On the eve of the 67th annual Tony Awards, recognizing the season’s bests, here are reviews of some of the season’s standout productions:
Matilda: If there were an award for best British import with highest level of hype, this engaging, but often unintelligible musical from the Royal Shakespeare Company would win hands down. It did win London’s Olivier Award and looks poised to cop the Best Musical Tony, even if it doesn’t really live up to its advance word.
Based on Roald Dahl’s dark-toned slyly subversive children’s book, it centers on a 9-year-old girl who loves books, although her cartoonish parents prefer her to watch more television instead. At school, Matilda is caught between the polar opposites of nasty headmistress Agatha Trunchbull (campy Bertie Carvel, skipping about in panto drag) and warm, nurturing Miss Honey (Lauren Ward), whose lineage is positively Dickensian.
As good as they are, the show is carried by its talented pint-sized cast, and particularly the quartet of girls who share the role of Matilda in rotation. If they are as winning as Sophia Gennusa, they would have surely won a Tony or four — Billy Elliot style — but they were churlishly ruled ineligible to compete.
The kids whip through Peter Darling’s robotic choreography, which winks at the moves of Spring Awakening. I’m pretty such Tim Minchin’s lyrics are clever, but he has packed them so densely and the tots have such high-pitched voices that many of the words are hard to understand on first hearing at the Shubert Theatre. It is no little problem. But you can always spend your tme admiring Rob Howell’s crafty set design, which has a motif based on giant Scrabble tiles.
MATILDA, Shubert Theatre, 225 W. 44th St., $32-$167. (212) 239-6200.
***
Kinky Boots: With a little backlash against presumptive winner Matilda, the lucrative Best Musical Tony Award could go to this audience-pleasing, but surprisingly conventional show, based on a little-seen 2005 movie. It brings to Broadway a new theater composer, pop star-songwriter Cyndi Lauper, who demonstrates a command of the theatrical genre, while sticking closely to her own rock sound. The result is a score that is catchy, smart and rich in character.
With only a few exceptions, Harvey Fierstein’s book sticks closely to the film’s plot about a guy who reluctantly inherits his father’s failing show factory in northern England. In a last-ditch effort to save the business from going under, he switches production to a niche market — making high-heel boots for drag queens. Such a story line has potential, however far-fetched, yet the results seem like they have been stitched together from outtakes of such shows as La Cage aux Folles, The Full Monty and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
Director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell takes those inspirations and turns them into a string of high-stepping, high-energy production numbers, while Fierstein draws us into the psyche of drag queens.
Billy Porter heads the cast as cross-dressing Lola, with such charisma and vocal power that he overshadows Stark Sands as factory owner Charlie. In a supporting role of a factory worker for falls for the boss, Annaleigh Ashford has an appealing radiance. Otherwise, Kinky Boots is about a quart low on originality, but it still manages to be a crowd-pleaser.
KINKY BOOTS, Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 W. 45th St., $77-$142, (212) 239-6200.
***
Pippin: If the race for Best Musical is close, the Best Musical Revival category is a blowout, with the reconceived return to Broadway of 1972’s Pippin the prohibitive, odds-on favorite. When it wins, that will mark the third revival Tony for Diane Paulus, artistic director of Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre, who previously tinkered with and revitalized Hair and Porgy and Bess.
For Pippin (a callow Matthew James Thomas), the anachronism-laden tale of the son of King Charlemagne, she has set it inside a circus tent — thanks to the considerable assistance of the French Canadian big top troupe, Les 7 Doigts de La Main (Seven Fingers). Circus stunts take the place of the many magic tricks in the original production, and at their best, they illustrate and further the plot. Patina Miller (of Sister Act) is all smiles and spandex as the stage managing Leading Player, able enough, but she misses the crucial layer of menace that Ben Vereen delivered so effortlessly.
Also downplayed is Bob Fosse’s signature razzle-dazzle, though choreographer Chet Walker comes up with dances in the master’s style. If Paulus emphasizes spectacle over plot, that is merely an accurate assessment of the show’s weaknesses. What it does have is a handful of juicy supporting roles, well-filled here by Terrence Mann (Charlemagne) and Rachel Bay Jones as a widow who eventually domesticates Pippin. Still, for sheer attention thievery, you have got to see Andrea Martin (Pippin’s grandma Berthe), who earns a standing ovation mid-song for her high-flying trapeze act.
PIPPIN, Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45th St. $58-$148. (212) 239-6200.
