Somehow, Someday, Somewhere

My first clue that there was trouble afoot in the current Broadway revival of West Side Story came a few weeks ago, when I ran into Curtis Holbrook -- who plays Action in the show -- at a Duane Reade on Ninth Avenue. At first, I wasn't sure it was Curtis because his hair was skinhead-short rather than a style that would be appropriate to the 1950s, when WSS is set. I innocently asked him if he was wigged on stage, and he replied, "No, this is how I wear my hair in the show. They wanted me to look tougher."

In case you haven't heard, the new West Side Story at the Palace Theatre is directed by the nonagenarian Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book for this show that is most beloved for its immortal Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim score and for Jerome Robbins' brilliant direction and choreography. Unfortunately, as Laurents proved with last season's Gypsy (for which he also wrote the book), the fact that someone is a good or even great writer doesn't by any means imply that he is also a talented director, even when dealing with his own material.

To be sure, there are a few good ideas mixed in with the myriad mistakes of this production. For example, Laurents has come up with a neat way of avoiding the unintentional laughter than usually happens at the beginning of the "Tonight" duet scene, when Tony runs through a Puerto Rican neighborhood yelling "Maria" and only one woman comes out on the fire escape. Also, the director should be credited with the superb casting of the lovely, golden-voiced, wonderfully natural Josefina Scaglione as Maria and the amazing triple-threat Karen Olivo as Anita. But the praiseworthy aspects of this WSS are far outweighed by innumerable blunders.

We know we've got a problem as soon as the curtain goes up on that famous brass fanfare: The Jets saunter down to the lip of the stage and glare at the audience in silence for a VERY LONG moment before they start snapping their fingers and the action finally begins. While they're posed in this fashion, we can't help noticing how anachronistic to the '50s are their hair styles, ranging from crew-cuts to mop-tops, and their costumes, designed by David C. Woolard. (A recent New York Times article detailed the research that went into designing a 100% period-authentic police uniform for this revival's Officer Krupke to wear, but it's hard to understand how that specific example of painstaking verisimilitude is supposed to jibe with the scatter-shot clothing and hairdos that pervade the production.) On the plus side, James Youmans' sets are period-accurate and wonderfully atmospheric, harking back to Oliver Smith's originals without slavishly imitating them.

Robbins' choreography has been wisely and well recreated here (by Joey McKneely), but the pacing of the danced Prologue is off just enough to scuttle the excitement. Bad pacing remains a problem throughout the show in terms of both the dialogue and the music, with conductor Patrick Vaccariello -- who previously deferred to Laurents' iron-fist control in Gypsy -- literally stopping the orchestra at certain points in "I Feel Pretty," "Gee, Office Krupke," and other numbers so that some silly piece of stage business can happen. (What would Bernstein have to say about all this? I shudder to think.)

Speaking of the orchestra, I'm sorry to report that it's over-amplified to the point where some of the brass passages in the "Dance at the Gym" hurt my ears. Why shell out big bucks to have 30 musicians in an acoustically viable Broadway pit and then crank up the volume of the sound system so much that you might as well have gone with only 10 players? Did the folks in charge here learn nothing from the Lincoln Center revival of South Pacific? Apparently not.

And what of the cast? Aside from the excellent Scaglione and Olivo, almost everyone is wanting in one way or another. Matt Cavenaugh sings well as Tony -- at least, he did at the performance I attended -- but his performance is affected, his New York accent is unconvincing, he looks too mature for the role, and he's the wrong type of handsome for it. (The form-fitting, long-sleeve T-shirt Cavenaugh wears nearly throughout the show does a good job of showing off his pecs but makes him stand out like a sore thumb in certain scenes, such as the dance at the gym.)

Cody Green, who plays Riff, is a first-rate dancer, as are all of the Jets and Sharks; but Green isn't a strong actor, and he evinces a bit of a speech impediment (trouble with esses). The aforementioned, usually excellent Curtis Holbrook overacts as Action, no doubt at Laurents' behest. And though George Akram is well cast as Bernardo, he doesn't make a very strong impression -- partly because Laurents has stubbornly insisted that the "America" number be performed in its original version, by the Shark women alone, rather than including the men as in the multi-Oscar-winning movie of WSS.

