Here is a look at a handful of shows from Broadway’s spring season, in a run-up to the Tony Awards, which will be broadcast June 8.
Real Women Have Curves: Although based on Josefina Lopez’s 1990 play and the subsequent HBO movie starring America Ferrera from 2002, the newly arrived musical, Real Women Have Curves, seems extremely timely in the current days of immigrant peril. While this tale of an East L.A. dress factory, peopled mainly by undocumented Latinas, is ultimately upbeat with a message of female empowerment, getting there takes a journey of stress and peril.
At the show’s center is recent high school grad, Ana Garcia (Tatianna Córdoba), the only American citizen in her family, determined to escape the drudgery of the dressmaking shop run by her feisty mom Carmen (Justina Machado) and her older sister, Estela (Florencia Cuenca). What Ana hasn’t told her family is that she applied to and has been accepted at Columbia University, with a full scholarship. But when the shop gets a large order — 200 dresses — with an all-too-brief deadline, it is all hands on sewing machines. including Ana’s.
Adapters Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin balance the drama and the comedy nicely, supporting the ethnically flavorful score by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez, a bit of salsa, a bit of hip-hop and a bit of pure Broadway. The show stopping number is the title tune, in which the mostly full-figured cast strips to bras and panties in the oppressive heat of the factory — a celebration of positive body image.
The cast is certainly female-centric, but Mason Reeves is appealing in support as Ana’s endearingly awkward boyfriend and, late in the show, Mauricio Mendoza is touching as Ana’s dad, conflicted about her yearning to relocate across the country for school. There is nothing innovative about Real Women Have Curves, but in the steady hand of director-choreographer Sergio Trujillo, a conventional retro musical like this makes for satisfying entertainment.
REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES, James Earl Jones Theatre, 138 W. 48th St., $48-$299.
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Gypsy: The much-revived Gypsy has one of the great roles of the musical theater, Rose Hovick, the obsessively driven stage mother of star stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. The part is a Tony Award magnet as Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly and Patti LuPone can attest. Still, even if you feel you have seen this show often enough, you have got to see Audra McDonald’s Mama Rose, one of the most stunning performances I have ever encountered in my half-century of theatergoing.
McDonald is hardly a natural fit for the role, having more of a classically trained soprano voice than a belting boom, but she makes the iconic Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim score her own, from her opening “want” song (“Some People”) to her thunderous finale, the emotional high wire act, “Rose’s Turn.” Of course the six-time Tony Award winner is a terrific singer, but she also has great acting chops, which she demonstrates throughout this marathon performance.
Rather than color-blind casting, director George C. Wolfe emerges us in the waning days of Black vaudeville, which gives the production an additional quality of uniqueness. He wants us to be aware of race in the case of Rose and her two daughters — June and Louise — but also ignore it, when June’s back-up farmhands grow up and change from black to white. Don’t ask.
Even with a towering performance like McDonald’s, Gypsy allows room for others to stand out. As Herbie, the candy seller coerced into being the act’s agent, Danny Burstein makes a strong impression, romancing Rose until her ruthlessness on Louise’s behalf drives him away. Joy Woods, so touching in The Notebook, makes the crucial duckling-to-swan transition as she takes on the mantle of Gypsy Rose. And in the 11 o’clock spot, Mylinda Hull, Lili Thomas and Lesli Margherita are aptly brassy and coarse as the trio of strippers advising Louise that “You Gotta Have a Gimmick.”
Written in 1959, at a time we now look back on as a golden age for the musical theater, Gypsy is proof that “they don’t write ’em like they used to.” This season has seen a profusion of new musicals, some of them quite entertaining, but none on the quality level of Gypsy. And certainly no performance as astonishing as McDonald’s.
GYPSY, Majestic Theatre, 245 W. 44th St. $46-$421.
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Boop, the Musical: If Little Orphan Annie can be dragged out of the past and taken to Broadway, why not Betty Boop, the spit-curled kewpie doll of the early black-and-white animated cartoons from Max Fleischer’s inkwell?
Or maybe the inspiration for this show was Barbie, for our celebrity heroine of Boop, the Musical is literally transported from her celluloid world to the real world of colorful contemporary New York City which, naturally, will take some adjustment. And adjust she does, involving herself in city politics, finding romance and tap dancing her way into our hearts.
Boop isn’t as interested in taking us back nearly 100 years to Betty’s origins as much as taking us back to the days when musicals just wanted to put a simple tune on our lips and a smile on our faces. If that is enough for you — and it should be — step up and give yourself over to the irrepressible staging and choreography of Jerry Mitchell, who never met a production number he couldn’t double down with dazzle.
If you recall the Boop cartoons, you will appreciate all the more the impersonation of Jasmine Amy Rogers, who has the look, the megawatt smile and the squeaky voice to sell us on the fair damsel, not to mention a vintage song style, high stepping dance skills and legs that go on for days. This marks Rogers’ Broadway debut, the introduction of a major talent.
And since every self-respecting retro musical needs a secondary romantic couple, Boop gives us Stephen DeRosa as eccentric inventor Grampy, who reconnects with Valentina, an astrophysicist from his distant past, played by the always welcome though underemployed Faith Prince. Together they make beautiful music on a charm-laden duet, “Whatever It Takes.” It’s not their fault that they keep being upstaged by Betty’s pet pug Pugsy, a marionette expertly manipulated by Phillip Huber.
Much is made of the two different worlds — monochrome for Betty’s cartoon universe and vivid color for the Big Apple — particularly in Gregg Barnes’ half-and-half costumes. The hummable score is provided by composer David Foster, with clever lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. Add in a jokey script from Bob Martin and sit back, relax and enjoy. Using your brain for two-and-a-half hours is strictly optional.
