Barbra Streisand’s tribute to the late Marvin Hamlisch was one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen (or heard). I’m still crying from this sweet, deeply touching performance which is officially the highlight of the evening.

Hamlisch and Streisand were great friends and collaborators since she began her career. He was as much responsible for her success as she was.

Streisand’s delivery of that old chestnut, “The Way We Were” was a masterclass in what makes a performance a transcendent experience.

True, her voice has gained warmth and huskiness over the years, but that makes it all the more beautiful. She sang the entire song with pianissimo phrasing, and direct, emotional honesty. 

I don’t even know what to do with my emotions right now. Mr. Hamlisch wrote one of the most moving musicals in history. He and Ms. Streisand are both legendary artists who’ve given the world beautiful music.

We were lucky to have Mr. Hamlisch in our live, and we’re even luckier to have Ms. Streisand…enough of that, back to more crying

Somewhere, buried deep inside the bloated, stultifying film adaptation of Les Misérables, is a story of oppression, suffering and salvation. If you can find it, kudos to you because I sure couldn’t.

Cameron Mackintosh’s juggernaut of a mega-musical is now wearing concrete shoes, weighed down by inept direction, literal-mindedness and bad acting. When it’s good, it’s boring, when it’s bad, it’s unwatchable.

Oh how I kept waiting for this film to move me. I expected the singing to be sub-par (as is the case with most movie musicals today), yet it’s the acting and the execution that make this pallid movie such a drag.

Apparently, Hugh Jackman - this century’s sad answer to Gene Kelly - felt compelled to bring Les Miz to the screen, making good on a project that had been years in development, only to continuously fall apart over casting and budgetary issues. I wish Mr. Jackman had let that bee in his bonnet go silent, because the film he and director Tom Hooper have come up with is the pits, a kitschy, lugubrious - and at 2 hours and 37 nauseating minutes, over long - dirge, relentless in its excess.

As directed by Mr. Hooper at his most lackadaisical, the film is a noisy, disconcerting piece of overblown hokum. Hooper films his actors in a farrago of queasy, claustrophobic close-ups as they employ the more is more method of acting. When Hooper doesn’t have a musical number or performer to zero in on, his direction becomes a frenetic jumble of cross-cuts and swooping camera angles. You get the sense that the director doesn’t have any faith in the material or your attention span.

Hooper’s decision to regurgitate virtually every note of the score on screen is also a curious misstep with unfortunate consequences. The interim scenes of dialogue-driven recitative feel perfunctory and mind-numbingly endless. And while I applaud Mr. Hooper’s one innovation, to film the singing live, the paucity of musicianship and strong voices on screen make the whole affair seem strained. In attempting to achieve intimacy and verisimilitude, Mr. Hooper has, paradoxically, made every song seem deeply artificial and laughably grandiose. He has over inflated material that wasn’t very subtle to begin with.

This is not to say that Les Miz couldn’t have been successfully adapted to the screen, but it would need to be seriously rethought to approximate the stage show. Alas, Mr. Hooper hasn’t made any changes or offered any ideas that might show an understanding of the differences between film and theater. Instead, he has merely placed a frame around the characters, and situated them in photorealistic environs, saliva, gaping mouths and all.

The cast is uniformly disappointing. Anne Hathaway can be an adequate singer, but her “I Dreamed a Dream,” pitched entirely on one high-strung level, doesn’t stir the emotions because her overripe emotionalism, and the proximity of the camera are far too distracting. 

As for Mr. Jackman, the less said the better. I have never been a fan of his wobbly, steely voice, which was dismaying in Oklahoma! and is even worse here. His approach to the music exposes every slight deviation of pitch and, true to form, he takes great expressive liberties with his singing  — sometimes prolonging, sometimes rushing phrases. His bleached tone tends to obscure the notes he is singing. At times, I thought he might be trying to talk-sing, but his inelegant phrasing made no sense musically or dramatically. His natural strengths - effortless charm, irresistible charisma - are oddly muted in a role that calls for stoicism and introspection.

Curiously, Russell Crow is the only person giving a believable, consistent performance that’s scaled for the screen. His voice may lack refinement (and any discernible technique), but he handles the music ably enough, and sings the material as written without any of the fussy, melodramatic flourishes that afflict the rest of the cast. (This is the first time I’ve seen Les Misérables where Javert’s only number, “Stars,” became the highlight of the show.)