Many of Laurents' innovations fall under the category of "good idea in theory but not so much in practice" -- for example, having some of the dialogue and lyrics delivered in Spanish (as translated by Lin-Manuel Miranda), and having the vocal solo in the "Somewhere" ballet sung by a boy soprano. The Spanish doesn't work because there's just too much of it; particularly annoying are the passages in the "Quintet" where the Jets and Sharks sing in English and Spanish simultaneously, resulting in a muddle. The boy soprano doesn't work because that's the wrong type of voice for this music and also because the kid only appears fleetingly on stage before his big moment, so he seems a non-sequitur.

If you attend this West Side Story, you'll probably feel your mind and emotions reeling as the production lurches from effective to disappointing to infuriating. In the heretofore magical moment during the "Dance at the Gym" when Tony and Maria fall in love with each other at first sight, Howell Binkley's lighting doesn't isolate them from the other dancers and bring them into a world of their own, as it should. During the first scene in Doc's drugstore, the Jets show their contempt for Lt. Schrank (Steve Bassett) by "menacingly" snapping their fingers -- but the rhythm of their snapping is so slow that they can't keep it together, so they come across as more pathetic than menacing. "Gee, Officer Krupke" lays an egg because the number is played not for comedic irony but for bitter, dead-serious irony. And so on.

The infelicities of this production continue right through the last scene, where Laurents' direction is borderline absurd: Maria still asks "How do you fire this gun, Chino?" but now she wields the weapon with the brutal assurance of a terrorist, sticking the muzzle of the gun in Action's throat, then grabbing him by the back of the neck and forcing him to his knees. (I wish I were exaggerating about this.) And though the staging of the show's final moments is arguably more "realistic" than the original, it's also far less emotionally affecting. As my theater companion said, "I cried anyway, but not as much as I usually do." I also had tears in my eyes, mostly from sadness over a missed opportunity. (See below.)

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In August 2006, I wrote an article lamenting the fact that there were no plans for a 50th anniversary Broadway production of West Side Story. Kevin McCollum, who with his producing partner Jeffrey Seller had tried but failed to get such a project together, told me what went wrong:

"At one point, we did have the rights. We love the show -- we think it's one of the most important musicals ever written -- but the project just didn't work out in terms of the timing and how everyone wanted to go about it. As a producer, you want to put together the whole creative team for a show. The first thing you do is find a director who shares your vision; Jerry Mitchell is someone we wanted to work with, and we had ideas for the other members of the team. We wanted to bring in some new, creative people, but the various authors and their estates weren't on the same page as we were. Revivals come with baggage. We tried to get everyone to agree with the direction we wanted to take, but that didn't happen, so we gave the rights back."

At the time, I also managed to speak briefly with Arthur Laurents, who stated in no uncertain terms: "There is going to be a Broadway revival [of WSS], but it won't be for the 50th anniversary. There's an entirely new idea of how to do the show -- and I will not tell you what that is." As it turned out, McCollum and Seller are lead producers of the current revival, with Laurents directing.

To wrap up my 2006 article, I wrote: "I can't help thinking that a well-produced, well-cast, and well-directed West Side Story could be the Broadway goldmine of the 2000s." Given reports of huge advance tickets sales for the revival that's now at the Palace, it seems I was right about the goldmine part but that the "well produced, cast, and directed" proviso turned out to be unnecessary.

There may somehow, someday be a worthy Broadway revival of West Side Story, but probably not in my lifetime; so I'll continue to attend regional, community theater, college, and high school productions of the show and hope for the best somewhere beyond midtown Manhattan. Believe it or not, the finest WSS in my experience was staged at the old Jones Beach theater, with Christine Andreas and Barry Williams (of Brady Bunch fame) as Maria and Tony. (That gives you an idea of how long ago it was!)

