That’s the question you might be asking sometime during Broadway’s most recent foray into bringing Shakespeare to the masses who can afford really expensive tickets. And the latest Bard venture is a hot hot ticket. “Romeo + Juliet” opened Thursday at the Circle in the Square, which, despite being Broadway’s smallest theater, saw over a $1 million gross last week for Sam Gold’s feisty new production of this vintage romantic tragedy.

Gold’s last two excursions with Shakespeare on Broadway did not fare so well despite “King Lear” starring Glenda Jackson and “Macbeth” starring Daniel Craig. Far more memorable were his revelatory productions of “Hamlet” with Oscar Isaac at the Public Theater and “Othello” with Craig and David Oeylowoh at the New York Theater Workshop. Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” is more kinky than revelatory. It’s a very digestible two hours and 10 minutes with intermission, and spliced between all the soliloquies are fight scenes that are thrillingly choreographed by Sonya Tayeh, who even throws in some breakdancing. There’s also a credit that reads “violence by Drew Leary.”

If you’re worried by that plus sign (+) in the title, Gold has not lifted from Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 “Romeo + Juliet” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Those lovers were young. Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler in Gold’s production are children, and the set design, by Dots, features a playroom full of cuddly stuffed animals, some of which are gigantic. Immensely effective is Gold’s use of the entire Circle in the Square. I’d never before been aware of this theater’s many catwalks above the stage. Now they’re alive with Verona’s adolescents. Or maybe they’re from the Bronx.

Kit Connor of “Heartstopper” fame mesmerizes as Romeo, and the many young women in the audience, as well as maybe one or two old men, squeal with delight when he kisses Zegler. Those squeals turn deafening when, with awesome artistry, he rips off his very superfluous T-shirt. The half-modern, half-antique costumes are by Enver Chakartash. Oh yes, Connor handles Shakespeare’s poetry with real distinction, too.

Rachel Zegler of “West Side Story” fame isn’t quite so comfortable with the iambic pentameter. Before anyone gets the idea this critique against Zegler derives from her sounding American to Connor’s very British delivery, it’s nice to report that other Yankees in the cast have no problem making the poetry accessible to 21 Century ears. They include Gabby Beans playing Mercutio and the Friar, Tommy Dorfman playing Tybalt and the Nurse, and Sola Fadiran playing Juliet’s mother and father.

Once upon a time a few years ago in the theater, it was the actors who worked hard to make us believe they were the characters we’re watching. Nowadays, it’s the audience that must work hard to believe that, for instance, a young Black female actor is an old Roman Catholic member of the Italian clergy in the 14th Century (or whenever this story is set). Gold makes no consideration for a role’s age, ethnicity and gender. Beans, Dorfman and Fadiran make that irreverence part of the fun, and along the way they handle the language beautifully. That said, I wasn’t always sure which characters they were playing, but eventually I caught up to them.

Zegler only really comes alive as Juliet when she sings two songs by Grammy Awarda winner Jack Antonoff. One comes during the masked ball where she meets Romeo, and Zegler sings again before the two of them finally get around to screwing.

As Gold tells this story, theirs is a puppy love. Perhaps that’s the big revelation of this “Romeo + Juliet.” The kids aren’t all right, and if their story is not really a full-blown tragedy anymore, they’re awfully fun to watch.

The post ‘Romeo + Juliet’ Broadway Review: Rachel Zegler Sings, Kit Connor Strips appeared first on TheWrap.

I use Spectrum, so maybe that’s why I couldn’t sympathize.

Delia Ephron’s “Left on Tenth,” based on her 2022 memoir of the same title, opened Wednesday at the James Earl Jones Theatre. It’s a 100-minute one-act play, directed by Susan Stroman, that puts you in a bad mood even before it begins. Pre-curtain, we’re treated to various automated Verizon messages that tell us to hold, we’ll be right with you and so on. It’s frustrating enough when this happens in the privacy of one’s own home. It’s infuriating in the theater, and Ephron and Stroman are to blame, not Verizon, for making an audience sit through such audio pollution.

You might also want to tell Delia to get a grip, since she’s living on 10th Street in the Village in a very big apartment with a gorgeous view. Beowulf Boritt’s set design turns that apartment into something like the Oval Office, not a place most people would like to live, but hey, she’s got space!