Even watching the most talented members of the cast becomes an enervating experience. As madame Thénardier, Helena Bonam-Carter is uncharacteristically wan and gets no support from her co-star, Sasha Baron Cohen, whose scenery-chewing shtick has never felt more exhausting. As the idealistic Marius, Eddie Redmayne whips his whole body while attacking certain phrases, as if physically willing his larynx to cooperate. (I never does.) A trilly Amanda Seyfried is appropriately doe-eyed and vacant in the thankless role of Cosette. And as Eponine, the lovelorn street urchin, Samantha Barks is stymied, forced to rein in her usually impressive voice to accommodate Mr. Hooper’s style.

Quibbles with singing aside, the gravest sin of this movie is how boring it is. The stage Les Misérables zips along with breathtaking exuberance. The three-hour running time flies by as the show grabs your attention and keeps you engaged. Paradoxically, the film Les Misérables seems to lumber on and on with no end in sight. A little pathos goes a long way, but some decent direction would have gone even further.

Did anyone else watch “Animaniacs” as a kid? I used to watch that show religiously. One of my favorite characters was Rita the Cat. She would constantly break into song only to have things thrown at her by anyone near by. It turns out that Bernadette Peters provided the voice for Rita! So I guess I’ve been a Bernadette Peters fan since I was a little kid…who knew?

“In the central role of Cathy Whitaker, a happily domesticated wife and mother in 1957 Connecticut who embarks on a romance that shakes up her tidy little world, is Kelli O’Hara. Her bright soprano and natural grace, now being shown to fine effect in ‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’ on Broadway, are among the happy wonders of the New York musical theater.” - Charles Isherwood

I have SERIOUS emotional connections to this song. Not because it’s really funny (though, god knows, it is), but because me and my girl Gabbie (my best friend/one of the most talented people I know/funniest person I know/collaborator/singing partner in all my future projects) rocked this s%@t in our gay as blazes/super ghetto cabaret. 

But, seriously, putting a show together with her was one of the happiest times of my life! And that includes the time I saw John Hamm jogging with his shirt off at the Chelsea Fitness Center….

I’m watching the episode of “Glee” (I know…I know, but there’s nothing else on) where New Directions goes to NY to compete.

The show’s depiction of New York is totally warped. (Much like their depiction of high-school, singing and tolerance). I think it’s morally irresponsible.

New York is not a clean, white oasis full of tea shops and stuffed animals. If you try to give a loved one a bouquet of flowers in CP, someone would shoot you. Oh, and if you ran into Patti LuPone and said “Ms. LuPone! I’m your biggest fan!!!” she would rip up the program you’re holding in your hands…yup she’s a bitch in real life.

Got my new DVD of Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake” today! I forgot how unbelievably wonderful this work is. Bourne is a genius. Ballet companies and modern dance companies are equally at fault for their dwindling audiences and shoestring budgets; they’re boring! But Bourne makes dance a living breathing organism. His embrace of over-the-top theatricality and his strengths as a storyteller make his ballets so irresistibly compelling. I adore his aesthetic as a choreographer with his penchant for off-kilter angularity and exaggerated lines; it’s strangely beautiful.

The production was recently recorded for a second time in 2011, and this is the DVD to own. The first DVD is quite frustrating with its fussy editing and bizarre angles. Here, the director knew to stay back and capture the whole picture. Also, Dominic North makes a much more convincing Prince than the original danseur.

If the dance world looked more like this, I’d have stayed in the game. Meanwhile, thank god we have Mr. Bourne.

I fucking love this woman with all my heart. As Ben Brantley said, Kelli O’Hara is “one of the finest musical actresses of her generation.” She sings every phrase with such meaning. The clarity of the text always comes through…flawless!

The official trailer for the Les Miserables film. Just listen to those over-processed vocals on “I Dreamed a Dream.” Judging from the breathy quality, jagged vibrato and the noticeable break from chest voice to head voice, they must have belonged to Anne Hathaway at some point. 

Alas, it would appear that AutoTune is the new Marni Nixon. The studios are no fools. This way, it’s perfectly fine if they don’t acknowledge it in the credits.   

“I’m bored with it. I wish they’d do something other than stand around and sing.” - Patti LuPone on opera

Warning: this is just a preliminary review. I plan to see the show again for further assessment. These are just mere observations from the first performance I attended. This production is far too complex for just one review.