As it happens, I'll be seeing a high school production of WSS in a couple of weeks. I'm expecting it to be more traditional and, in that respect, far better in sum than the revival that will likely be ensconced at the Palace for years. What a pity that one of the show's co-authors should have done such a poor job of staging this acknowledged masterpiece of the American musical theater.

Audrey II

Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe are arguably the two most iconic movie actresses of the mid-20th century. Given that they represent very different types of female beauty and personality, it's fascinating to learn that Monroe was originally considered for what is perhaps Hepburn's most famous role.

"It sounds crazy to us now, but they wanted Marilyn to be in Breakfast at Tiffany's." So says Cheryl Stern, co-author and star of The Transport Group's new musical, Being Audrey. "What a different movie that would have been! Marilyn is actually more similar to the character Holly Golightly as described in the book [by Truman Capote], and it would have been a far more obvious choice to have someone so overtly sexual playing this call girl. But of course, the movie is all the more poignant because we have skinny, super-classy Audrey Hepburn taking the 50 dollars in the powder room."

When I chatted with Stern recently, she told me about the development of Being Audrey and her own involvement in the project: "I've been a member of the Transport Group from the very beginning, as an actress and a writer. Ellen Weiss, a board member of the group and a wonderful composer/lyricist, had had this idea for a long time about a woman who's obsessed with Audrey Hepburn and travels into the world of Audrey's most famous films. When Ellen saw me as Mamie Eisenhower in Michael John LaChiusa's First Lady Suite at Transport, she said, 'That's the woman who has to play Audrey!' So we met and began throwing ideas around.

"We brought James Hindman onto the project, and he came up with a genius idea for what's happening with this character, Claire Stark: She's a middle-aged, Park Avenue woman who seemingly has it all but suddenly finds herself in a crisis that she doesn't know how to handle. It scares her so deeply that she retreats from reality and finds herself in the movies Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Love in the Afternoon, Funny Face, and Breakfast at Tiffany's."

During the course of the musical, which is set to run March 27-April 26 at 220 East 4th Street, Cheryl as Claire will assume the guises of Hepburn's characters in those films. And in an extension of the show's Purple Rose of Cairo-Wizard of Oz-esque conceit, the other cast members -- Brian Sutherland, Stephen Berger, Andrea Bianchi, Valerie Fagan, Michael Maricondi, Mark Ledbetter, and Blair Ross -- will appear both as people in Claire's life and the other actors/characters in the movies.

So, what is it about this particular actress and her filmography that inspired Weiss, Stern, Hindman, et al? "Audrey Hepburn represents perfection to so many women," says Stern. "I think that's because she was always authentic to herself. The reason we saw as her as so beautiful was because she found her own look and used what she had. Our show deals a lot with that question of identity, and one of the most fascinating things about Audrey is that she didn't copy anyone else. She was an original."

For more information, visit www.transportgroup.org.

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Somethin' Sort of Irish

Sure and I thought I had my bases covered for St. Patrick's Day this year: I was to interview actor Jeremy Bobb, who (a) looks as Irish as the day is long, (b) hails from Dublin (Ohio, but still Dublin!), (c) made his Broadway debut in the 2007 revival of the great Irish playwright Brian Friel's Translations before going on to play a character named Phelim O'Shaughnessy in Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, and (d) now has the plum role of the leprechaun Og in the City Center Encores! presentation of Finian's Rainbow.

I'll confess to being a little disappointed when Bobb told me he's only one-quarter Irish -- but I got over it. Certainly, his stage credentials as a son of Erin are solid. "I look like this, so that's how I tend to get cast," he says. "Not in my last two shows; I did the Donald Margulies play Shipwrecked at Primary Stages, and before that I was in Michael Weller's Beast at New York Theatre Workshop. There were no Irish people in those plays. But before that, I played a lot of them."

Folks who secure tickets to Finian's Rainbow will get to see and hear Bobb in his first professional musical theater role. "In my high school productions of Oklahoma! and Guys and Dolls, I was Will Parker and Sky Masterson, respectively. And in college, I did Blood Brothers. But as far as musicals go, that's been it for me -- until now. It's really exciting."