Which brings me to “You’ve Got Mail.” It’s the movie Delia wrote with her oldest sister, Nora Ephron. The first 15 minutes of “Left on Tenth” feature a lot of name dropping. Since nothing of dramatic interest happens beyond the Verizon nonsense, it’s something of a relief to hear about the Ephron family. Delia lets us know that her parents, Phoebe and Henry Ephron, wrote the successful Broadway play “Take Her, She’s Mine.” My mind instead wandered to the Ephrons’ dreadful screenplay for the movie version of “Carousel,” which is not mentioned. Better than her parents having written a Broadway hit, Delia tells us that they both were angry drunks. Memoirists, even those born into great privilege like the four Ephron daughters, love having abusive parents. Without a terrible mom and dad, there would be no memoir.

Delia also has an adorable little dog, Honey (played by Dulce), that she trots out to keep the uncomplicated plot moving. Spoiler alert: this first little dog comes to a tragic end for which Delia takes responsibility, but no problem. The nice thing about child substitutes is that they’re so easily replaced, unlike human kids, and Delia soon gets herself another fur baby, Charlie (played by Charlie), albeit bigger than the first.

In “Left on Tenth,” the human actors Peter Francis James and Kate MacCluggage play over a dozen featured characters between them, and it is mildly suspenseful to wonder what costumes, by Jeff Mahshie, they will show up in next. Most impressive are the many wigs, by Michael Buonincontro, that MacCluggage dons throughout the show. How does she make these dramatic changes in so little time? Amazing.

Ephron’s play is one of Stroman’s few forays outside musical theater. Nonetheless, all the actors get to dance a lot, and it’s meant to be funny and charming because none of them can dance.

Shades of a rom-com emerge in “Left on Tenth” when Delia meets online a Jungian therapist, Peter (Peter Gallagher), and begins long email and phone conversations with him before they actually meet face to face. Is there anything less dramatic on stage than people sending each other email messages?

Yes, that would be watching Delia go through her two medical treatments for leukemia. Stroman must know how painful yet undramatic this is because she sends James and MacCluggage on stage to distract us with a Ballet of the Hospital Partitions. These framed blue curtains keep crisscrossing the stage while Margulies makes minor changes in her facial expressions and moves from her back to the left side of her body then to the right. “Left on Tenth” captures perfectly the tedium of being in a hospital, for both the patient and the visitor.

Before Delia gets sick, Margulies is perky to the point of robotic. Illness becomes her.

Since I prefer memoirs from people who have achieved something in life rather than survived something, I didn’t know about Ephron’s health problems. I was only mildly engaged watching “Left on Tenth” when Gallagher’s Peter finally shows up to woo Margulies’ Delia. Peter is so smitten even before he meets Delia that I thought he had to be a stalker, and Ephron’s memoir was about her falling in love and then fending off a real nut job. How disappointing to learn that I was supposed to be swallowing this schmaltz about her present husband without a dollop of irony to wash the goop down.

Peter turns out not to be a pervert. He is too good to be true, and you won’t believe this character for a second. I had other good reasons to be suspicious.

Elsewhere in the play, Delia has an HIV-positive friend who takes at least 20 different drugs a day just to stay alive. Clearly, his doctor forgot to tell him several years ago about Descovy. Delia also has “Der Rosenkavalier” being performed in Central Park at the Naumburg Bandshell. “La Boheme,” maybe. “Der Rosenkavalier,” never.

The post ‘Left on Tenth’ Broadway Review: Julianna Margulies Explores Love and Leukemia appeared first on TheWrap.

Looking at the current New York theater, Mae would have to add the words “lesbian” and “nonbinary” to her proclamation. Shows like “Titanique,” “The Big Gay Jamboree” and “Oh, Mary!,” a play that is grossing over $1 million a week on Broadway, make it clear the whole LGBTQ team is taking over.

“Drag: The Musical” opened Monday at New World Stages, and for much of the show, it joins the illustrious company of those aforementioned titles. It’s only big problem: It’s too Broadway even though it’s playing Off Broadway. Clearly, the show has big-stage ambitions. Jason Sherwood’s set and especially Marco Marco’s many glitzy costumes are very Broadway quality. They dazzle! Actually, they dazzle too much. Part of the appeal of drag is its inherent tackiness, and sometimes the display of money can kill a laugh. “Titanique,” especially, knows how to use cheapness to induce guffaws.