SEVERE WEATHER ALERT: A raging hurricane can be found tearing up the stage of the Richard Rodgers Theater, and it nearly threatens to eviscerate everything and everyone in its path. No, I’m not referring to the hurricane that besieges the poor residents of Catfish Row in act II of “The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess”. Such extreme weather conditions come courtesy of the exquisite Audra McDonald who is single-handedly carrying, what is otherwise, a dour, muddled take on the greatest American opera ever composed.

The miracle of Ms. McDonald’s performance lies in her ability to make the audience feel her character’s deep well of emotions…and what beautiful, messy emotions they are! Even when Ms. McDonald isn’t applying her lustrous soprano to Gershwin’s irresistible melodies, she is able to register ambivalence, joy, regret, and pain with the smallest gesture or the slightest shift in her posture. It’s a remarkable performance, and to say Ms. McDonald has outdone herself is to state the blatantly obvious.

The same cannot be said for the rest of Diane Paulus’ confused production, which fails to deliver the heart wrenching drama that a good production of “Porgy” can provide. This “Porgy and Bess” feels threadbare and musically inert. Ms. Paulus has certainly elicited superb acting from nearly every cast member, but almost no one can rise to the level of Ms. McDonald’s vocal splendor and musicianship. For me, the show seemed to deflate whenever Ms. McDonald was not present.

David Allen Grier has to be one of the most pleasant surprises of the production; completely embodying the sleazy Sportin’ Life with gusto and oily charm. Mr. Allen Grier (who has a lovely singing voice) steals many of the scenes and is a welcome, lively presence.

Sadly, Norm Lewis - a charismatic Broadway vet and normally a first-rate singer - is vocally under powered and woefully miscast as Porgy. He’s a sympathetic presence, but he has far too much leading man bravado to be believable as a crippled tragic hero. His “I Got Plenty O’ Nothin’” was a lugubrious mess, with Mr. Lewis taking far too many musical liberties essentially undercutting the folksy ebb and flow of Gershwin’s charming, colloquial paean to the simple life. Porgy is a cripple, beaten down by life, yes, but a good Porgy must have a booming, rich bass-baritone voice to convey his humanity and his unyielding kindness. Mr. Lewis’ voice is smooth but small. He also has some distinct rough patches in his voice, which I found oddly disconcerting.

Diane Paulus’ much debated, highly controversial production has been a source of contention for theater and opera buffs. As you probably know, there were some proposed alterations to the libretto by the creative team during the initial workshops. Many - including Stephen Sondheim - took exception to any tampering with this beloved masterpiece. Storywise, the purists can sleep soundly, as the libretto has remained more or less intact.

It must be said that Ms. Paulus has tightened and clarified the story telling, and the story has more of a cohesive dramatic flow. The opera feels more intimate and involving from a theatrical viewpoint. But the production still feels like a cut and paste job, and opera purists are correct in their assertions about the quality of the singing (save for Ms. McDonald) and the paired down arrangements. Some of the orchestrations are downright baffling. Emotional moments such as “Bess You is My Woman” and “My Man’s Gone Now” come off as tepid and unremarkable.

Riccardo Hernandez’s abstract set is beautifully weathered and visually striking, but doesn’t really give the audience a good sense of where we are or what we’re supposed to be looking at. Ronald K. Brown’s lively choreography deftly mixes traditional African dance, swing, and Broadway jazz to create some very elegant dance numbers.

But “Porgy” is a landmark piece of lyric drama and it is (to my amazement) seldom performed. In truth, Audra McDonald is worth the price of admission. Her performance is a master class in exquisite acting. She well may be a Bess for the ages or, dare I say, the greatest Bess ever.

Caution: Rentheads, don’t hate me. I’m speaking from a strictly musical standpoint

One of the many things that bothers me about ‘Rent’ (and there are quite a few) is the recurring use of Quando men vo as a leitmotif for Mimi and Rodger’s love.

If you actually go back to ‘La Boheme’, and look at the text of that aria, it is basically just Musetta bragging about how much of a whore she is.

There’s almost nothing romantic about the aria, particularly for Rodger and Mimi. It would make far more sense to apply that motif to Maureen, as she is the character who is actually based on Musetta.

