Saturday: The Hired Man and Cry-Baby
Saturday matinee: THE HIRED MAN at 59E59.
This production is the big headliner of the 2008 edition of Brits Off-Broadway. It is an English musical from the 1980s that got swept away and forgotten at the time by the wave of Andrew Lloyd Webber mega-musicals. This intimate production features about ten actors and a piano. Its wide-ranging, turn of the century rural England plot follows the plights and tribulations of hired farmhands, who work the land in poverty and eventually fight in World War I. The show has received quite a lot of respectful reviews, especially for its romantic, folksy score. And while I too enjoyed the music, I didn't really fall for the show, which tries to cram far too much plot, nor its amateurish cast.
Saturday night: CRY-BABY on Broadway.
This was the second-to-last performance of CRY-BABY, which closes Sunday afternoon following a two-month run. Had it not unexpectedly received a Tony nomination for Best Musical, it surely would have closed a month ago. I must confess that I was among the many critics who did not fall for this adaptation of John Waters' 1990 film. (Newsday and The Wall-Street Journal liked it. That's about it.)
Though I really do like to see Broadway musicals more than once, what I really wanted to figure out was whether I was too harsh on the show, which I have recently gone so far as describing/deriding as an "artistic and financial disaster." Based on such criticism, I'd feel awkward asking its press agents for another pair of comp tickets. But luckily my colleague Wayman Wong, entertainment editor for The Daily News, was able to score tix.
Should Rob Ashford have won a Tony for his choreography? I'm not sure. The hip-hop choreography of IN THE HEIGHTS is far more unusual and unprecedented for Broadway. Ashford's showstopper work falls neatly in the athletic, prop-oriented choreography tradition that ranges from Michael Kidd (LIL ABNER) to Susan Stroman (CRAZY FOR YOU).
So was I too harsh? Maybe. It's a very polished show, but it's empty, at least for me. I felt absolutely nothing for its characters or story. And judging by the number of people who bailed at intermission, I imagine I wasn't the only one who felt that way.
Unlike HAIRSPRAY, which is a truly winning film-to-stage adaptation, there just wasn't enough in the plot of CRY-BABY to make a compelling musical. Instead, it felt like a single joke spread out over two and a half hours.
