Super exciting news! I’ll be the lead tenor in “The Producers!” So…yea I just basically show up in one scene, look aryan and belt “Springtime for Hitler.” but still…
I’ve got my ice blue contacts ready, and my hairdresser is making me a blonde next week. I’m excited…I have NO IDEA how it’s gonna look.
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.
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!
“But where are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here.”
- A Little Night Music
“Don’t look bleak, Happy endings can spring a leak, ‘Ever after’ can mean one week, We’re just having a drought.”
- Stephen Sondheim
“I loved it. I loved the fine detail in the characterizations, the light hand, the authenticity.”
- Diana Damrau on “Light in the Piazza”
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.
Way to go Debbie Voigt!
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Not three months after singing her first Brünnhilde in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Wagner’s “Walküre,” the soprano Deborah Voigt is performing the title role in Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun” here at the Glimmerglass Festival. Though a wide-ranging repertory is an admirable quality in an artist, it is quite a leap from Wagner’s “Ring” to a classic Broadway musical. Coming into this production, Ms. Voigt risked looking foolish.
A revamped version of George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” starring Audra McDonald, Norm Lewis and David Alan Grier, will go to Broadway soon after it completes its run, previously announced, at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.
Producers announced on Wednesday that the show — which plays down its roots as an opera and features a reworked book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and new arrangements by Diedre Murray — will open at the Richard Rodgers Theater on Jan. 12, with previews beginning on Dec. 17.
Diane Paulus, the artistic director at the A.R.T., will direct “Porgy and Bess.” Kicking off the company’s season, the show is slated to run from Aug. 17 to Oct. 2, with an opening night on Aug. 31.
When the A.R.T. engagement was first announced, Ms. Paulus said that she and the creative team intended the show to “have a future life” beyond Cambridge. She said then that the Gershwin estate wanted to turn the classic work into a musical and “bring it to the audiences of today.”
The casting of Ms. McDonald as Bess, Mr. Lewis (“Sondheim on Sondheim”) as Porgy, Mr. Grier (“Race”) as Sportin’ Life, and Joshua Henry (“The Scottsboro Boys”) as Jake made clear this was unlikely to be just a short regional run. And the producers, Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel, expressed optimism about Broadway after workshops and a developmental performance for investors in May.
“Porgy and Bess” had its premiere in Boston in 1935 and ran briefly on Broadway soon after. The show had months-long revivals there in 1942 and 1953, but in recent decades it has remained in opera houses.
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