The book and songs for “Drag” are written by Tomas Costanza, Justin Andrew Howard and Ashley Gordon, and this trio knows how to write book songs, unlike most of the people writing for the musical stage today. (We’re talking to you, Alicia Keys.) Book songs need to establish character and carry the plot. Costanza, Howard and Gordon do that with practically every song in “Drag,” giving us a splendid mix of rock, pop and disco.

It all begins promisingly. Liza Minnelli, one of the show’s producers, delivers a taped message that not only sets up the story but informs us that “Drag” will be performed in “one unnatural act.” As Minnelli tells it, two rival drag bars positioned across the street from one another harbor a most unfortunate history: Their respective headliners Kitty Galloway (Alaska Thunderf–k) and Alexis Gillmore (Nick Adams) used to be lovers and are now enemies. When Thunderf–k and Gillmore take the stage separately for the first time, they each knock it out of the ballpark’s closet. They also could not be more different. Gillmore is a real genderf–k with his bulging biceps and cut abs covered with satin and taffeta. Thunderf–k, on the other hand, is Rosalind Russell in “Auntie Mame,” only a lot taller.

“Drag” goes Broadway not only in its set and costumes. The musical also wants us to believe it has a real heart. This is a mistake that “Titanique,” “Jamboree” and “Mary” never make. They are send-ups from the get-go. They never turn sentimental the way Broadway musicals like “Kinky Boots” or “& Juliet” do with their weepy LGBTQ characters. Unfortunately, we’re meant to take Gillmore’s sad-sad-sad childhood in “Drag” seriously.

Gillmore has a straight brother, Tom (Joey McIntyre of the New Kids on the Block) and a 10-year-old nephew, Brendan (Remi Tuckman), and when they’re on stage, watch out! One can’t fault the performances of McIntyre and Tuckman, both of whom are amazingly talented, but their material is meant to, yes, tug at our heartstrings. Those theatergoers who fell in love with the humorless nonbinary character in “& Juliet” or Billy Porter in “Kinky Boots” will probably shed a tear. The rest of us can only wish that open-heart surgery could be performed on “Drag” to make it 15 minutes shorter.

As a director and choreographer, Spencer Liff knows just what to do when the drag artists are at work. Really splendid is a showstopper lit by flashlights when the power goes out at a drag club because the electric bill, among many other things, has not been paid.

Liff is far less successful when Alexis and Tom reminisce about the brother’s sad-sad-sad childhood. Scalpel, please!

The post ‘Drag: The Musical’ Off Broadway Review: When Boys Just Want to Have Fun appeared first on TheWrap.

Putting a video camera(s) on stage and having live actors taped so that their faces can be magnified on big screens has become the most tiresome directorial crutch of this century. The musical “Sunset Blvd.” opened Sunday at the St. James Theatre after a run in London, and the camera work is so overused it can only be hoped that it inspires a moratorium on utilizing such recording devices in the theater.

All those close-ups take our attention away from what’s happening elsewhere on stage. They also expose a lot of things we should not be noticing. Those elements include the ugly around-the-jaw mics, the tape that secures those mics to an actor’s neck, the actors’ sweat — and also their acne. It is quite a youthful cast.

Jamie Lloyd’s revival of the 1993 musical by Lloyd Webber, Don Black and Christopher Hampton won raves and many Olivier Awards in London. There and now on Broadway, it stars Nicole Scherzinger in the role of Norma Desmond, the silent film star looking to return to the screen.

Photographs from the West End production made it clear that Scherzinger wasn’t wearing Norma’s signature turban, nor was she made up to look like some old gargoyle a la Gloria Swanson in the film or Glenn Close on stage. In this revival, Norma is now 40, not 50. Her hair is straight and long. She wears a simple black dress. The sets and costume by Soutra Gilmour are a sophisticated study in chiaroscuro, a nod to the black-and-white film that is the musical’s source material.

For me, the big surprise of this “Sunset Blvd.” is Scherzinger’s outrageously campy over-the-top performance. Like so much of this revival, it is both minimal and excessive. Her look is minimal while her acting goes way beyond anything delivered by either Swanson or Close, neither of whom offered particularly subtle studies in mature womanhood.

When Scherzinger sings, she comes up with drag queen gestures that haven’t been seen since Susan Hayward lip-synched “I’ll Plant My Own Tree” in “Valley of the Dolls.”

She’s also horny. When Gloria Swanson’s Norma invites William Holden’s Joe McGillis to spend the night in a bedroom above her garage, it is not obvious that she’s on the make. Scherzinger, on the other hand, delivers the invitation with such Cruella de Vil lust that she gets a big laugh from the audience.