But whatever. The first time I ever saw ‘Rent’ (on Broadway) I had no idea what was going on. The sound design was far too abysmal to distinguish Quando men vo from Seasons of Love.

Can we all just agree right now that Audra McDonald is going to be the sexiest Bess ever! I’m so friggin’ excited for this. I have been dreaming of staging a production of ‘Porgy’ with Audra for YEARS! Also, I couldn’t be happier that Norm Lewis is playing Porgy. If nothing else, this is going to be the most lusciously sung ‘Porgy’ ever.

Finally had a chance to see the new revival of “Follies” on Broadway. Posting my review here and, I must say, all the hype you’ve heard is justified. This is one amazing production.

The ghosts that haunt the Weismann Theater are very real in Eric Schaeffer’s stunning new production of “Follies” at the Marriott Marquis. First there are those spectral showgirls: former glamour goddesses who restlessly roam about the theater.

Yet it is the past that is the real ghost of “Follies,” and Stephen Sondheim’s magisterial score captures the heartache, bitterness, and regret that accompany the passing of time and roads not taken. Never look back seems to be the show’s mantra.

As we all know, this production (originally staged at the Kennedy Center) benefits from a star studded cast, and some of the finest actors working in the theater today.

We have Bernadette Peters’ romantic, hopeful Sally; an innocent who settled for a man she did not love (Buddy). I have never been so tied to a character’s hopes and dreams, and so heartbroken when such dreams go unfulfilled. Ms. Peters paints such a vivid portrait of a woman beaten down by life, and desperate to find happiness, it’s almost unbearable to watch.

Many critics argued that Ms. Peters was too glamorous, too vivacious to play the frumpy Sally. But Ms. Peters here delivers a woman of such ferocious desperation, that no critic could argue that this Sally is a fully realized character. It’s a magnificent performance, and it shows you just why she is a living theater legend.

Then there is Danny Burstein’s Buddy: Sally’s husband and former stage door Johnny. I must confess that I have been rooting for Mr. Burstein since I saw him in “The Drowsy Chaperon” as the demented Latin Lothario, Aldolfo. In “South Pacific,” Mr. Burstein was equally hilarious and touching as crafty Luther Billis. He is a standout in a cast that is uniformly excellent.

Mr. Burstein’s buddy emerges as the cynosure of our sympathy. Boldly comic, and yet emotionally raw, Mr. Burnstein’s Buddy is a man far too afraid to leave his dour situation, seeking comfort in younger mistresses just to feel human contact.

There really isn’t anything more to be said about the white hot Jan Maxwell that hasn’t been said already. The woman is simply magnificent. From her first entrance, you can tell that this is a woman to be reckoned with. Draped in a sequined, chiffon gown, and never without a glass of champagne in her hand, Ms. Maxwell’s Phyllis is an emblem of class and sex appeal.

Yet it’s the underlying tension in this Phyllis’ persona that gives the performance dimension and uniqueness. For all her bravado, this Phyllis is clearly on the edge and fragile; this becomes apparent in Ms. Maxwell’s mesmerizing rendition of “Could I Leave You”.

As Phyllis’ confused, self-indulgent husband Ben, Ron Raines handles his creaky dialogue with aplomb. He has a beautiful singing voice, and he makes the most of “The Road You Didn’t Take,” a hauntingly beautiful paean to the choices we make in life.

I must admit that the “Loveland” sequence, where each character essentially has a breakdown, is the most thrilling part of this production. It is here that each character finds a counterpoint with their younger selves and the effect is chilling. I won’t soon forget the image of Ms. Peters lying on the floor, sobbing out of heartbreak. All in all, this is a splendid revival of a true masterpiece.

by Stephen Sondheim

The article by Mr. Healy about the coming revival of “Porgy and Bess” is dismaying on many levels. To begin with, the title of the show is now “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.” I assume that’s in case anyone was worried it was the Rodgers and Hart “Porgy and Bess” that was coming to town. But what happened to DuBose Heyward? Most of the lyrics (and all of the good ones) are his alone (“Summertime,” “My Man’s Gone Now”) or co-written with Ira Gershwin (“Bess, You Is My Woman Now”). If this billing is at the insistence of the Gershwin estate, they should be ashamed of themselves. If it’s the producers’ idea, it’s just dumb. More dismaying is the disdain that Diane Paulus, Audra McDonald and Suzan-Lori Parks feel toward the opera itself.

