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What did New York
Magazine critic John Simon have to say about this year's Tony nominees?
A no-holds-barred review of the season.
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Anna
in the Tropics
The Pulitzer Prize�winning play Anna in the Tropics
is a marked improvement over the Cuban-American Nilo Cruz�s
previous efforts, although that is not saying very much.
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*Assassins
The musical tells the story�part fact, part fiction�of
our nine actual or foiled presidential assassins, from
Booth to Hinckley...Robert Brill�s powerful set, evoking
the spookiness of an abandoned roller coaster and arcade;
Susan Hilferty�s careful costumes; and Jules Fisher and
Peggy Eisenhauer�s spectacular lighting enhance the uniformly
cogent performances. |
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*Avenue
Q
An X-rated puppet show that has fun with racism (song:
�Everyone�s a Little Bit Racist�), homosexuality, full
frontal puppet nudity and sex, schadenfreude (song: �Schadenfreude�),
obsession with porn, and other things that Sesame Street,
from which some of these perpetrators graduated, couldn�t
do. The show is clever, but in a sophomoric way. |
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 *
Big
River
The revival is the brainchild of director and choreographer
Jeff Calhoun, whose idea it was to blend deaf-mute and
hearing actors in the same production ...When the nonspeaking
Huck and speaking Jim affirm their newfound friendship�s
superseding the master-and-slave relationship, they
do so on the raft in the loveliest number, �Worlds Apart.�
They face each other, and their signing, more excited
than ever, turns into a ballet of arms and hands.
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Bombay
Dreams
Worse than mindless, inept, and boring, it defeats any
pejorative trying to sink to its level... What may work
on a Bombay screen does not work on a Broadway stage,
never mind Don Black�s desperate lyrics and Thomas Meehan�s
doomed tinkering with Meera Syal�s clich�d book. |
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The
Boy from Oz
Hugh Jackman stars in this trivial, stifiling musical
about the life of singer Peter Allen... What is most wanting
in Oz is Peter Allen�s charisma, which burst forth
like a nova; here, it fizzles, rather like a second-rate
meteor straining to be a first-class comet. |
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The
Caretaker
In Harold Pinter�s play, Mick, the brutal younger brother,
accuses Davies, the shifty tramp whom Mick�s elder brother,
Aston, has taken in: �Every word you speak is open to
any number of interpretations.� This charge can as justly
be leveled at Pinter, whose plays can mean anything, which
the gullible mistake for everything. Others, like me,
view them as being about nothing... David Jones�s direction
toils valiantly on behalf of the production, but cannot
make a play out of a sow�s ear. |
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 Caroline,
or Change
Good works get richer with repeated exposure; the operatic
musical Caroline, or Change, transferred to Broadway,
seems, on second viewing, poorer. The story centers on
the relationship of an 8-year-old Jewish boy, Noah Gellman,
with his family�s black maid, Caroline Thibodeaux, in
the Louisiana of 1963...Unexpiated liberal guilt permeates
the proceedings; events of personal meaning to author
Tony Kushner fail to involve us, and even the clever music,
mostly pastiche, loses some of its charm upon rehearing. |
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*
Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof
The revival had a scrupulously dedicated Maggie in Ashley
Judd, despite an unflatteringly desexualizing wig; a powerfully
tangy and idiomatic Big Daddy in Ned Beatty, and solid
supporting work...The lone liability is the Brick of Jason
Patric, a Marlon Brando impersonation such as even second-rate
stand-up comics have ceased to perpetrate. |
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*
Fiddler
on the Roof
Ranking high among musicals, Fiddler on the Roof
rates a 10 for Joseph Stein�s book, a 91/2 for the Jerry
Bock�Sheldon Harnick score, and a resounding 10 for the
Jerome Robbins choreography. The current revival earns
an 8... That the production is more ecumenical than previous
versions is to be applauded; accusations that the show
has been goyified are baseless. Leveaux�s pacing is brisk
and his spacing painterly. He uses the full depth of the
Minskoff stage and creates lively panoramas |
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Frozen
The play's author alleges that Frozen is about
forgiveness, that, as the American academic Agnetha, researching
her thesis on serial killers in England, declares, �the
difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness
is [that] between a sin and a symptom.� But I see more
revenge than forgiveness in the play; if there is forgiveness,
it stems from Agnetha, the outsider, and not Nancy, the
mother of 10-year-old Rhona, who has been ravished and
slain by the pedophile Ralph.What Frozen has is
first-rate acting. Swoosie Kurtz (Nancy), Brian F. O�Byrne
(Ralph), and, in the least well-written part, Laila Robins
(Agnetha) could not be better, and if superb performances
are enough for you, so is this play. |
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*
Golda's
Balcony
It�s marvelous when an actor and a role that seemed to
be waiting for each other meet in an incandescent embrace.
Tovah Feldshuh has impressed in a number of roles, but
none has etched itself into her skin and taken over her
whole inner being the way that of Mrs. Meir does in Golda�s
Balcony. |
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 *
Henry IV
Let me say it flat out: Lincoln Center Theater�s production
of Henry IV, the two parts shortened and fused,
is the best American Shakespeare I have ever seen. As
a purist, I miss the full texts spread over two evenings;
as a realist, and even as a theater lover, I found Dakin
Matthews�s compression canny, fluid, and thoroughly enjoyable.
The essence is undamaged, the impact perhaps even greater.
