New York City Theater

I was able to do interviews with both Rob Fisher and Kelli O'Hara beforehand on their American Songbook shows. Rob's show was on Friday night, and Kelli's took place on Saturday. Both were very, very well performed and excellently conceived as cabaret pieces.

In recognition of the 90th anniversary of Bernstein's birth, Fisher's show looked at about 80 minutes' worth of Bernstein material, with a sharp emphasis on ON THE TOWN and WONDERFUL TOWN. But the moment that really took my breath away from Gavin Creel singing "Simple Song" from MASS. Maybe it's time we revive that, as part of the upcoming Philharmonic/Carnegie Bernstein tribute?

Kelli's show began with Broadway material, offered as a kind of half-time show a duet with Vicki Clark, and concluded with a handful of songs from her new album. Her husband Greg Naughton came onstage to play guitar for the song he wrote for Kelli. She encored with "The Light in the Piazza." Surprisingly, no Rodgers & Hammerstein, and no mention about SOUTH PACIFIC.

The York has not announced the titles of the four musicals that will make up its Spring Musicals in Mufti series, but has released a lyric from each musical. If you can name all four musicals based on the lyrics, you can win free tix to all four shows.

These are the lyrics:

1. “It must be you – there can’t be two.”

2. “One Our Father, ten Hail Marys”

3. “A time for Spring . . . and a time for something to fall”

4. “Entrepreneur – a word so light it can float”

CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK TO THE MUFTI SITE

So while the RENT HEADS continue to weep and lament that show's long-overdue closing (I'm not saying the show isn't great, it's just it's time to go away), does anyone really care that the barely one-year-old Off-Broadway revival of THE FANTASTICKS is closing?

I can't imagine who. I, for one, thought it was a great revival. Why? They just did the original staging, top to bottom. Sure, it was in a new Times Square-area theater, rather than one in the Greenwich Village, but does that really matter? That replicated the space pretty faithfully. So what now remains at the Snapple Center? The nearly two-decade long run of THE PERFECT CRIME and God only knows what else.

Frankly, as great as a show really is, we don't necessarily need it around 24/7. But as long as it's around, if you've never seen THE FANTASTICKS, I highly recommend checking out this very special, essentially perfect musical.

Okay, we've got a positive review for MERMAID. And it's Time Magazine, which also came to the rescue of the critically-maligned GREASE revival. (Note: I too really liked GREASE, but alas did not appreciate MERMAID.)

CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK TO THE TIME MAGAZINE REVIEW

AND CLICK HERE FOR MICHAEL FEINGOLD'S BRILLIANT VILLAGE VOICE REVIEW

Who is the Time Magazine reviewer? What kind of background does he come from? Who knows. He has every right to his opinions, and he's a damn good writer. I can't help but wonder how much influence Time Magazine has when it comes to reviews. If not much else, it'll provide MERMAID with some pull-quotes said by a recognizable mainstream publication.

FEINGOLD QUOTE: "Americans love buying things for their kids, and a lot of them will love taking their kids to The Little Mermaid, fooled by its look of gaudy expenditure, just as a lot of them love taking their kids to Vegas. Apparently, one of the American dreams of our time is to have your kids grow up to be compulsive gamblers or pricey hookers. "

Click here to see Labute's latest diatribe, as printed in the English paper The Guardian, where he talks about how he was first inspired by contemporary British playwrights like David Hare and Caryl Churchill.

Disclaimer: I don't really like Neil Labute. At his last play at The Public Theater, he kicked my chair on purpose because he saw me looking at my Playbill, figuring I was not paying attention to the play. Apparently, he has not learned that critics often take notes in a Playbill during a show. And with the sole exception of THE SHAPE OF THINGS, I don't think his work is that good.

The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/theater) was handed the story first, as expected. But we all saw this coming. Its tentative closing date is June 1, but I'll bet the bank that it's extended to January 2009. The RENTHEADS will come back in large numbers, allowing an extension or two to follow.

What will happen to RENT? We'll see it live on in regional and amateur stagings. What will happen to the Nederlander Theater? It'll receive its long-overdue renovation, and will hopefully host some new shows. (If you recall, before RENT, no one was using the space. But keep in mind, that was in 1996, in the beginning of Disney's Times Square Cleanup Movement.)