Ms. Paulus says that in the opera you don’t get to know the characters as people. Putting it kindly, that’s willful ignorance. These characters are as vivid as any ever created for the musical theater, as has been proved over and over in productions that may have cut some dialogue and musical passages but didn’t rewrite and distort them.

What Ms. Paulus wants, and has ordered, are back stories for the characters. For example she (or, rather, Ms. Parks) is supplying Porgy with dialogue that will explain how he became crippled. She fails to recognize that Porgy, Bess, Crown, Sportin’ Life and the rest are archetypes and intended to be larger than life and that filling in “realistic” details is likely to reduce them to line drawings. It makes you speculate about what would happen if she ever got her hands on “Tosca” and ‘Don Giovanni.” How would we get to know them? Ms. Paulus would probably want to add an aria or two to explain how Tosca got to be a star, and she would certainly want some additional material about Don Giovanni’s unhappy childhood to explain what made him such an unconscionable lecher.

Then there is Ms. Paulus’s condescension toward the audience. She says, “I’m sorry, but to ask an audience these days to invest three hours in a show requires your heroine be an understandable and fully rounded character.” I don’t know what she’s sorry about, but I’m glad she can speak for all of us restless theatergoers. If she doesn’t understand Bess and feels she has to “excavate” the show, she clearly thinks it’s a ruin, so why is she doing it? I’m sorry, but could the problem be her lack of understanding, not Heyward’s?

She is joined heartily in this sentiment by Ms. McDonald, who says that Bess is “often more of a plot device than a full-blooded character.” Often? Meaning sometimes she’s full-blooded and other times not? She’s always full-blooded when she’s acted full-bloodedly, as she was by, among others, Clamma Dale and Leontyne Price. Ms. McDonald goes on to say, “The opera has the makings of a great love story … that I think we’re bringing to life.” Wow, who’d have thought there was a love story hiding in “Porgy and Bess” that just needed a group of visionaries to bring it out?

Among the ways in which Ms. Parks defends the excavation work is this: “I wanted to flesh out the two main characters so that they are not cardboard cutout characters” and goes on to say, “I think that’s what George Gershwin wanted, and if he had lived longer he would have gone back to the story of ‘Porgy and Bess’ and made changes, including the ending.”

It’s reassuring that Ms. Parks has a direct pipeline to Gershwin and is just carrying out his work for him, and that she thinks he would have taken one of the most moving moments in musical theater history — Porgy’s demand, “Bring my goat!” — and thrown it out. Ms. Parks (or Ms. Paulus) has taken away Porgy’s goat cart in favor of a cane. So now he can demand, “Bring my cane!” Perhaps someone will bring him a straw hat too, so he can buck-and-wing his way to New York.

Or perhaps in order to have her happy ending, she’ll have Bess turn around when she gets as far as Philadelphia and return to Catfish Row in time for the finale, thus saving Porgy the trouble of his heroic journey to New York. It will kill “I’m on My Way,” but who cares?

Ms. McDonald immediately dismisses any possible criticism by labeling anyone who might have objections to what Ms. Paulus and her colleagues are doing as “Gershwin purists” — clearly a group, all of whom think alike, and we all know what a “purist” is, don’t we? An inflexible, academic reactionary fuddy-duddy who lacks the imagination to see beyond the author’s intentions, who doesn’t recognize all “the holes and issues” that Ms. Paulus and Ms. McDonald and Suzan-Lori Parks do. Never fear, though. They confidently claim that they know how to fix this dreadfully flawed work.

I can hear the outraged cries now about stifling creativity and discouraging directors who want to reinterpret plays and musicals in order to bring “fresh perspectives,” as they are wont to say, but there is a difference between reinterpretation and wholesale rewriting. Nor am I judging this production in advance, only the attitude of its creators toward the piece and the audience. Perhaps it will be wonderful. Certainly I can think of no better Porgy than Norm Lewis nor a better Bess than Audra McDonald, whose voice is one of the glories of the American theater. Perhaps Ms. Paulus and company will have earned their arrogance.

Which brings me back to my opening point. In the interest of truth in advertising, let it not be called “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” nor even “The Gershwin-Heyward Porgy and Bess.” Advertise it honestly as “Diane Paulus’s Porgy and Bess.” And the hell with the real one.