For the runup to the Tony Awards on Sunday, ArtsPaper’s Hap Erstein takes a series of looks at the shows up for Broadway’s highest honors:
Bullets Over Broadway — Susan Stroman (The Producers, Contact) must surely be the reigning director-choreographer of Broadway, but her stock has fallen substantially this season.
It began with the musical Big Fish, which, by most accounts, had its considerable charms on film eradicated by Stroman’s heavy-handed production numbers. Undaunted, she returned to helm the stage version of Woody Allen’s delightful 1994 backstage comedy Bullets Over Broadway, which also arrived shooting blanks.
Years earlier, Marvin Hamlisch was reportedly working on a new score for this tale of a young, naïve playwright who comes under the influence — and superior writing talent — of a trigger-happy mobster. When that effort broke down, Allen was content to go with existing music of the 1920s, the period of the show, which mirrors his usual approach to scoring his films.
Stroman has experience with this route — she created the energetic dances for Crazy For You — but the song choices here range from generic (“Up a Lazy River,” “Let’s Misbehave”) to obscure (“Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me”) to campy (“Yes, We Have No Bananas”).
Stroman takes these vintage tunes and gives them the hard sell, where a more deft, lighter touch seems called for. Without much motivation beyond eye candy filler, she brings on a handful of tap-dancing chorines at regular intervals, an empty distraction that soon turns disheartening/
Allen provides the book and either he did not spend much time on it or he had no new ideas to supplement his admittedly terrific original screenplay (written with Beautiful’s Doug McGrath). Pared down to punch lines supporting the musical numbers, the script lurches along precariously.
Zach Braff (of TV’s Scrubs) makes his Broadway debut as playwriting novice David Shayne well enough. He has a natural appeal and a pleasant enough singing voice, but the role calls for a more experienced hand that can elevate the weak material. That would seem to describe Marin Mazzie (Ragtime, Kiss Me, Kate), but her approach to the iconic role of diva Helen (“Don’t speak!”) Sinclair is to mug shamelessly. Stealing his scenes — even if it is petty theft — is Nick Cordero as the thug/play doctor Cheech, the only performer in the show to cop a Tony nomination.
William Ivey Long seems to be channeling Guys and Dolls for his eye-popping gangster costumes and abbreviated chorus girl garb. About the giant hot dog duds and the scene they are featured in, the less said the better.
BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St., New York. $52-$142. (212) 239-6200.
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Aladdin — If you are looking for an avant-garde take on Disney’s breezy 1992 animated feature, Aladdin — à la The Lion King — you will be disappointed. Everyone else, meaning the whole family if you have the shekels to buy them all tickets, should be well satisfied by this cartoon-to-stage transfer.
As you probably remember — if not, just ask your grandchildren — the film reshaped the Arabian Nights yarn into the Disney formula, something about a princess who goes gaga for a mere commoner, which honks off the snarling vizier. Still, the match-up prevails, thanks to the fast talk and wish-granting of a vaudeville-trained genie.
Other than the need to augment the film’s songs to a Broadway-length score — cue some cut songs by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, and some new ones by Menken and Chad Beguelin — that genie loomed as the show’s biggest challenge. On celluloid, he was played by the inexhaustible Robin Williams, but who in the world could do all of that hip schtick eight times a week, let alone a single performance?
Enter James Monroe Iglehart (Memphis), a king-sized black man who will never be mistaken physically for Williams, but has similar entertain-til-I-drop genes. And when he launches into “Friend Like Me,” the first-act showstopper that sends him scampering about the stage of the venerable New Amsterdam Theatre, he obliterates all memories of Robin What’s-his-name. Still, you will find yourself hoping that there is oxygen waiting for him in the wings.
Less crucial to the show’s success, but probably a necessary touch, is the magic carpet that Aladdin (Adam Jacobs) and Princess Jasmine (Courtney Reed) ride, suspended in air, as he croons “A Whole New World” to her. Presumably thanks to Jim Steinmeyer (credited with “illusion design”) the carpet and its passengers do indeed soar and dip about the stage like, um, magic.
Otherwise, give most of the credit for the show’s high entertainment quotient to director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw (co-director of the far less family-friendly Book of Mormon). He keeps his limber cast in near-perpetual motion with dances that are equal parts casbah, Kismet and Chorus Line. Beyond the genie’s schtick, Nicholaw keeps winking at us with pop culture references that should keep grownups alert.
For the most part, though, this Aladdin seems aimed at kids, not that the dazzling design work of Bob Crowley (scenery), Gregg Barnes (costumes) and Natasha Katz (lighting) is anything but first-class.
The cast is fine, but in true Disney fashion, the performers are overshadowed by the production. That way no cast member is irreplaceable and Aladdin can keep plying its magic for years to come.
ALADDIN, New Amsterdam Theatre, Broadway and 42nd St., New York. $49.50-$155.50. (866) 870-2717.