And when she doesn’t get a laugh at other dramatic moments, she flips her hair around in a “take that, biiiitch!” gesture that provokes guffaws. It’s not just her exaggerated line readings, it’s that she’s being taped in close-up — so we see her bulging eyes and lips, her flicking tongue. This Norma wants to be serviced by Joe (Tom Francis) so badly that when she sits down to spread her legs wide, Scherzinger forgets for a moment that this musical is “Sunset Blvd.,” not “Cabaret.”

A former Pussycat Doll, Scherzinger has the vocal chops to make showstoppers of “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye.” The sound pouring out of rock stadium size amps at the St. James is much like that of the Pussycats: lush, loud, homogenized and processed with excessive reverb. But that’s not enough: when Scherzinger sings, she’s suddenly enveloped in billowing fog. It’s a not-so-subtle reminder that this story is set in smoggy Los Angeles.

Neither “Cats” nor “Sunset Blvd.” got great reviews upon their world premieres. “Cats” became a huge hit regardless — “Sunset Blvd.,” not so much.

Lloyd Webber has had quite a year here in New York City. Critics went wild over a new production of his feline show that set the musical at a drag contest. I remained unimpressed, because the songs and the book remained the same: dreadful.

Jamie Lloyd has dropped a few songs from his “Sunset Blvd.,” but he didn’t cut enough. Lloyd Webber brings a verismo verve to Norma’s two aforementioned arias, but ensemble numbers like “Let’s Have Lunch” and “Every Movie’s a Circus” are dead air, pumped up only by Fabian Aloise’s athletic choreography.

Lloyd distracts from the desultory act-two opening “Sunset Boulevard” song by putting a video camera on Francis as he walks around backstage, then takes a stroll in front of the theater on West 44 Street to join the “Sunset Blvd.” chorus. It makes sense that they all need a breath of fresh air — Lloyd uses so many fog machines that they render the St. James uncomfortably warm, humid and stuffy. It may be the first Broadway venue to come down with black mold.

Wilder made his “Sunset Blvd.” almost three-quarters of a century ago, and it’s amazing how much more erotic it is than this stage revival. That’s because Holden comes off as a real stud in the movie. He’s clearly laying both Norma and his new girlfriend Betty, and both women are quite happy.

Francis brings an innocuous boy-next-door quality to the role. When Scherzinger jumps up on his hips at the end of act one, do they have sex or does he lodge a complaint with Actors’ Equity? Francis has even less chemistry with Betty, played by Grace Hodgett Young — dressed like a lady wrestler, complete with braided pigtails. Near the end of the show, when Betty’s gigantic silhouette hovers over Norma and Joe, the lighting design by Jack Knowles brings to mind “The Wiz.” Did that Dorothy forget to leave town when the show closed last summer?

Other weird showbiz references populate Lloyd’s production. After Norma shoots Joe at the end, she’s suddenly covered in blood. Did I miss something? Has she used a knife instead of a gun? Or did she sneak in a little quickie with Joe’s corpse before it fell into the pool?

And why is Scherzinger suddenly channeling Sissy Spacek from “Carrie”?

The post ‘Sunset Blvd.’ Broadway Review: Nicole Scherzinger Evokes Sally Bowles and Carrie White appeared first on TheWrap.

There’s some connective tissue too – Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the screenplay for the original film, wrote the book of the musical and is closely involved in the creative process while Lonny Price, who played Neil Kellerman in the film before becoming a lauded stage director, is set to direct “Dirty Dancing: The Musical.”

The show hails from Lionsgate and The Path Entertainment Group under its live stage arm Showpath and will launch in 2025 with a major run in North America before hitting theater markets in Asia, Australia, Latin America and beyond.

Per a press release announcing the show, “Dirty Dancing: The Musical” will bring “a fresh creative approach to the timeless love story that captured the hearts of millions around the world.” It is once again set in the summer of 1963 and follows the love story between Frances “Baby” Houseman and dance instructor Johnny Castle. “The original film celebrates themes of empowerment, independence, and the joy of dance – elements that will be present in the new stage adaptation,” the release said.

There may even be some new songs.

