Art, life, and other scribblings.
Thoughts and prayers welcome as well.
Used to be poisonivywalloftext.blogspot.com but some people did not know how to behave on the blogosphere.
Andrea Chenier
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Ugh, December was not a good month. Had to cancel several plans. But I'm back in business and yesterday I went to the OONY's Andrea Chenier. My review can be found here at parterrebox.
Benko as Fanny It's been a busy week. I ended up seeing three shows in a short amount of time: Funny Girl , How I Learned to Drive , and Rigoletto . Two of the shows were wonderful. Of course, it's the not-so-wonderful show I'll focus on the most. I deliberately avoided Beanie Feldstein in Funny Girl , but when Beanie came down with covid , I decided to buy a ticket. I'd heard nothing but glowing reviews about Beanie's understudy Julie Benko. The good news: Benko deserves all the accolades. Her voice is AMAZING. No, she doesn't sound anything like Barbra Streisand, but she has a classic Broadway belt. She also has a surprisingly sweet sound when she's not belting. She is a decent dancer and numbers like "His Love Makes Me Beautiful" and "Rat Tat-Tat-Tat" were fun and funny. Her portrayal is on point too -- she mixes naivete and moxie, all in a tiny, pretty package. She has good chemistry with Ramin Karimloo (Nicky). There are other at
One critic wrote about Sarah Bernhardt's portrayal of Fedora: "Sardou's Fedora , the strongest drama written in recent years, with Sarah Bernhardt as the heroine--a character unquestionably suggested by the eccentric French actress's remarkable skill in the simulation of conflicting passions--presents a combination of ingenuity, constructive and dramatic eloquence that is not likely to be equaled on the stage within the knowledge of playgoers now living." Act 2 of Fedora, photo @Ken Howard Last night I saw the Met's new production of Umberto Giordano's Fedora and reread this critic and wondered what got lost in transit between the play (by Victorien Sardou) and the operatic adaptation (libretto by Arturo Colautti). Because the opera comes across as a fun, intermittently entertaining soap opera but nothing more. There's no emotional buy-in for the opera's melodramatic plot. Characters are dropped onstage, and their backstory and motivations are of
It's always tricky reviewing musicals or plays in the early-preview time frame. You realize that many of the acting and directing choices might be adjusted and even completely changed before opening night. saw the Lincoln Center Theater's revival of Camelot on March 15, about one week into previews. So for the purposes of fairness, I'm not going to criticize some of the acting or directing choices that I think need improvement. They could improve ... or not. However, the biggest issue with this revival is something I don't see improving. That would be Aaron Sorkin's new book for the Lerner and Loewe musical. It was so wrong-headed, so ill-conceived, that a few days later I'm still in shock at how bad it was. By the way, as a disclaimer: I love Sorkin's work. I loved The Social Network and To Kill a Mockingbird . I also enjoy Bart Sher's revivals of classic musicals. My Fair Lady was mostly wonderful, South Pacific was all wonderful. This is why the
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