Twenty years ago, the movie dynamo Disney Studios tried its hand at a Broadway musical with Beauty and the Beast, a stage clone of its Oscar-winning animated film.
The show was rudimentary at best, not much more than a theme park diversion, but audiences ate it up and the show ran for 13 years. Since then, Disney has been a major producer of theater product, ranging from such artistic successes as The Lion King and Aida, and embarrassments like The Little Mermaid and Tarzan. (I have been going to Broadway shows for more than — yikes! — 50 years, and Tarzan is the single worst thing I have ever seen on a Broadway stage.
Disney musicals — they are their own category — are best when the company entrusts the material to a strong director, who renders his or her personal vision of the work. Think Julie Taymor or Robert Falls. That sort of happens this season with Aladdin, as helmed by director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw (The Drowsy Chaperone, The Book of Mormon).
The amusing Nicholaw has pretty much succeeded at infusing the Arabian Nights yarn with vaudevillian humor — think Hope and Crosby in The Road to Riyadh — and building dazzling, exhausting production numbers. If you are not giggling by the end of “Friend Like Me,” featuring the tireless James Monroe Inglehart as the Genie, you need to have your funny bone examined.
The show is a visual feast, thanks to the Moorish geometric sets by Bob Crowley — the director of Tarzan, sticking here to what he does best — and great crayon-colored, albeit skimpy costumes by Gregg Barnes (Kinky Boots). And as you may have heard, the show features a magic carpet on which Aladdin and Jasmine fly about the New Amsterdam Theatre stage.
The effect is quite stunning, almost magical, unless like me you spend your time trying to figure out how they did it, instead of just being awed. There is plenty for childlike adults to enjoy in Aladdin, but also a lot that is clearly only aimed at kids.
It is no Lion King, but I expect Aladdin is enough of a crowd-pleaser to run for years.
When I went to Aladdin, my wife went to All the Way, the drama by Robert Schenkkan (The Kentucky Cycle) about LBJ and his political maneuvers to get the Civil Rights Act passed. She reports that star Bryan Cranston gives a Tony Award-winning performance as Lyndon Johnson, completely unrecognizable from his character on TV’s Breaking Bad. She says that the play is good, but the reason to see the production is clearly Cranston. It looks like he is headed for a Tony for his Broadway debut.
And since it opened Wednesday night, I can now write about Casa Valentina, Harvey Fierstein’s new play about a Catskills bungalow colony in the early ’60s, where straight men went to live freely as cross-dressers. Yes, it is based in reality, though the characters are fictional.
Fierstein, of course, burst onto the Broadway scene over 30 years ago writing and starring in Torch Song Trilogy. Since then, he has mainly cranked out the books for musicals (La Cage aux Folles, Newsies, Kinky Boots), getting rich along the way. Nothing wrong with that, but it is a pleasure to see him return to non-musical — I almost wrote “straight” — plays.
Casa Valentina has plenty of well-crafted comic lines in the early going, but never doubt that Fierstein has serious themes on his mind, particularly as they relate to the subject of the many ways that men express their sexuality. And he eventually lowers the boom, for nearly all of his male characters are unhappy with their life choices. You could think of it as a heterosexual Boys in the Band, which is high praise in my view.
Joe Mantello directs the play with his usual assured hand, with a top-notch cast led by Reed Birney, Patrick Paige, John Cullum and a quip-slinging Tom McGowan. Like all serious dramas, you have to worry for Casa Valentina’s chances of lasting very long on Broadway, but this highly visible production should help the play receive much subsequent exposure in regional theaters.
Next: Beautiful, the Carole King musical