***
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike: Playwright Christopher Durang is mainly a creature of off-Broadway, but with his latest smart-aleck comedy, the Chekhovian Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, he moves uptown with a more mainstream entertainment without compromising his sharp-edged, satiric view of the world.
It is set in a Bucks County country house, where grown siblings Vanya (David Hyde Pierce) and Sonia (Kristine Nielsen) reunite with their sister Masha (Sigourney Weaver). Yes, their parents were Chekhov-fixated academics.
Masha, a celebrated movie star, has been supporting the others, but she now returns with boy toy Spike in tow, planning to sell the family estate. Each of them brims with yearning and regret, not unlike their namesakes, but Durang knows how to mine such melancholy into high-octane comedy.
Nielsen, a veteran of many Durang plays, expertly delivers a second-act phone sequence that is both wryly comic and heart-rendingly touching. Then Pierce takes over with a ranting monologue about his nostalgia for the bygone ’50s. Director Nicholas keeps a relatively tight rein on the antic proceedings, and introduces a terrific new member to the Durang rep company, Shalita Grant, as housekeeper Cassandra who has a voodoo touch.
In part for his body of work and in part for this confection with some underlying substance, look for Vanya and Sonia, etc. to cop the Best Play Tony.
VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE, Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th St., through Sun., July 28. $62-$142. (212) 239-6200.
***
The Assembled Parties: Richard Greenberg apparently is in demand these days, with three productions on Broadway this season. There’s his short-lived, quickly dismissed adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a newly opened musical of the 2002 film soap opera Far From Heaven, which drew an underwhelming critical response, and The Assembled Parties, probably the best reviewed new work of the year. The buzz is that it will lose the Tony to Vanya, but I found it to be the better play, a drama of substance despite its many, well-crafted laugh lines.
Nearly every character speaks in a hyper-articulate manner, giving it the intended feel of the kind of play they just don’t write anymore in these post-Mamet days. The Bascovs, a Jewish family of affluence and education, lives comfortably in a 14-room apartment — the kind they don’t build anymore — on Central Park West. We see them on two Christmases, 1980 and 2000, just as Reagan is about to take over the White House and, later, George W.
While there are political references sprinkled about, The Assembled Parties is a more personal play of expectations and disappointments, of family secrets harbored and revealed, or resentments, infidelities and even suggestions of fraud. We view the Bascovs through the eyes of an invited outsider, golden boy son Scott’s college friend Jeff (agog, sensitive Jeremy Shamos). Invited to help Scott’s mother with the holiday meal, Jeff falls in love with her and so do we. In large part that is because she is played by Jessica Hecht, giving a lilting performance as a child star who breathes optimism like oxygen.
She is the standout in an ensemble beautifully modulated by Manhattan Theatre Club artistic director, on a stunning, award-worthy set by Santo Loquasto. And as she did in last season’s Other Desert Cities, Judith Light impresses in support as Hecht’s sister-in-law from Jersey, a woman of wisdom and wisecracks. What’s not to like?
THE ASSEMBLED PARTIES, Friedman Theatre, 261 W. 47th St., through July 7. $67-$137, (212) 239-2600.
***
I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers: I am no fan of one-person shows, but sometimes the performer is so compelling that you simply have to overlook the built-in limitations of the genre. Certainly that is the case with Bette Midler, who holds court from a Beverly Hills couch, dishing dirt as Hollywood super-agent and deal maker extraordinaire, Sue Mengers.
As the show curtain puts it, “WARNING: This play contains profanity, smoking, alcohol consumption, drug use and gossip.” That pretty well sums up the 90-minute experience, except that Midler makes it all so compelling, even if you had never heard of Mengers.
She has a couple of clever co-conspirators in playwright John Logan (Red) and director Joe Mantello (Take Me Out, Wicked). Logan has clearly researched his subject and shaped her tales of the Hollywood A-list for maximum impact by Midler. And even though she never leaves that couch until the final moments of the show, Mantello has staged every minute creep along the velour.
She spins insider stories about such stars in Mengers’ corral as Faye Dunaway, Ali MacGraw, Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds, but saves the most dramatic for her most lucrative discovery, Barbra Streisand, whom she knows is about to call to fire her. That bit of suspense is enough to give the play and its string of tales some context. But as the show business cliché puts it, Midler could read the phone book — kids, ask your folks what that is — and we would be enthralled.
I’LL EAT YOU LAST, A CHAT WITH SUE MENGERS, Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St., through Sun., June 30. $87-$152. (212) 239-6200.
