Humbled and Overwhelmed

Solea Pfeiffer as Eva Peron, photo @Sara Krulwich For the second time in a week I've seen an operatic work about a highly polarizing historical figure. Last Friday I saw Philip Glass's Akhnaten and tonight I saw New York City Center's production of Evita . I've never actually seen Evita live before. I can't believe I'm using Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice as examples of skillful dramaturges but Evita was everything that Akhnaten wasn't. Tim Rice was not afraid to paint his own picture of Eva Perón which mixed fact with fiction. Webber's music portrays the different facets of Perón-- her naked ambition in "Goodnight and Thank You" and her shiny charisma in the anthem "Don't Cry for Me Argentina." So I know that Philip Glass is a much superior composer to ALW, but Evita was engaging in all the ways Akhnaten wasn't.

Regular readers of this blog might know this already but every year I take my mom to a carefully picked, PG-rated, old-fashioned musical (the only type my mom will go to). I call them momsicals. We've been to Lion King , Cats , Phantom of the Opera,  and  Hello Dolly!. When I asked her what the next Momsical would be, she said "Carousel." She was adamant about it too, so on April 1 we went to see the new Broadway revival of Carousel .

Kelli O'Hara and Patrick Wilson, photo @ Sara Krulwich When New York City Center announced that the chief Encores! presentation of their season would be Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon , tickets sold out so quickly that you would have thought the musical only came around once in a hundred years. Oh wait ... Anyway tonight's performance was one of glorious highs and depressing lows. Let's start with the positive here: this was a lavish, fully-staged performance. They spent good money on this. It didn't have the feel of a semi-staged concert at all -- there were colorful costumes, enough props and some background projections to evoke the world of the Scottish highlands. This is a production that could transfer to Broadway with minimal adjustments. A few more sets (a ramp served as an all-purpose entrance and exit tool) and less amateurish projections and we'll have a great show.  Of course if it moved to Broadway it probably wouldn't have had the full orch

Government Inspector, photo @Carol Rossegg Over the past week for whatever reason I've seen 5 shows. Two were revisits ( The Great Comet , closing on September 3, and Groundhog Day ) and three were new to me: The Play that Goes Wrong , Government Inspector , and Prince of Broadway . Of all the shows by far the biggest highlight was Government Inspector . It's playing in the off-Broadway New World Stages theater. GO SEE IT BEFORE IT CLOSES ON AUGUST 20. Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's famous play had a synergy of great casting, direction, and production values. The whole evening had the audience in stitches. Gogol's satirical play has lost none of its bite and relevance -- the snobbery, ignorance, selfishness, and corruption of the public officials in the play could be transplanted to modern times without any adjustments.

Unit set of the Kittredges' living room My theater blitz continues: I attended the second preview of the revival of John Guare's  Six Degrees of Separation on April 6th. I know that it's the second preview and thus the show is still ironing out the wrinkles, but I think this revival is well worth attending for several reasons. this is just a well-constructed, well-written, thought-provoking play and even if you've seen the movie I think a live performance is worth seeing. Some aspects of the play are dated. It sounds unlikely nowadays that an art dealer can really own a Fifth Avenue apartment, and the characterization of the Ivy League Kids is overly broad. But the play still makes us think about uncomfortable issues of race, class, identity, and, for lack of a better word, how much of the "liberal" New York population is really so that rich upper class Manhattan Brahmins can feel less guilty for being, well, filthy rich. The Cats jokes are appropriate as

Bette Midler in Hello Dolly! Photo @ Julia Cervantes This was a big Broadway blitz for me. On Friday evening, I attended City Center's Encores! presentation of Cole Porter's   The New Yorker's .  A day later it was time for Divine Miss M (aka Bette Midler) and the highly publicized revival of Hello Dolly ! Finally I watched Glenn Close get ready for her closeup in the revival of her star vehicle, Sunset Boulevard .

Cats! photo @ Richard Termine Last year I took my mom to see The Lion King , which I decided would be the perfect momsical. This year I decided to extend the tradition. My mom will only see family friendly musicals. And so my mom, predictably, chose Cats (what else)? The reason: "I love cats." (She does.) A picture of the junkyard set So I took my mom to see Cats , and it was an even more perfect mom-sical. I never saw the original 1982 Broadway version but I've read that this revival (also directed by Trevor Nunn) hasn't changed much. The dancing and lighting effects do have a very 1970's  disco  jellicle ball feel to them. My mom has a hard time understanding dialogue in the theater. Cats is a pure song-and-dance extravaganza. There's almost no storyline or character development (even my mom said "I wish there was more of a story") but she loved the non-stop dancing numbers, the cool set (the stage and theater is decorated like an aban