I am up in New York for a week to take a bite of the Broadway season, 12 shows in nine days. Ah, the sacrifices I make for the sake of my readers.
By most accounts, it is a dismal year for musicals, with lots of screen-to-stage transfers, but little inspiration in the bunch and certainly no Book of Mormon — still the hottest ticket in town a year later — among them. We’ll see. The advance word is much better for plays, a commodity that was pronounced dead on Broadway long ago.
From my first day’s viewing, a Saturday double header, the play far outshined the musical. The play was the wildly imaginative Peter and the Starcatcher, a smart, verbally nimble and cleverly directed prequel to Peter Pan, written by Rick Elice, best known as the co-author of the book to Jersey Boys.
This time his boys are Lost, a rag-tag bunch who narrate their own story in the third person, Story Theatre-style, filling us in along the way with how one misfit orphan came to be called Peter Pan (not his real name), how the pirate captain lost his hand (not how you think) and the genesis of Neverland.
Starring as the handless captain with a Groucho Marx moustache is Christian Borle (newly hot from TV’s Smash), Celia Keenan-Bolger (of the original cast of 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) as Molly, Wendy’s mom. And new to me, Adam Chanler-Berat (a veteran of Next to Normal) as the orphan boy.
As sophisticated as Peter and the Starcatcher is theatrically, it would make a great introduction to the live stage for youngsters. Surely the script will be produced by theaters around the country, but it is unlikely they will be able to top the direction by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers.
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In the afternoon, I saw one of the final previews of Nice Work If You Can Get It, a “new Gershwin musical” in the jukebox vein of My One and Only and Crazy for You. Based roughly on Oh, Kay!, it concerns a wastrel playboy (Matthew Broderick), about to marry the wrong girl until a tough-cookie bootlegger (Kelli O’Hara) comes into his life.
The score, of course, is great, with such Gershwin standards as Someone to Watch Over Me, Fascinating Rhythm and Lady Be Good, plus some terrific obscure songs. Joe DiPietro (I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change) wrote the wisecrack-laden book, not to be taken seriously, in the style of Prohibition-era shows.
Presumably Broderick is a box office name, but he is not really up to the vocal and dance demands of the show, though he compensates with puppy dog charm. He and O’Hara do rise to the requirements of an extended dance sequence to S’Wonderful, however, tripping the light fantastic over the furniture in an hommage to Astaire and Rogers. And the always welcome Judy Kaye is a delight as a Prohibitionist who, of course, eventually gets roaring drunk.
Nice Work could use about 20 minutes out of it and some structural tweaks, but it is a pleasant entertainment that the audience ate up. I worry about the critical reaction to it, but the show deserves to get beyond whatever snide reviews are coming its way and have a “nice” commercial run.