All in Off-Broadway
Transport Theatre Group Company presents the first New York revival of “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”, featuring a new book by Dick Scanlan. Despite an energetic star turn by Beth Malone, the titular character operates in a single mode, and the Meredith Willson score is unremarkable. This attempt to shoehorn a 21st century approach into the shell of a 20th century musical founders.
A look at two new musicals that opened recently off-Broadway: The New Group’s “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” and Roundabout Underground’s “Darling Grenadine” (critic’s pick!).
With the concept of “winter” an increasing memory, here is overview of all that’s coming to New York stages this spring!
Richard Jones directs a new adaptation of Ödön von Horváth’s 1937 noirish procedural “Judgment Day” by playwright Christopher Shinn, performed in the Park Avenue Armory’s drill hall on a grand scale. The experience is mesmerizing and effective, even if not essential to the text.
“Sing Street” is an undercooked musical (play with music, really) adaption of the 2016 hit indie Irish film. A sweet coming-of-age story with a gorgeous heart, the stage version gets none of the charm or quirkiness of the film right, and the thin, surface-deep story does not sustain its length. Still, it remains a promising property that has the potential to be a knockout on stage, perhaps after more time in development.
The York Theatre Company in Midtown East presents the first mainstage production of their 50th anniversary season with “Anything Can Happen in the Theater: The Musical World of Maury Yeston”, a delightful new musical revue in tribute to composer and lyricist Maury Yeston.
Here I take a look at “The Michaels” and “Dr. Ride’s American Beach House”, two Off-Broadway plays of very different substance that trade in the same, refreshing approach of eschewing bombast and declaration for delicacy and introspection.
After a five year hiatus, the Broadway parody revue “Forbidden Broadway” is back with a new edition that makes fun of Broadway shows, actors, and personalities through sketches that satirize the form. Mostly funny, this iteration is undercut by a tinge of bitterness and resentment toward shifting cultural mores and trends on Broadway. But, in the end, it’s still the same scrappy, low-budget comedy revue that’s been playing, off and on, since 1982.
“Soft Power”, David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s dramaturgically breathtaking new musical-within-a-play, experiments with form while rendering a sort of reverse version of “The King and I”. The resulting satire of American culture and politics brims with an unpretentious intelligence and an unexpectedly penetrating sense of patriotism. If democracy will break your heart, “Soft Power” can mend it.
Joshua Henry stars in “The Wrong Man”, a buoyantly rendered original new noir musical about a man falsely accused of murder that is the brain child of multi-platinum pop music singer, songwriter, and producer Ross Golan. A narrative song-cycle set in an intimate, concert-like atmosphere, this musical gets rhythmically rote, and suffers for a lack of specificity, but is nevertheless saved by a great score, fluid choreography, and Mr. Henry’s titanic performance.
Wives”, Jaclyn Backhaus’ smartly satiric and forthrightly feminist play, deconstructs the way in which women are “supposed” to behave, think, and feel about each other, and retells three historical episodes typically told through the male gaze, but this time from the perspective of the “wives”. The result is hilarious and poignant.
Jack Thorne’s listless, shapeless, and dreadful new play “Sunday” centers on a book group of Gen Z-ers grappling with ennui; yes, it is as painful as that sounds. Mr. Thorne doesn’t have much to say for this unconvincingly invented milieu, other than to wallow in the imagined ennui and dullness of a supposedly disillusioned generation to which he does not belong.