“In the years after I wrote and co-produced the original film ‘Dirty Dancing,’ I was grateful and astonished by the generations of audiences who responded with open hearts to the themes of honor and courage beneath the surface. Years later, sensing our audiences wanted to ‘be there’ while the story was happening, I wrote and co-produced a stage show,” Bergstein said. “Its reception all over the world exceeded my sweetest dreams. Now we’ve come full circle, and with my old friend Lonny Price by my side, I’m returning to the stage with a reimagined version. Its hope is to be equal to the new world swirling around us while revisiting more fully and precisely the story I’d wanted to tell when I wrote my first lines. It’s my way of saying thank you to you all.”

The post ‘Dirty Dancing’ Heads to Broadway With New Adaptation appeared first on TheWrap.

Adam Driver takes over for Timothy Olyphant, who originated the role of Strings McCrane, a major star who wants to give it all up to return to his country roots. Olyphant brought a leisurely charm to his Strings; Driver delivers a real feral power, and considering the nearly three-hour runtime on “Hold on to Me,” the show’s narrative drive runs even faster and sharper. Don’t let that running time discourage you, though. Lonergan’s play is great fun and right on target regarding how it punctures American’s fixation on celebrities. It also makes a good case for outlawing testosterone, a male ingredient that evolution should have retired sometime after the Pleistocene.

As eccentric characters in the theater go, Strings McCrane is right up there with Blanche du Bois and Sheridan Whiteside — and just as irresistible. Strings is a country star who has crossed over to the movies, where he has made it big playing comic book heroes. He’s pampered, insulated, obscenely rich, self-obsessed and hounded by the paparazzi. That’s when his beloved mama passes away back home in Tennessee.

When we first meet Strings, he’s in the process of smashing another priceless guitar because, dammit, his life is just so hard and thankless. No problem. His loyal assistant, Jimmy (Keith Nobbs, the epitome of being obsequious), has a spare top-of-the-line guitar ready to go.

Jimmy, as written by Lonergan and played by Nobbs, could be a whole other play. He’s the Uriah Heep of the modern-day entertainment world, and anyone who has worked or covered the biz knows this guy. He’s the shadow who knows more about the star’s life and resume than the star himself. He might be homosexual, but the creepy thing is that he’s probably not. Lust would at least explain his groveling devotion.

To calm Strings’ many frustrations, Jimmy orders up a hotel masseuse, and so enters Nancy (Heather Burns), who is destined to run through the categories of one-night stand, girlfriend, fiancée, wife and ex-wife faster than Strings’ country twang allows him to finish one of his endless Shaggy Dog sentences.

Without giving away too much of the story, let’s just say Strings’ family and relatives are played by a superb ensemble that includes C. J. Wilson, Adelaide Clemens and Frank Wood. What their life in the star’s shadow requires of them looms large and comically horrifying in every scene they share with Strings. In so many 90-minute plays, they are reduced to mere types who show us a single facet of the lead character’s personality. Here, Lonergan’s supporting characters glitter brighter than the marquee at the Grand Ole Opry.

“Hold on to Me Darling” doesn’t ramble so much as it takes its time, and director Neil Pepe keeps all the comic moments percolating, one on top of the other.  The minor miracle at the end is that after laughing at Strings’ many indulgences, Lonergan gives us a glimpse beyond the spoiled country boy. Suddenly, it’s almost sad in a Johnny Cash sort of way.

Wood doesn’t overplay his cameo at the end. Given just 10 or 15 minutes on stage, most actors kick up enough of a storm to blow their respective character off the stage. Check out “McNeal” with Robert Downey Jr. at Lincoln Center to see a whole cast begging for a Tony nomination for best featured actor or actress. Wood doesn’t go down that road. He’s the essence of a long-lost relative, as guilty as he is wounded.

The post ‘Hold on to Me Darling’ Off Broadway Review: Adam Driver Grabs the Best Role of His Career appeared first on TheWrap.

Yes guys, we’re talking about “Somebody to Love.” You love it, we love it, pretty much everyone alive loves it, and presumably attendees at Broadway for Harris (that’s the fundraiser’s organizers) loved it too.

See for yourself below:

@andthatsshow.biz Giving us Ella Enchanted REALNESS, Anne Hathaway! :face_holding_back_tears: From Broadway for Harris #broadway #ellaenchanted #annehathaway #somebodytolove #millennial ♬ original sound – And That’s Showbiz

Midway through the song, the musicians toned down so Hathaway could talk for a second. She said, “We got a big choice to make, America, you have to make a choice, you do have to vote. Maybe this election, maybe you don’t have a candidate that you love, but you have to have an issue that you, maybe the somebody you love is you. You gotta vote for yourself, America.”