***
The Nance: Douglas Carter Beane’s portrait of a gay baggy-pants burlesque comic in the late 1930s, a time when homosexuals were persecuted and burlesque was on the wane, The Nance, is a serious, though not always successful attempt to blend social drama with vintage comedy sketches.
Like I’ll Eat You Last, it depends on a star turn and it gets it from Nathan Lane, who sinks his teeth into his juiciest role since Max Bialystock. He plays Chauncey Miles, a sad, self-loathing gay man whose burlesque specialty is playing an exaggerated gay stereotype. Worse yet, he is a Republican, who cannot see the irony in supporting the New York mayor and his crusades to crack down on burlesque and on the city’s homosexuals.
In the opening scene, Chauncey hangs out at the Automat restaurant, hoping to pick up a gay trick, under the nose of the vice squad. He does attract a down-on-his-luck younger guy named Ned, who moves into Chauncey’s flat as they try to forge an ongoing relationship. Interspersed with Chauncey’s story are scenes of him onstage at the Irving Place Theatre, running through wheezy old gags that Lane manages to make fresh, or at least grimace over at length when they fall flat.
Lane is a master of comic timing, but what impresses here is his work in the dramatic scenes. His Chauncey is a tortured soul, trapped in his skin and lashing out with a savage comic wit. Onstage at the Irving, he is backed by Lewis J. Stadlen as his trusty second banana, as well as Cady Huffman (also of The Producers’ original cast), Andrea Burns and Jenni Barber as the act’s eye candy. The script is uneven, but director Jack O’Brien does what he can to mask its flaws.
THE NANCE, Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St., through Sun., Aug. 11. $37-$132. (212) 239-6200.
***
The Trip to Bountiful: It is not merely that Cicely Tyson is 88, nor that she has been away from Broadway for some 30 years. By any measure, her performance as tough, determined Carrie Watts is a stunning piece of acting, well worth the Tony Award she will certainly receive for her stage comeback.
As you may recall from the 1986 movie that brought an Oscar to Geraldine Page in the same role, widow Carrie yearns to leave her Houston home and visit her title hometown on the Gulf Coast. And what Carrie wants she usually gets, much to the consternation of her son Ludie (Cuba Gooding Jr., in an ill-advised stage debut) and his impatient wife (Vanessa Williams).
Written in 1953 by the late Horton Foote, whose plays have always erred on the languorous side, Bountiful starts particularly slowly, but once Carrie dons her hat and sets off on her bus journey, the play and Tyson work their magic.
Tyson has learned from her work in film how to register her emotions on her face and there is never a doubt about what Carrie is thinking. The cast includes a sunny Condola Rashad as a young soldier’s wife that Carrie encounters on her bus ride and Tom Wopat puts in a late appearance as a sheriff trying to persuade Carrie to return home, am engrossing two-hander sequence. Michael Wilson directs with a loose, affectionate hand, letting the play spin its charms at its natural, leisurely pace.
THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL, Sondheim Theatre, 124 W. 43rd St., through Sun., Sept. 1. $42-$142. (212) 239-6200.
***
Hap’s Tony Predictions
Who needs to bet on the NBA finals when the real money can be made hustling your friends and neighbors over Sunday night’s Tony awards. Here are the answers you crave, direct from the future and my time machine. Feel free to split your winnings with us.
* Best Play: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
* Best musical: Matilda
* Best revival of a play: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
* Best revival of a musical: Pippin
* Best book of a musical: Matilda
* Best original score: Kinky Boots
* Best performance by an actor, play: Tom Hanks, Lucky Guy
* Best performance by an actress, play: Cicely Tyson, The Trip to Bountiful
* Best performance by an actor, musical: Billy Porter, Kinky Boots
* Best performance by an actress, musical: Laura Osnes, Cinderella
* Best performance by a featured actor, play: Richard Kind, The Big Knife
* Best performance by a featured actress, play: Judith Light, The Assembled Parties
* Best performance by a featured actor, musical: Terrence Mann, Pippin
* Best performance by a featured actress, musical: Andrea Martin, Pippin
* Best scenic design, play: The Assembled Parties
* Best scenic design, musical: Matilda
* Best costume design, play: The Nance
* Best costume design, musical: Cinderella
* Best lighting design, play: Lucky Guy
* Best lighting design, musical: Matilda
* Best sound design, play: The Nance
* Best sound design, musical: Motown The Musical
* Best direction, play: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
* Best direction, musical: Pippin
* Best choreography: Kinky Boots
* Best orchestrations: Matilda