Now that RENT's been around perhaps a little too long, it's easy to forget how extraordinarily electrifying it felt to hear that wonderfully original score for the first time. I wasn't there for the premiere in 1996. The first time I ever listened to RENT was on my walkman in 1998. I continued to listen to it just about everyday for a full six months till I finally saw the show. But we all got a taste of what it was like in the beginning when Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal returned to the show last summer. Maybe they'll come back again...

I'm willing to bet that without RENT, there would be no SPRING AWAKENING - just as without HAIR, there would be no RENT. As rock musicals, all three of these extraordinarily good musicals take our breath away in ways not seen in any golden age musical.

RENT was a gift to Broadway from a downtown artist who was taken from us too soon. And it made Broadway a better place for 12 and a half years.

But let's not get too sad. EVERYTHING CLOSES. CATS closed. LES MIZ (and its inferior revival) closed. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST closed. And one day even LION KING will close.

What did I do this weekend theater-wise?

1. I went back to SPEECH & DEBATE, a truly wonderful Off-Broadway play that was easily worth a second look.

2. Did a phone interview with Kelli O'Hara. This will run as a short Q+A in the paper about her Lincoln Center concert, but I'd like to type up the transcript of the whole conversation and post it here.

3. Went to two of the Times Talks events, one of which was with James Levine of the Metropolitan Opera, interviewed by Anthony Tommassini. Levine looks good physically, considering the surgery he went under a few years ago, and how overweight he looked only a few years ago. (He's lost some 50 pounds lately.) Unfortunately, the event wasn't too exciting. Tommassini was far too reverential to Levine, and it didn't make for a very interesting or lively conversation.

4. The 39 Steps. My review will come out on Wednesday.

5. Happy Days at BAM. Wasn't too filled. But you can bet that when Endgame plays in two months, it'll be packed. It was announced yesterday that Elaine Stritch will be in the cast.

OTHERWISE, Let's go over some of the best lines spilled over LITTLE MERMAID

These quotes are culled from New York Theater Guide:

"But in a perverse process of devolution “The Little Mermaid” arrives on Broadway stripped of the movie’s generation-crossing appeal. Coherence of plot, endearing quirks of character, even the melodious wit of the original score (supplemented by new, substandard songs by Mr. Menken and the lyricist Glenn Slater) have been swallowed by an unfocused spectacle, more parade than narrative, that achieves the dubious miracle of translating an animated cartoon into something that feels like less than two dimensions"
Ben Brantley
New York Times

"Kids, especially girls and young women who grew up adoring the movie, will be enchanted by all the bright colors and nonstop motion. But others, including musical-theater lovers, won't find much satisfaction here." & "The production is busy, not exciting; mechanical, not magical."
Joe Dziemianowicz
New York Daily News

"Oddly enough, it's George Tsypin's settings and Tatiana Noginova's costumes - with their breathtaking vulgarity and equally breathtaking confidence - that give this "Little Mermaid" a certain flap to its flippers in a sea of almost calculated mediocrity." & "Underneath all this baroque ornamentation was a tiny, tinny little musical struggling for its life."
Clive Barnes
New York Post

"For all of its expertise, "The Little Mermaid" is extravagant kids' stuff, even by Disney standards."
Michael Sommers
Star-Ledger

"The new Mermaid is ultimately less than the sum of its impressive parts, offering neither the richly imaginative spectacle of The Lion King nor the old-fashioned vitality and charm of Mary Poppins." & "Wright, Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater ... have developed the tale of a young mermaid's longing to live among humans into an endearing, if rather conventional, love story."
Elysa Gardner
USA Today

"It is even harder to fall in love with the show. In fact, the most amazing part of Disney's latest musical is its amazing shortage of originality - not to mention magic or cross-generational wit." & "Doggedly conventional, well-performed, middling bore of a show." & "Deep-sea living is represented by what looks like shredded plastic shower curtains. The show has a seashell-soap-dish aesthetic, sprinkled with pearlized fixtures from a kitsch '50s bathroom."
Linda Winer
NewsDay