Of course we won’t tell you who to vote for, but we will agree with the actress that you really should vote, period. Nearly half of all U.S. states have same-day voter registration. Find out if you live in one of them here.

Meanwhile, this obviously isn’t the only blast from the past Hathaway has dropped lately. She’s also starring in “The Princess Diaries 3” as well as producing it through her own Somewhere Pictures production company.

The sequel will be directed by Adele Lim, who wrote the film adaptation of “Crazy Rich Asians” and directed and produced 2023 comedy “Joy Ride.”

Debra Martin Chase is producing the Disney film, while executive producers include Lim’s producing partner Naia Cucukov and Melissa Stack.

The post Anne Hathaway Sings Queen’s ‘Somebody to Love’ at Kamala Harris Fundraiser | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

It’s a fitting start to director Snehal Desai’s updated staging of the 2010 Tony-winning musical, here a Deaf West Theatre and Center Theatre Group co-production performed jointly in spoken English and American Sign Language with both hearing and Deaf actors. A musical call to arms adapting Green Day’s seminal 2004 concept album of the same name – itself a Grammy-winning, post-9/11 indoctrination of the Bush years – the musical seethes with a rousing, underbelly rage that feels as appropriate today as it did 15 or 20 years ago. Projections of the Republican presidential nominee lead frantic snippets of our 24-hour news cycle in those opening moments, slapping the audience awake with a literal media overload before the production’s ensemble chants over the title song’s opening riffs: “Don’t wanna be an American idiot / Don’t want a nation under the new media.”

And it’s safe to say Donald Trump has no fan in Green Day. 

The veteran punk rock outfit hilariously came under fire earlier this year when, while performing on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” frontman Billie Joe Armstrong had words for the former president, changing the lyrics to their 2004 anthem “American Idiot” to say he’s not “part of the MAGA agenda.” 

“Hilariously” because, well, what else did conservative pundits expect from a band who’s always rocked with anti-establishment, anti-authority and often anti-Republican rhetoric? Their catalog, and especially “American Idiot,” has long been a middle finger to a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many. 

The new stage production’s opening visuals from projection designer David Murakami are the only time we see Trump in the flesh onstage, but his presence is still felt in this present-day “American Idiot.” The musical again centers on three young men – Johnny (Daniel Durant), Will (Otis Jones IV) and Tunny (Landen Gonzales) – and its themes of suburban malaise, economic insecurity and fatalistic disillusionment are still the production’s beating heart. In other words, “American Idiot” doesn’t show Trump again, but it dramatizes the conditions of desperation that breed the groundswell of his support from a male populace that feels despondent and unheard. Restless angst permeates the snarls, contorted faces and rock star wails of its players – a red-eyed anger that wouldn’t feel out of place among Trump’s ranks. 

But don’t worry, “American Idiot” has at least a more optimistic ending than a rally peppered with MAGA hats. After fleeing their suburban life for the city and falling to a plague of societal demons, its three leads come out on the other side with a resolve to be better.

Will (voiced alongside Jones by James Olivas) is left behind in their small town with weed, booze and binge TV after an accidental pregnancy keeps him from breaking free to the city with Johnny and Tunny. Tunny (voiced alongside Gonzales by Brady Fritz) gets deluded by promises of male grandeur and enlists in the army before getting injured in an unnamed war. 

And our hero Johnny (voiced alongside Durant by Milo Manheim) makes it to the city in hopes of finding meaning, only for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll to tailspin him into the throes of heroin addiction. He falls for a girl (Whatsername, played by a scene-stealing Mars Storm Rucker), a beacon of light in the dark, only to snuff it. “Finally we’re getting somewhere,” he says. “Nowhere.”

Beyond being just the effective conceit of Deaf West’s inclusive storytelling, the fact that these men are played onstage by two actors apiece visually distills how their story of crushed dreams, alienation, addiction and abandonment are stories existing over and again in today’s America. We live in an epidemic of male loneliness, anger, toxicity. Where there’s one, there’s always another. It’s a beautiful and impactful visual brought to life by choreographer Jennifer Weber and ASL choreographers Colin Analco and Amelia Hensley, that, like Deaf West’s “Spring Awakening” before it, uses the company’s mission to enhance and illuminate the original work’s themes. 

