| 5-show weekend (longish, sorry) | |
| Posted by: carolinaguy 10:39 am EDT 04/30/24 | |
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| Spent the weekend checking out a few of the contenders from the back half of the season: LEMPICKA - Friday night, Orchestra Row O It's a misfire, but I don't have any hate in my heart for it. I have to say, I very much enjoyed a good number of the songs and would probably listen to parts of the cast album frequently. Espinoza is heroic in a role that it is not possible to perform eight times a week for any real stretch of time. The night I saw it, she went raspy and lost tone for a brief passage in "I Will Paint Her," but otherwise she sounded healthy. Amber Iman is a gem, and her "Stay" was a spectacularly lovely moment. The direction, if one can call it that, is quite scattered -- individual scenes work, but the flow between them isn't really there. There's also a lot of extraneous movement, which always makes me suspicious that there's some lack of trust in the material. I got sick to death of that central platform trucking on and off every minute. That thing probably already has more miles on it than my car. The core problem here is that the show doesn't really know what it wants to say about the artist, or art, or anything really. It also somewhat peters out at the end. I felt like it could have led up to Lempicka's final realization that, for all she'd been through, she'd ultimately played it safe and by so doing lost everything she had passion for. There could have been a "Rose's Turn" moment, though I would hesitate to ask the lead to do any more high belting. STEREOPHONIC - Saturday matinee, Orchestra Row P My favorite play since THE FERRYMAN. The spiritual cousin to SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, this meditation on the creative process somehow manages to be both epic and intimate. Eli Gelb and Sarah Pidgeon were, for me, the particular standouts in a marvelous, finely-honed ensemble. Every moment, line, gesture, note, pause... all so exquisitely tuned that the 3+ hour running time flew by and I wouldn't want anything cut. It finds profundity in the smallest moments, and one character's observation about needing other people being torture was just one of many arrows straight to the soul. The songs are all winners, and if it were named Best Original Score, I surely wouldn't be mad. My only quibble would be that Act IV is specifically set in a different recording studio than Acts I-III, but the set doesn't change at all. Pedro Pascal and Glen Powell were sitting a few rows in front of me. THE NOTEBOOK - Saturday night, Orchestra Row P No surprises in this straightforward adaptation. It's giving its target audience exactly what it wants with slick professionalism but no spark of invention. The book tells the story capably and adds enough humor to avoid becoming maudlin. The score has a certain lack of variation, but the songs are all effective and very pretty in the moment. For me, the best was Middle Allie's "My Days," which is a prime example of how to musicalize a character's key life decision. It also gives Joy Woods a showstopping moment. The big rain effect comes across as an unnecessary expense and technical shenanigan, because I didn't feel it added anything. An example of trying to check the boxes of expectation. The biggest pleasure the show offers comes in the form of Maryann Plunkett -- watching her watching the other performers was a master class in being present as an actor. APPROPRIATE - Sunday matinee, Orchestra Row O It was a pleasant surprise that this was not just The Sarah Paulson Show, but also gives ample stage time and lovely moments to the whole cast. Paulson's character is a lot to take, so the author has wisely given us breaks from her Toni so we can see other viewpoints. But even though she's playing a... well, I won't use the word her sister-in-law does (but it's accurate), Paulson finds humanity particularly in gestures and physicality. Her final speech to her brothers is a masterful piece of acting and writing. Thought-provoking and necessarily depressing, it should leave every audience member pondering how it applies to their own life and experience. There's also considerable humor to balance the shocking family secrets and venom. I won't spoil it here, but Corey Stoll has a line at the end of a long rant that had waves of laughter crashing through the theater, as the audience seemed almost relieved to be able to guffaw at something so, well... inAPPROPRIATE. The final coup de theatre means the Tony for Scenic Design of a Play is theirs to lose. My only quibble would be that the act break feels oddly placed -- the first act is about 50 minutes and the second about 90; I thought we could have broken more effectively at a moment later on. The only other problem is not the fault of the production, but the noise from 44th St. is very distracting in the Belasco. ILLINOISE - Sunday evening, Orchestra Row M This sort of show is normally not really my thing, but this is particularly well done. I had no familiarity with the music at all, but I found it hypnotic and enjoyed discovering it in this context. The vocalists are perfection, and the orchestrations are superb. It's full of beautiful stage pictures, and the use of movement to convey character and emotion as clearly as dialogue was revelatory to me, but then I have very little experience with dance theater. I would highly recommend to anyone seeing the show that they allow themselves time to read the Playbill insert beforehand, as it will prepare you for the structure of the storytelling to come. (Seating-wise, I feel like the best vantage point for this would probably be center of the front mezz. I was all the way house right in the orchestra and I don't feel I really missed any significant part of the staging, but I couldn't see the two vocalists who were on a raised platform stage left.) |
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