Ahead of this season’s Tony Awards presentation on Sunday, June 16, here are more of my Broadway reviews:
* Appropriate — Where would the theater be without dysfunctional families? With his Broadway debut, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins conjures up an extraordinarily vicious clan in the Lafayettes, who reunite in the dilapidated rural Arkansas home of their recently deceased father to settle his estate and some long-held grudges. Three estranged siblings — Toni (Sarah Paulson), Bo (Corey Stoll) and Franz (Michael Esper) — face off for the first time in years, armed with assorted secrets and hostilities.
Recovering drug addict Franz, the youngest of the three, arrives with his young fiancée, River (Ella Beatty), intent on having the family confront their patriarch’s flagrant racism, based on distressing evidence found among the clutter. Toni (a fiercely volatile Paulson) is wearied and bitter from her long-held responsibilities as the eldest of the trio. And the middle of the sibs, Bo has been the peacemaker, a role he knows he cannot keep up long, eager as he is to deal with the estate and return as quickly as possible to his distant life in New York City.
Director Lila Neugebauer orchestrates well the simmering fuse that is the Lafayette family, full of dramatic jolts and more than a little humor. It plays out on a unit set designed by a multi-disciplinary collective known as dots, strewn with the hoarded junk they hope to sell to pay off their father’s debts. First seen at Signature Theatre in 2014, Appropriate makes an assured leap to Broadway, surely the frontrunner for the best revival Tony Award.
APPROPRIATE, Belasco Theatre, 111W. 44th St. Through Sunday, June 30. $55-$349. 800-447-7400.
# # #
* Illinoise — Challenging the very definition of a musical, this stunning dance concert directed, choreographed and co-written by Justin Peck (Tony winner for 2018’s Carousel revival) illustrates the songs by Sufjan Stevens in his 2005 concept album, Illinois. Together with Pulitzer Prize-winner Jackie Sibblies Drury (Fairview), he has rearranged the 22 musical numbers, shaping them into a narrative about an Everyman named Henry (the expressive Ricky Ubeda) and his two deceased friends, Carl (Ben Cook) and Shelby (Gaby Diaz).
Wordlessly, they convey the emotional journey of their close friendship and romantic entanglements, leading to Carl’s battle with cancer and Shelby’s suicide. As they perform Peck’s elegant, energetic modern dance steps, a trio of vocalists/musicians — Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova, and Tasha Viets-VanLear, sporting Stevens’ signature butterfly wings — accompany the dancers from a side platform.
The 90-minute intermissionless concert is divided into three acts or movements, with the main storyline at the center segment. In it, Ubeda is the principal dancer, presumably a representation of Stevens with a narrative line that is autobiographical. The first act sees the charismatic Brandt Martinez leading the ensemble in a series of tales drawn from Illinois album cuts based on “Jacksonville,” “Zombies,” “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.,” and “The Man of Metropolis.” Also impressive is Byron Tittle, whose tap dance solo is a popular standout.
Familiarity with Stevens’ album would help one’s comprehension of the narratives being conveyed, but Illinoise works as kinetic eye candy apart from its storyline. Taken as pure dance, it is a theatrical experience unlike any previously seen on Broadway.
ILLINOISE, St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St. Through Sunday, Aug. 10. $49-$343. 800-447-7400.
# # #
* The Great Gatsby — Through several film versions and now a stage musical, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has proven to be elusive material to adapt. Considered a candidate for “the great American novel,” this tale of wealth, romance and redemption seems to defy efforts to take it off the page to other media. In the current example, director Marc Bruni (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) apparently placed his emphasis on sets and costumes at the expense of character development and themes.
Indeed, to convey the world of self-made millionaire and lavish party giver Jay Gatsby, you do need eye-popping scenery on the plane of what Paul Tate DePoo III keeps dazzling us with, evoking the excesses of the Roaring Twenties’ flapper era, as well as Linda Cho’s stylish period costumes. But when those two design elements are the production’s standouts, they overshadow the flattened-out narrative as rendered by Kait Kerrigan in her Broadway debut.
The problem is not with the two leading performers, Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada, quite persuasive and in powerful voice as Gatsby and his once and future lover, Daisy Buchanan. The songwriting team of Jason Howland and Nathan Tysen provide them with several swoon-worthy romantic duets, though they sound far too generic and contemporary to fit the show’s needs. Also an asset is Noah J. Ricketts in the pivotal narrator role of Nick Carraway, the Midwesterner who has relocated to West Egg, Long Island, and finds himself overwhelmed by his new neighbor, Gatsby. The show manages to connect the dots of the increasingly complex tale without ever getting beneath its surface.
Fitzgerald’s novel is by far the best source material of the many page-to-screen-to-stage shows that have arrived this season, but Bruni and his collaborators never sufficiently make the case for why The Great Gatsby needed to become a musical.
THE GREAT GATSBY, Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway, $48-$298. 800-447-7400.