Before being cast as Og, a leprechaun who is slowly turning mortal because his crock of gold has been purloined, Bobb had only a passing aquaintance with Finian's Rainbow. "I had certainly heard a few of the songs, but I had never seen a production," he tells me. "And I haven't seen the movie with Fred Astaire, other than a few clips on YouTube. It thought it looked almost psychedelic."

The Encores! Finian's also stars Kate Baldwin as Sharon McLonergan, Cheyenne Jackson as Woody Mahoney, and Jim Norton as Finian, with such notables as Philip Bosco, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and Terri White in featured roles. "It's an honor to be among this group," says Bobb, who's especially thrilled to be sharing the stage with Norton: "When I was doing Is He Dead?, some of our producers were also on The Seafarer, so I got to see that show several times. Watching Jim Norton in that was like watching an instructional video on how to be a good actor."

Og's big number in Finian's is the wonderfully witty Burton Lane/E.Y. Harburg ditty "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love (I Love the Girl I'm Near). "It's basically four or five versions of the same joke, but so clever," says Bobb. "If you use the words correctly, you can get a nuanced version of the joke each time you do it." And is it easy for him to connect with the sentiment expressed in the lyrics? "Well," he says with a chuckle, "I think anybody with a dick can relate to that song!"

Finian's Rainbow will be performed March 26-29 at City Center. For more information, visit www.nycitycenter.org.

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A Plateful of Verismo

Over the decades during which Franco Zeffirelli designed and directed productions for the Metropolitan Opera and other first-rank companies throughout the world, his work came in for its share of brickbats, with more than a few observers rating several of his creations as overblown. But even the man's harshest critics would have to admit that his Met productions of the double-billed Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci -- now nearly 40 years old, and still revived often -- are exemplary, providing grandeur without bombast, passion without campy excess.

As seen in the current revival, Zeffirelli's Cav & Pag still look great, with two major caveats: huge creases in the cloud-filled cyclorama for Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria lend this otherwise gorgeous production the amateurish feel of a high school show; and some of the original stage business, such as the blocking of the choristers in the first scene of Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, has deteriorated into muddle. (David Kneuss is now credited as the stage director.)

This season, Cav & Pag are likely to draw audiences who've never before seen these productions, as star tenors Roberto Alagna and Jose Cura will be singing the roles of Turridu (Cav) and Canio (Pag) in separate stretches of performances. Alagna is first, making his role debut as Turrridu and bringing his Canio to the Met for the first time. It's a pleasure to report that, In both assignments, his tenor sounds more open and has less of an intrusive beat on high notes than I've heard in the past.

Alagna's still youthful good looks serve him in good stead as the hot-headed, hot-blooded Turiddu even as they make him seem physically miscast as Canio, the supposedly middle-aged clown whose wife is having a hot affair with a young villager. This must be the first time in the history of this opera that Canio has come across as sexier than Silvio, though Christopher Maltman certainly sings ardently in the latter-named role.

The rest of the principals are strong: Waltraud Meier brings a voice of Wagnerian force to Santuzza in Cav; soprano Nuccia Focile and tenor Tony Stevenson are perfectly cast as Nedda and Beppe in Pag; and baritone Alberto Mastromarino is vocally and dramatically superb as Alfio in the Mascagni work and Tonio in the Leoncavallo.

The chorus sings lustily and the orchestra plays beautifully, but this brings me to my final cavil about the performance I attended: Conductor Pietro Rizzo, in his Met debut, had some trouble keeping the singers and the musicians in synch. Perhaps this was at least partly due to opening night nerves? At any rate, here's hoping he'lll get into his groove as the run continues.

Rooms Full of Talent

Rooms, "a rock romance" by Paul Scott Goodman and Miriam Gordon, opened at New World Stages last night. And though the after-party was held more than 30 blocks north of the theater, at Calle Ocho (on Columbus Ave. between 81st and 82nd), EVERYONE showed up. Here are my photos of the shindig.