"Disney has turned "Mermaid" into the latest of its high-gloss screen-to-stage projects — and the result is almost exactly half as clever and touching and tuneful as the film."
Eric Grode
New York Sun

"For adults these structures (the sets), sparingly enhanced by projections and limited use of film, certainly make for a lot of elegantly lit plastic onstage. (The set occasionally looks like the ultimate '70s disco.) But for the smaller ticket-holders in the audience - including my companion, a savvy 7-year-old named Rachel - they create a very convincing aquatic landscape." & "It's important to remember that this is a Disney musical, so the accent is on the show's longevity: There are no popping star turns to be missed when the actors move on. Every role can be smoothly filled ad infinitum. The two romantic leads, Boggess and Palmer, are especially bland, though perfectly competent."
Jacques le Sourd
Journal News

"Under the direction of Francesca Zambello, whose background is in opera, the show is static. Instead of scenes flowing into one another and the story building, you have the sense of watching a series of barely connected sequences, each one designed to present a song. "The Little Mermaid" isn't bad; it's bland. It's done well enough that kids up to age 8 or so might enjoy the color, the music and the elemental mermaid-meets-prince story. But even they might be puzzled by some of the creative decisions." & "The dozen numbers that Menken wrote with lyricist Glenn Slater for the show are, with a couple of exceptions -- especially "I Want the Good Times Back" -- not very notable. The love songs are particularly dreary."
Robert Feldberg
The Record

"The Little Mermaid" - tail intact - amiably swims along on good cheer and charm. " & "This musical, buoyed by one of the best Disney film scores and a delightful new leading lady, succeeds as enjoyable family entertainment. And, yes, the sets are big, but then, so is the ocean."
Michael Kuchwara
Associated Press

"Disney's uneven procession of theatrical adaptations of its beloved film properties hits a sour note with this charmless rendition of its smash 1989 animated film." & "Far worse, even such classics as "Under the Sea" and "Kiss the Girl" ... are delivered here in fussily staged renditions that fail to come close to the film's originals." & "Most egregious is the production's visual conception, with Tatiana Noginova's over-the-top costumes and George Tsypin's stylized set designs more often than not simply ugly to look at."
Frank Scheck
Reuters

"This is a show of chiefly juvenile distractions. Stronger on color than design cohesion, its gaudy kitsch has neither the dazzling stagecraft of "Lion King" nor the impressive scale and storybook quaintness of "Mary Poppins." & "The overall effect is that of a department store holiday window conjured by some display queen with artistic pretensions and a plastic fetish -- rarely of a mysterious world fathoms below."
David Rooney
Variety

http://www.newyorktheatreguide.com/reviews/littlemermaid08.htm#press

Let's take a look at the shows we'll be losing today:

1. LES MIZ REVIVAL - It started out awkwardly, but the cast it's closing with (including Judy Kuhn as Fantine) is fantastic.

2. THE GRINCH WHO STOLE CHRISTMAS - Good riddance. Next year, can we do WHITE CHRISTMAS instead?

3. FANTASTIA in THE COLOR PURPLE - Well, COLOR PURPLE isn't closing per se, but it may as well. The show only worked for me with Fantasia, and I doubt that it ever will again.

4. CYMBELINE - This was truly one of the best Shakespeare productions I've ever seen, and it's a shame it didn't catch on with a larger audience.

5. THE GLORIOUS ONES - I'm glad this new Ahrens-Flaherty musical will get a recording. I'll also be at the final performance today.

6. CYRANO - An enjoyable production of an overrated play. It's been recorded for PBS' Great Performances.

CLICK HERE FOR MICHAEL FEINGOLD'S IMAGINATIVE ESSAY

"January 6 was a chilly night, but as on every Twelfth Night, King Stanislavsky, King Ziegfeld, and King Comrade Brecht had braved the cold winds of midtown Manhattan to honor the infant theatrical year. They huddled in the dank motel garage on Eleventh Avenue where the unformed babe lay, contentedly sleeping, wrapped in swaddling clothes hastily assembled from old rehearsal skirts."