BOOP, THE MUSICAL, Broadhurst Theatre, 235 W. 45th St. $58-$256.
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Purpose: Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, Tony Award winner for last season’s best revival, Appropriate, is back with another guided tour of Dysfunctional Family Land, Purpose, which recently garnered a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He again reunites a clan and pits them against one another, with a script both articulate and incendiary.
This time his focus is on the Jaspers, an African-American family headed by patriarch Solomon (Harry Lennix), a clergyman and activist renowned for his work in the civil rights movement. His wife, Claudine (Latanya Richardson Jackson), a former lawyer, put her career on hold to support his legacy, run their sizable home (artfully designed by Todd Rosenthal) and referee the family confrontations.
His older son, Solomon Jr. (Glenn Davis), was groomed to inherit his mantle in politics, a dream deferred by a conviction for embezzlement that landed him in prison for two years. Straying even further from the Jasper traditions is younger son Naz (Jon Michael Hill), a nature photographer and the narrator of the play, a character easy to relate to except for those he is related to. Unattached and self-described as asexual, Naz is nevertheless a sperm donor for a lesbian friend, Aziza (Kara Young), the outsider who inevitably arrives and stirs up difficulties and discontent, particularly at a first act-ending dinner scene that stops just short of a food fight. Junior’s wife, Morgan (Alana Arenas), facing her own incarceration for filing false tax returns, is mute for most of the evening, but never doubt that she will erupt with her own fury eventually.
Commissioned by Chicago’s renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Company, it sets down on Broadway at the cozy Helen Hayes Theatre, directed again by Phylicia Rashad, who modulates the building storm with a knowing hand, but could have tightened the text in the somewhat overwritten second act. Still, as the Pulitzer intends, Purpose sheds light on the American way of life, with ease of identification, regardless of race.
PURPOSE, Helen Hayes Theatre, 240 W. 44th St. $69-$299.
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Dead Outlaw: Out to prove once more that anything can be a musical, the team that brought us The Band’s Visit — composer/lyricist David Yazbek, book writer Itamar Moses and director David Cromer — have their tongues planted firmly in cheek telling the tall tale, Dead Outlaw, about a robber and killer, Elmer McCurdy, who traveled the Old West once he was dead himself and embalmed.
Born in 1880, died in 1911, yet not buried until 1976, Elmer’s history is so peculiar, it is surely true. We first meet him as he is strumming his guitar, lying supine on the roof of Arnulfo Maldonado’s grunge unit set, before getting up and launching a brief life of crime and alcoholism. As narrated by the onstage band leader Jeb Brown, we watch with incredulity as Elmer (deliciously deadpan Andrew Durand) gets snuffed out, then pickled and passed around, as a sideshow attraction, then an extra in a Hollywood movie and eventually the dissection corpse of none other than Thomas Noguchi, L.A.’s celebrity coroner.
Elmer’s biography is certainly morbid, yet the creative team of Dead Outlaw metamorphose it into comedy, albeit very dark comedy. If the show embeds a song in you, it will probably be the insistent lyric, “Your mama’s dead / Your daddy’s dead / Your brother’s dead / And so are you.” Go ahead, sing along.
As Elmer, Durand is quite compelling, even though the role calls for him to be stiff and mute for much of the show’s intermissionless hour and 40 minutes. The rest of the eight-member cast stays on the go, jumping from character to character, none more appealing than Julia Knitel as a Hollywood director’s quirky daughter.
Time will tell whether there is sufficient audience for this staunchly offbeat entertainment to justify its move to Broadway after near unanimous acclaim last season at Greenwich Village’s Minetta Lane Theatre. File Dead Outlaw under Guilty Pleasures, difficult to describe, but easy to enjoy.
DEAD OUTLAW, Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th Street. $48-$321.
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Smash: If you are reading this, chances are you are a fan of Broadway and probably watched a 2012-2013 TV series called Smash, about the making of a stage musical, Bombshell, about the life and career of Marilyn Monroe. And when you heard that the short-lived series would have a second life on Broadway, you were probably both excited and worried. A cult favorite that never attracted a sufficiently large audience to maintain a primetime network slot, would the show play to its fan base or reach for a more mainstream following?
While there should be a way to satisfy both groups, the much-revised results will probably please neither. With a score by the original music and lyrics team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, a book by a couple of seasoned pros, Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) and Rick Elice (Jersey Boys) and direction by the reliable Susan Stroman (The Producers), what could go wrong? Alas, pretty much everything.
For starters, the core of the TV show, the competition between Ivy Lynn and Karen to play Monroe, has been scrubbed. With the opening number, the infectious “Let Me Be Your Star,” Ivy (a terrific Robyn Hurder) already has the role, though she feels threatened by her understudy, who happens to be named Karen (likeable Caroline Bowman). And there’s an assistant director, Chloe (Bella Coppola) who gets drafted for the first preview when Ivy goes AWOL and Karen gets torpedoed by a laxative-laced cupcake. Wait, did I mention the maniacal Method acting coach (Kristine Nielsen) who pushes Ivy into believing she is Marilyn Monroe?
Whatever goodwill Smash had previously gets erased by the new comic tone and preposterous plot tangents. Plus the score’s impact gets squandered by the songs largely being framed as presentational numbers, out of their original context. On the plus side is snappy choreography by Josh Bergasse, solid design elements by Beowulf Boritt (sets), Alejo Vietti (costumes) and Ken Billington (lighting) and an amusing turn by Brooks Ashmandas as Nigel, the ineffectual director of the show-within-the-show (Smash’s only performance Tony nominee).
But the show’s assets are far outnumbered by its liabilities. The notion of a live version of Smash was a good one, but the choices made in the transfer to Broadway smash all chances for success.
SMASH, Imperial Theatre, 249 W, 45th St. $55-$321.