By 1957, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were the reigning kings of musical theater, but had never written a show for television. That changed when they were commissioned to adapt the enduring fairy tale Cinderella for the small screen, as a star vehicle for Julie Andrews, everyone’s fair lady since a year earlier.
With other casts and some tinkering with the score, the show has played on TV for decades. But it first arrived on Broadway last year as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, dressed up in magical costumes and storybook sets. While it is still playing in New York, the touring edition is at the Kravis Center this week, enthralling princesses, young and old, and a prince or two too.
It would be fair to assume that everyone in the packed Dreyfoos Hall was familiar with the story of Ella, the scullery maid who meets and wows the prince at a palace ball, so suspense is in short supply.
The core story is the one you grew up with, but adapter Douglas Carter Beane (The Nance) has given it contemporary underpinnings by inventing a conniving prime minister to the prince, a firebrand revolutionary who lobbies for peasant rights and the realm’s first democratic elections.
Director Mark Brokaw and his design team add a few dollops of spectacle to elevate the show to Broadway audience expectations. Nevertheless, the effects would be hollow if the fairy tale did not continue to tug at our heartstrings, which it does.
That emotional impact is due largely to the chemistry between the production’s Ella, lovely Paige Faure, and her prince, Topher (Andy Jones). Both performers come direct from the Broadway company and both have strong, creamy-rich singing voices and regal bearings. As the kitchen slave, Ella is aptly more down to earth but spunky, not unlike Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Kecia Lewis is lighter-than-air as Ella’s Fairy Godmother and Miami’s Aymee Garcia is an adept scene stealer, earning laughs whenever she opens her mouth as dense, chatty stepsister Charlotte.
Veteran costume designer William Ivey Long won the show’s only Tony Award for his wardrobe legerdemain, but Anna Louizos’s storybook forest and palace sets also contribute to the production’s happily ever after.
CINDERELLA, Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday. Tickets: From $25 up. Call: 561-450-6357.
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They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s tell some jokes.
Few shows are titled so accurately and succinctly as the off-Broadway hit, Old Jews Telling Jokes, unless, of course, it’s Cats. But I digress. Nor is there a show more suited for South Florida. For we certainly have Jews in abundance and, judging from the audience at the Stage Door Theatre, we also have plenty of old people. Just wait long enough; you could become one of them.
Anyway, picture a slight variation on Catskills on Broadway, a cast of five reciting and occasionally acting out a steady stream of comic anecdotes with an ethnic spin. There’s Jewish mother-in-law jokes. Jewish-American princess gags. Jokes about frugal Jews, about Jews who are eager to assimilate, about Jews retiring to Florida, and on and on.
Some of the jokes are so old, you will surely — “Don’t call me Shirley!” — be able to come up with the punchline before you hear it from the stage. But in many cases, it is the way the performers milk the set-up, tossing in amusing details, that makes the punchline all but irrelevant. Still, bring along a pencil, for you will want to scribble down some of these jokes so you can be the life of your next dinner party.
The jokes are vaguely grouped into subject categories — birth, childhood, dating, religion, retirement and old age — but like most stand-up acts, the topic can change as quickly as the weather. And each of the performers get a personal monologue, like Adam Chisnall’s recollection of the bond of wisecracks he had with his father, even on his deathbed. These segments slow the show’s pace bit, but give it a slight touch of substance.
Other tangents include an audience participation sing-along to a Tom Lehrer chestnut, “I’m Spending Hanukkah in Santa Monica,” a ditty which manages wry rhymes with other Jewish holidays. And curiously, we get the occasional film clip of Alan King’s nightclub act, an idea that might have been more effective if the show’s creators had found more vignettes of other old Jews.
In fact, even the cast is not particularly old. Well, Michael H. Small, whose performance career has spanned more than 40 years, probably qualifies, but Ashley Brooke and Chisnall are comparative youngsters, while Gail Byer and Ben Prayz are somewhere in the middle age-wise, made up to look older than they are. And whatever their religions are, it is easy to accept them as all as Jewish, for they understand the cadence of jokes and know how to deliver a punch line.
If you had an Uncle Irv or a Cousin Jake who had a pipeline to funny stories, you wouldn’t need Old Jews Telling Jokes. But go anyway, have a little fun and gather some material for when the family gets together for the holidays.
OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES, Broward Stage Door Theatre, 8036 W. Sample Rd., Coral Springs. Through Jan. 4. Tickets: $44. Call: (954) 344-7765.