This is Shakespeare that even Shakespeare shunners must
love. |
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I
Am My Own Wife
The memoir chronicles Lothar�s
adventures and often narrow escapes under Nazism and Communism,
the odd jobs that trained him for collector- and curatorship,
and his adjustment to transvestism and homosexuality.
The persecution of Jews and homosexuals is compellingly
conveyed in terse and shattering vignettes. Equally powerful
are evocations of aerial bombardments and other horrors
of war.... Jefferson Mays�with mediocre German pronunciation,
a good German accent in English, and very fine performing
that involves quick character and voice changes�does yeoman�s
service. |
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Jumpers
Jumpers proceeds along three levels: First, a
murder mystery, which is never solved (something that
is, to say the least, problematic). Second, a parodistic
philosophical debate between George, fumbling seeker
of the absolute, and Archie, cynically amoral relativist.
Third, a George-Dotty-Archie love triangle, reduced
to an unresolved farce. The trouble is that this three-level
prestidigitation never achieves the desired interrelation.
We get instead more or less cleverly excogitated, linguistically
acrobatic flippancy, along with characters who bypass
the heart and end up not mattering.
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King
Lear
King Lear is Shakespeare�s greatest play, and Christopher
Plummer is one of our greatest actors. So what happens
when these two greatnesses converge? Disaster. |
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The
Little Shop of Horrors
Audrey II, as the plant-protagonist is called, feeds on
blood and eats humans. The cast, headed by Hunter Foster,
Kerry Butler, Rob Bartlett, and Douglas Sills in a number
of kitschy roles, is good enough to eat from top to bottom.
Scott Pask (sets), William Ivey Long (costumes), and Donald
Holder (lights) do tastily under Jerry Zaks�s zesty direction.
Kathleen Marshall�s choreography is sufficient, and the
show, though without redeeming social or even botanical
value, manages to be chuckably esurient. |
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*
Match
If you want to experience what good directing and inspired
acting can do for a nice little script, Match should
be your meat. Stephen Belber�s play provides a spirited
blueprint for directorial and histrionic bravura: It concerns
a former ballet master, now small-time dance teacher,
living in wistful contentment in a dingy, if cozily overstuffed
Inwood walk-up, about to receive a youngish married couple
as his first guests in years. |
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Never
Gonna Dance
The obvious lesson to be derived from Never Gonna Dance
is that you cannot adapt a Fred Astaire�Ginger Rogers
movie musical for the stage unless you have a male and
female lead who, even if they don�t erase the memory of
those glorious stars, can at least stand comparison with
them. |
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 *
A
Raisin in the Sun
Adroit boulevard drama that pushes all the right buttons.
Under Kenny Leon�s meat-and-potatoes direction, all the
principals in Raisin�Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald,
Sanaa Lathan, and young Alexander Mitchell�do admirably.
As for Sean Combs as Walter Lee, his eyes widen a bit
too readily, his limbs are so loose as to threaten flying
apart, and his face is curiously babyish. Still, he has
genuine presence, and his emoting, except in a moment
of utmost dejection, has alacrity�no diddling or puffery�and
shows potential, if not quite yet heart. |
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*
The
Retreat from Moscow
Daniel Sullivan has directed with his customary incisiveness
and graceful attention to detail, but what supreme acting
talent he had to work with: infinitely inventive, exceptionally
nuanced, and insidiously compelling. This last applies
especially to Eileen Atkins. |
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Sixteen
Wounded
Everything about Sixteen Wounded (even the unearned
title) reeks of contrivance and dishonesty. A feel-good
fabrication with a contradictory ending, Eliam Kraiem�s
play pretends that a rabid Palestinian and a laid-back
Jew can become the best of friends, and that rampant melodrama
can pass for tragedy. |
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Taboo
Unless you are a Boy George fan or a freak-show fancier,
you�ll find the pickings as slim as the slender thread
trying to hold together the disparate halves of Charles
Busch�s revised book. Taboo will steep you in a Hamletic
quandary: Ta boo or not ta boo, that is the question.
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Twentieth
Century
As play, movie, or musical, Twentieth Century has
never failed to delight�at least not until its 21st-century
adaptation by Ken Ludwig. Aside from a few lumbering Ludwigisms,
it is hard to determine just what Ludwig contributed to
the dazzling Ben Hecht�Charles MacArthur original....
Laughs do remain in the Roundabout revival, but they have
to struggle past two serious obstacles�the leads. |
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 Wicked
This is the story of two young women, Glinda
and Elphaba, who become, respectively, the Good Witch
of the East and the Wicked Witch of the West. As Glinda,
Kristin Chenoweth is cute as a button, but rather makes
you wish for a zipper. The accomplished Idina Menzel
brings genuine pathos and edge to Elphaba, but all in
vain. And what of a score by Stephen Schwartz, who has
clearly lost it? Only one song, �Wonderful,� has a memorable
tune, and even that rather trite. The show is clearly
more withered than wicked.
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*
Wonderful
Town
Few scores score as giddily as the one for Wonderful
Town, and few stars shine as brightly as Donna Murphy
in this love letter to Greenwich Village. If she has not
yet been numbered among the musical theater�s superstars,
any unjust doubts are herewith erased. She is a consummate
singer and incomparable actress, but also a first-rate
comic and a comely presence. The entire cast needs no
reviewing, only congratulations. |
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Published May 11, 2004
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