And while the circumstance of its central men may be heartbreakingly prevalent, that doesn’t mean “American Idiot” has lost any of its punk edge. There’s a rage within the characters for which Green Day’s musical opus is a pitch-perfect match. Opening rock highlights like “St. Jimmy” and “Holiday” through to the down-tempo love song “When It’s Time” and Whatsername’s wailing kiss-off to Johnny’s addiction, “Letterbomb,” all make for one hell of a musical. 

It doesn’t all work – the rock opera’s minimalist book doesn’t quite fill in all the narrative blanks – but it captures a feeling and ignites the heart just the same.

The post ‘American Idiot’ LA Theater Review: 20 Years Later, Green Day’s Music Is More Than Just a Millennial Howl appeared first on TheWrap.

My opinion of “Our Town” is somewhat less rapturous, and it’s because I’m something of an expert on the subject of small towns, which Albee, Mamet and even Wilder are not. They were born in, respectively, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin. I was born and raised in a town that had an even cornier name than Grover’s Corner and under half its population. I grew up in Nora Springs, Iowa, and the Catholic church wasn’t “across the tracks,” as it is in Wilder’s play, but 10 miles away in another town. The  local school board wouldn’t even hire a Catholic to be a teacher in my hometown until after JFK had been assassinated.

The famous graveyard scene that is the third act of “Our Town” also strikes me as a little too bucolic despite its dark intimations about eternity and its lesson that we need to embrace life fully. A walk through the cemetery at Nora Springs always brought back a story my maternal grandmother used to tell, and there was no more Catholic a woman in the world than Ida M. Hofler. When she moved to town off the family farm that was land stolen from the Osage Nation, the old country doctor there told my grandma that she’d be shocked to learn how many women laid in the cemetery because they died from botched abortions. This was 1911, two years before “Our Town” ends and 27 years before Wilder wrote it.

In “Our Town,” the big scandal is that one corpse in the cemetery got there by offing himself. We’re told people don’t talk much about this suicide in Grover’s Corner. Strange, the ultimate moral sin was always a hot topic of conversation in Nora Springs, right up there with all those young women who had babies six or seven months after their wedding day.

Small towns hold no nostalgia for me, and I’d bet they don’t hold much for the director of this “Our Town” revival. Kenny Leon begins the play with three songs of worship, one of which is “Braided Prayer,” sung in Hebrew even though the word “Jew” is never mentioned in Wilder’s play. Under Leon’s direction, one of the two families that are neighbors in Grover’s Corner is Black, and when their son marries the other family’s white daughter, there is not a race riot. The biggest scandal in town remains an alcoholic preacher. I wasn’t aware of a Black family living in Nora Springs until 2013 when I went back there for my father’s funeral.

That these thoughts ran around in my head while I watched Leon’s production is a credit to what his direction brings to “Our Town.” Best of all, I enjoyed watching Jim Parsons play the Stage Manager and how he came off even gayer than he did in “The Boys in the Band.” His queerness is especially appreciated when, in “Our Town,” he talks about everybody getting married at a certain age as if by clockwork. He reminded me of so many bachelor ministers, priests and preachers who were queer as could be and the townspeople didn’t have a clue.

Wilder’s play has always captured the by-rote quality of life in small-town America and its citizens blindness to controversies they don’t want to confront. These characters are dead long before they end up in the cemetery. That’s my very personal take on “Our Town,” having lived for 18 years in one of these tiny hell holes — and no, I don’t consider it as the best American play ever. Not by a long shot.

“Our Town” plays best with city folk, like Albee and Mamet, who find its initial sunniness charming and think its characters are such simple souls that it takes no effort to feel superior to them. For me, Wilder’s faux sunlight in the first act just makes my skin crawl. When the Stage Manager tells us how the population of Grover’s Corner has gone from around two to three thousand, all I can think about is the lack of opportunity and diversity. Yes, Wilder is speaking to a greater human condition. But if that’s the case, why didn’t he set his story in Brooklyn? Because set in a city, the playwright wouldn’t charm anybody by scattering kernels of corn all over his act.

This latest Broadway revival of “Our Town” doesn’t sink Wilder’s reputation the way Lincoln Center Theater’s 2022 revival of “The Skin of Our Teeth” did. As I wrote in my review of that disastrous production, I hadn’t seen that many people walk out during intermission since the Met Opera last performed Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aaron.”