The mega-talented Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger star in Rooms as Scottish musicians and lovers Monica and Ian.

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Paul Scott Goodman, whose other credits include the musicals Bright Lights, Big City, Him & Her, and Alive in the World.

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Two generations of Schwartzes: Scott Schwartz (left), who directed Rooms, with his dad Stephen, the composer/lyricist of such shows as Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked

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Jesse Vargas (left), musical director of Rooms, with the ubiquitous Broadway maven Seth Rudetsky.

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Rudetsky with Celina Carvajal, who understudies the role of Monica and who has appeared on Broadway in Tarzan, Dracula, 42nd Street, and Cats.

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Here are Kritzer and Kreeger with Broadway star Raúl Esparza, who appeared in a previous version of Rooms that was presented at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2005.

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Among the other notables who attended the Rooms party were Jenn Colella (Urban Cowboy, High Fidelity, etc.) and maestro John McDaniel...

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...Kerry O'Malley, who'll soon be appearing in 1776 at the Paper Mill Playhouse, with Jeffry Denman, who recently starred on Broadway in White Christmas...

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...Karen Ziemba, last seen on Broadway in Curtains, with Stephen Schwartz...

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...and the hilarious Rachel Dratch, of Saturday Night Live fame.

They Both Reached for the Gunn!

Just when you were absolutely certain that every obscure old musical had already been revived in NYC in one form or another -- surprise! On Thursday evening, March 12, the invaluable Collegiate Chorale brought us an extremely rare concert performance of The Firebrand of Florence, the Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin operetta that only managed 43 Broadway performances in 1945. Featuring the New York City Opera orchestra and presented in the stunningly renovated Alice Tully Hall, the concert starred Nathan Gunn -- the gorgeous baritone who has recently been crossing over from opera to musical theater -- in the central role of artist/babe magnet Benvenuto Cellini, along with the beloved Victoria Clark, David Pittu, Terrence Mann, and a host of other major talents. Here are some pix from the after-party in the upstairs lounge at Tully.

Music of the Night

A Little Night Music is arguably the only true masterpiece of Stephen Sondheim that has not yet had a Broadway revival -- although there has been talk of one for years, and the Roundabout recently offered an all-star benefit concert performance of the show at Studio 54.

I think we can all expect to see Night Music back on Broadway for a run in the near future. But if you love the show and you don't want to wait, here's a heads-up: Beginning performances March 5 at the White Plains Performing Arts Center (WPPAC) is a fully staged production of this exquisite Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler musical about mis-matched lovers, with a cast headed by Broadway vets Penny Fuller, Mark Jacoby, Erin Davie, Rachel de Benedet, Stephen R. Buntrock, and Sheila Smith.

At a press preview last week, I thrilled to the vocalism of the production's liebeslieder singers. And based on Fuller's and Jacoby's performance of their final scene together and the "Send in the Clowns" reprise, it seems to me that they are close to ideal for the roles of Desirée and Fredrik.

Says Fuller, "I was just thinking the other day: I don't primarily do musicals, and yet I've been lucky enough to play some really great roles in musicals. When I was very young, I did Nellie in South Pacific and Carrie in Carousel. Then I did Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Eve Harrington in Applause, Elizabeth and Anne Boleyn in Rex. I wish I had gotten to play so many great parts in the dramatic canon."

Not long ago, Fuller was wonderful as the lead in Do I Hear a Waltz? -- music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Sondheim, book by Arthur Laurents -- at the George Street Playhouse. But, rather surprisingly, Night Music is her first experience in a show with both music and lyrics by Sondheim. "I wish I had done Company," she says. "That's the one missing from my list. And Follies. Oh, God! I have to go and see if I can get those parts!"

Fuller's most recent Broadway appearance was as Lucille in the late Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate, a role she will soon reprise at Hartford Stage. "It worked out perfectly," she says. "I get to do Night Music, then I get to rest a little, and then in May I'll go back to Lucille -- who's quite different from Desirée, as you know!"

