY. A resident artist at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, nine of his plays will soon appear in anthology published by Northwestern University Press.
At the moment there are two fire escape musicals on Broadway. One is a hit, one is struggling. Neither matches up to the great fire escape musical, of course -- West Side Story. But, though I understand why the hit is a hit, it's the struggling show that's won a piece of my heart.
The hit is In the Heights. Many years ago, I remember having a conversation with the writing team of Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford (authors of the off-Broadway hit, I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road) during which they theorized that a substantial percentage of the reason a musical succeeds is that it depicts a romanticized version of a world the audience wants to be immersed in. I don't know if their theory is different after some decades of working, but I have to come to believe there is some sense in it.
What is Grease, for instance, but a theme park of the American 1950s? Or Guys and Dolls but an engaging cartoon of Times Square a few minutes after they swept up the confetti after V-J Day? And it is the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows with the most vivid portraits of ways-of-life unfamiliar to New York theatergoers -- the royal court of Siam, tropical islands in the south seas, the flat plains of the west, the fishing villages of New England and a mansion in Austria -- that proved to be their most enduring hits.
In the Heights is about life in Washington Heights. The George Washington Bridge is in the background. In the foreground are a handful of buildings on a neighborhood street. The show concentrates on the characters associated with three businesses -- a taxi service, a fast food stand and a hair salon. By the end of the evening, two of these businesses will be closed and the third will have avoided closing only by the providential hand of a winning lottery ticket. The show was conceived by, features a score by and stars Lin-Manuel Miranda with a book by Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes, and it clearly means to document an endangered way-of-life.
There is energy to burn here, largely due to the choreography of Andy Blankenbuehler which embraces the sensuality of the Latin-influenced score. I suspect that this one of the shows that will be popular with Japanese tourists because you don't need to understand the dialogue in order to get the essence of what is going on.
Understanding the dialogue and the lyrics didn't enhance my experience much. The characters are pushed around by coincidence and the needs of the writers rather than being driven by their individual personalities. In the lyrics of song after song, Miranda has characters exhaustively explain their pasts. The repetitiousness of this tack wearied me swiftly.
And I am very much in the minority. The audience around me reacted as if the show were one big street party to which they were pleased to have access. In the Heights was successful off-Broadway last season and that success has apparently accompanied it to its Broadway incarnation. And I don't much mind being one of the few grinches who didn't enjoy it.
Much of the New York press was similarly grinchy about A Catered Affair, a musical based on a TV play dating from the Fifties by Paddy Chayefsky and the film adaptation written by Gore Vidal. A few of the press (including the Times's first-string critic, Ben Brantley) thought that at 90 minutes the show was too long and drab. Though I have some quibbles, I was pretty much enthralled throughout.
Largely set in and around a cramped New York apartment, the story concerns a middle-aged couple whose daughter Janey decides to marry. Janey and her intended want a simple and cheap civil ceremony, but Aggie, the girl's mother, is intent on throwing a big splashy event, largely as a way to compensate for the constrained life she's led since pregnancy forced her to marry cabdriver Tom. Tom watches the plans get ,more ostentatious and more expensive and realizes that every dime he has saved will disappear in feeding a ton of strangers at the reception. Also in the mix is Aggie's aging gay brother, Winston, who triggers the tension when he's told that there would be no room for him at the smaller civil service since he's not "immediate family" (though he's slept on the sofa for years).
These are buttoned-up people who have mostly had to choke back their disappointments and compromises. What John Bucchino's songs frequently offer is an escape valve for these pent-up feelings, none lovelier than Aggie's quiet rhapsody about all things apricot while helping her daughter shop. It helps that the orchestrations are by the masterful Jonathan Tunick and suggest the warmth of Elmer Bernstein's underscoring for films like Love with the Proper Stranger and The World of Henry Orient, both of which were love letters to New York.
Harvey Fierstein does double duty here, as the author of the book and playing Uncle Winston. He is an audience-pleaser as a performer, but his work on the book is a little less successful. Fierstein sets up Winston as the catalyst for the show's central dilemma, but he misses the audience's need to see Winston evolve to the point at which he can contribute to resolving the situation. Many of the other scenes play with understated power, though.
The performances, under the direction of John Doyle, are among the best on Broadway. Faith Prince has left her Adelaide of Guys and Dolls far behind and skillfully depicts the inner turmoil of the mother. Even when we disagree with her actions, we can't help but understand the years of frustration that fuel them. When the sound of grief comes pouring out of her, the moment is almost shockingly private. Tom Wopat finds an original take on husband Tom, managing to sustain a quiet strength even as he is bullied for much of the evening. His aria "I Stayed" is an explosion of pent-up feelings, simultaneously a defense, an indictment and a plea for justice. Leslie Kritzer avoids the trap of generic sweetness as the daughter.
Yes, as I say, aspects of Fierstein's plotting seem to me to be lacking, but I felt the evening achieved a good 80% of what it was shooting for, and so far it's the musical of the season a CD of which I most eagerly anticipate.
Incidentally, notwithstanding its mixed reception in the press, It is nominated for more Drama Desk Awards than any production this season. I hope it wins its share and that it has a chance to run long enough to reach a wider audience.
Jeffrey Sweet is a playwright, journalist and teacher, probably best known for his play THE VALUE OF NAMES, the musical WHAT ABOUT LUV? (which played the Orange Tree many years ago), and a history of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY. A resident artist at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, nine of his plays will soon appear in anthology published by Northwestern University Press.