Leon’s “Our Town” solves that problem, in part, by not having an intermission. The Stage Manager now simply informs us that Act 1 and then Act 2 have finished, the audience applauds, and we’re off to Act 3 without a break. “Our Town” now runs 100 minutes without intermission, and I have to ask this: Would you do that to any three-act play that normally runs around two and a half hours if you were a director who considered it the best American play ever?

In addition to Parsons’ pitch-perfect Stage Manager, Billy Eugene Jones and Richard Thomas bring real authenticity to the play’s two fathers, as does Ephraim Sykes in the role of the groom-widower George Gibbs. An extreme condescension, however, enters into the picture with several of the female actors’ performances thanks to the costumes, by Dede Ayite, which are dreadful. Katie Holmes’ mother wears earrings that are diamond studs. Michelle Wilson’s mother wears gold drop earrings. Zoey Deutch’s daughter wears a lace miniskirt. And Julie Halston’s town gossip hasn’t changed her coif or clothes since she last played Bitsy von Muffling in “And Just Like That.” If there’s a dramatic logic to these displays of money, it escapes me. Halston somehow manages to escape the burden of her appearance to deliver a credible performance.

Holmes, on the other hand, also makes a mess of her kitchen, especially when her mother character prepares breakfast and the Barrymore Theatre is suddenly invaded with wafts of frying bacon. We get to smell the bacon, but since everything is mimed, we don’t see the bacon or the frying pan, spatula, plates and glasses. I think Holmes cracked the eggs into the orange juice.

The post ‘Our Town’ Broadway Review: Jim Parsons and Katie Holmes Walk Different Paths appeared first on TheWrap.

“The Counter” features what used to be called back in the 1950’s “the little people.” There’s a waitress, Katie (Susannah Flood) who works the early morning shift at the counter of a greasy spoon. It is not a very successful business, it seems. Every day, she has only one person to serve, Paul (Anthony Edwards), who is her first and perhaps only customer. What “Groundhog Day” is to rodents, Meghan Kennedy’s new play is to coffee.

“The Counter” opened Wednesday at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre, and it could be called a two-hander if not for the fact that a woman named Peg (Amy Warren) shows up shortly before its 75-minutes wrap. Kennedy’s play follows Jen Silverman’s “The Roommate” and Max Wolf Friedlich’s “Job,” both of which are now playing on Broadway but suffer from the same skimpiness of detail and character. All three plays try to make up for their meagerness with a dollop of sensationalism. In “Job,” someone is held hostage. In “The Roommate,” a very ordinary woman becomes a joyous criminal. In “The Counter,” we are treated to serious physical and mental health concerns. (I’m trying not to be a spoiler here.)

In “The Counter,” the weightiness of the subject matter does bring about some suspense. Will Katie or won’t Katie comply with Jack’s outrageous wish? David Cromer directs Flood and Edwards to give very low-key kitchen-sink performances, which is apt considering the eatery locale, which is a most realistic set by Walt Spangler. For a moment, when Paul lets go with his big request of Katie, it appears that Kennedy is reaching for another “Nighthawk,” by Edward Hopper, but set in the early-morning hours.

Even though the play lasts only 75 minutes, it divides neatly into three acts. In the first third, Kennedy gives both Katie and Paul intriguing “Strange Interlude” moments in which each of them delivers his or her private thoughts without the other character hearing those thoughts. Then Paul delivers his bombshell, which is dramatic and promising. And then Kennedy spends the last third of her play defusing the shock of that moment by turning “The Counter” into a most sentimental journey: Everything connects! Everybody has a purpose in life! Frankly, I was hoping for the opposite — that Katie would carry out Paul’s request.

Death hovers over these two characters, and, no doubt, when they finally pass away, they will have a lot to talk about with the black-and-white characters from Chayevsky’s “Marty.”

There was a time in the theater when a play like “The Counter” – or “Job” or “The Roommate” – would have been paired with another play. Think of Edward Albee’s “The American Dream” and “The Zoo Story.” There was also Elaine May and Alan Arkin’s funny triptych “Power Plays” that arrived just before the turn of the century. Since then, a night in the theater is shorter than an afternoon at the movies. Jez Butterworth’s “The Hills of California” just opened on Broadway and a revival of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” opens tomorrow night. The difference between those plays and “The Counter” is the difference between a full meal and a bite-size snack.

The post ‘The Counter’ Off Broadway Review: This Greasy Spoon Serves Nothing but Coffee appeared first on TheWrap.