Jacoby, who previously played Fredrik in a production of Night Music at the South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa, is looking forward to another go at the fellow. "There's so much to mine in this piece and in Sondheim in general," he says. "There's so much to question, so much digging to be done. I find the role of Fredrik difficult because he's so misdirected; he's going here and there, really searching for answers. It's very easy to relate to as a more-than-middle-aged man, I'll tell you that much."

But this very challenge is what makes Fredrik so interesting to Jacoby. "As actors, we're taught to make clear choices in our performances," he remarks, "but I feel that element of it is sometimes overrated. I think the questions are more important than the answers. Just as we don't always have answers in life, I don't think we necessarily need to say 'This is what it is' when playing a role.' That certainly applies to Sondheim, who's largely about ambiguity."

Directed by SIdney J. Burgoyne, with music direction by James Bassi and choreography by Melissa Rae Mahon and Sean McKnight, A Little Night Music will continue its run at WPPAC through March 22. The venue is far more quickly and easily accessible from Manhattan than you might guess. For more information, visit wppac.com.

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Don't Cry for Jeremy Piven!

If you thought partisan politics only happens in Washington, D.C., think again. On Thursday, February 26, Jeremy PIven attended a hearing at the offices of Actors' Equity Association to make his case as to why he should not be censured by the union for his abrupt departure from the Broadway revival of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow. At the end of the three-hour hearing, the five members of Equity who were present sided with their fellow actor, while the five attending members of The Broadway League -- a group made up largely of producers -- ruled against him.

In case you haven't been following what has turned into one of the two most widely covered theater stories of recent months (the other being Patti LuPone's photographer-induced meltdown during a performance of Gypsy), here's the sorrowful précis: In December, Piven left the company of Speed-the-Plow with no notice whatsoever, stating that he was seriously ill due to high levels of mercury in his bloodstream.

In the ensuing weeks, doubt was cast on his claim of severe illness, and it was strongly suggested that he left the show out of sheer boredom. Reportedly, Piven had often gone out partying after performances, and photos of him doing just that were printed in various media outlets. It was also reported that he would frequently show up at the theater minutes before curtain time, as he is said to have done during his Off-Broadway stint in Fat Pig a few seasons ago; and that he had been trying to wrangle out of his Speed-the-Plow contract for some time before his exit, personally phoning other actors to see if he could find someone to replace him in the role of Hollywood hotshot Bobby Gould.

After the hearing at Equity, Piven granted an exclusive interview to The New York Times. Given that exclusivity, it's all the more disappointing that the resulting article -- written by Patrick Healy -- either glossed over or completely failed to address several key issues in the dispute, including those noted above. Healy wrote that Piven "twice broke down in tears as he described a health scare that he said made him exhausted and disoriented during some Speed-the-Plow performances and ultimately left him fearful that he could die."

Even if that's true, it seems clear that Piven acted irresponsibly in at least one respect. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say we believe he was so sick that he needed to withdraw from the show immediately. But why did he skip town the next day? Can we not assume that New York City is home to at least a few doctors with enough skill and experience to treat mercury poisoning? Isn't it reasonable to think that, if Piven had quit eating fish and had begun treatment for his illness right after his diagnosis, his health might have improved quickly and significantly enough that he could have returned to the show after a medical leave and played out the rest of his contract?

This point seems almost impossible to argue with, so it's hard to fathom how the Actors' Equity members who sided with Piven at the February 26 hearing could have come to the conclusion that he did not act unprofessionally and did not deserve some kind of censure. (I can't help imagining what might have happened if Raúl Esparza and Elisabeth Moss, Piven's co-stars in STP, had been on hand for the hearing.)

Because of the split decision, no action was taken against Piven. But the day after the hearing, the following press release was issued by the producers of Speed-the-Plow: "The grievance went as expected yesterday. The grievance committee (made up of League and Equity representatives) did not rule for either side, and we will be filing for arbitration as provided by our contract." Stay tuned!