Birdie doesn't take flight

How can you make Bye Bye Birdie not fun? Trust the Roundabout to find a way. My review of Robert Longbottom's revival is in today's Post.

Another day, another pan

You wouldn't know it from the slew of negative reviews I've been writing lately, but Ming the Merciless really isn't my role model.

That said, here's another one, this time for Mahida's Extra Key to Heaven.

Oh no, Othello

Peter Sellars's Othello is a stinker. There's just no way around it. I can't remember the last time I looked at my watch so much at the theater. I distinctly remember a check at 10:04pm, followed by another one after what felt like at least 20 minutes. Alas, I realized with despair that it was only 10:08.

Considering that this is very much a director-led staging — something I'm usually in favor of — and that it comes a few days after Luc Bondy's Tosca being booed at the Met, I was heartbroken at the idea of having to write such a negative review (my lowest star rating so far at the Post). I really don't want to sound like revisionist readings of classics faze me, but in this case there was no alternative: The show is downright inept. I will go into more details on my Post blog later today.

As for Tosca, I'm going tonight and shall judge for myself.

Is life worth living? Don't answer that

I'm a big fan of the Mint Theater and its mission to revive forgotten plays, but this time they kind of wrecked their latest discovery, Lennox Robinson's Is Life Worth Living? More on the misfire in today's Post.

High and low

Ooh boy, this past weekend I experienced quite very different shows, as you can see in my two Post reviews today: from the good (Ivo van Hove's staging of La Voix Humaine) to the inept (Daniel Goldfarb's The Retributionists).

At the latter, there was quite an exodus at intermission, which tells you something — and it's not good. The former took place as part of the Dutch-run New Island Festival, out on Governors Island. I have to admit I'd never been there, and I was enchanted by my little trip.

The location certainly added to my enjoyment of La Voix Humaine, but it's a safe bet to say that no setting, no matter how exotic, could have helped The Retributionists. It's an embarrassment for everybody involved.

His Lameness

Daniel MacIvor's His Greatness at the Cherry Lane Theatre, New York Post, August 26.

Much more fun: The phone rang at 8:20am this morning and what I heard when I picked up was, "Hello, this is Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys." No, I don't know him — I was supposed to interview him for a preview of next week's PSB shows. Still, it's a great way to start the day. More when the piece comes out, obviously.

Uneventful

More Fringe Festival action with John Clancy's The Event, reviewed in today's Post. What's worse: a perfectly adequate but bland show or one that's horrid but perversely entertaining?

Sinking to new lows

Lisa Ebersole's hapless Mother gets trashed in today's Post.

Demolishing a small show presented in a nice space like the Wild Project isn't fun, but then neither is Mother.

Snakes eyes

Okay, not quite snake eyes but almost. I have two reviews in today's paper, rating one star and one and a half stars. It's an embarrassment of embarrassments.

Zakiyyah Alexander's 10 Things to Do Before I Die at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre, New York Post, June 1

Leslie Ayvazian's Make Me at the Atlantic 2, New York Post, June 1.

Legal debacle

Vern Thiessen's A More Perfect Union at the East 13th Street Theater, New York Post, May 14, 2009.

Two Supreme Court clerks duke it out in the library. Dear god…

Accent grave

A bilingual pun for a title!

Samson Raphaelson's Accent on Youth at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, New York Post, April 30, 2009.

Oooh that one irked me.

The Philanthropist

Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist at American Airlines Theatre, New York Post, April 27, 2009.

Run, run away from this one!

We had a fantastically sunny weekend here in New York. Not that I saw that much of it as I spent most of it at the theater, going to the theater or coming back from the theater. (That damn F line being all screwed up didn't help.)

Unimpressed

Michael Jacobs's Impressionism at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, New York Post, March 25. (My second one-star review in a row. The timing is harsh.)

Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons: How could it suck, right? And yet…

Total Hollywood crap

Every word, every shot, every sound in Rachel Getting Married—in which Anne Hathaway's Kym gets out of rehab long enough to almost screw up her sister Rachel's wedding—is a fraud. It's hard to think of a more dishonestly manipulative movie this year. Nothing the characters say or do makes sense, because everything they say or do only serves one purpose: to lead to a confrontation or a crisis. Jenny Lumet's hack script throws consistency and psychological realism to the wind just so the actors can get their Oscar moments, while Jonathan Demme still thinks a handheld shakycam is shorthand for raw naturalism, ie authenticity in Hollywoodspeak.

Here's a typical example of the shams the film continually sets up. At one point, several characters including Kym and her dad (Bill Irwin) are gathered around a table, figuring out the sitting arrangements for the wedding. The discussion gets tenser, as it tends to do when Kym is involved; she asks her dad to continue it in private in the kitchen, away from the others. Next thing you know, the entire brood crashes their talk. And next next thing you know, Dad gets challenged by Sidney, his future son-in-law, into a preposterous contest to see who can most efficiently fill the dishwasher. And next next next thing you know, Kym haplessly passes on to Dad a plastic plate belonging to her now-dead little brother, provoking a sorrowful reaction.

Why is the family going to the kitchen after it's been made very clear that Kym and Dad want to have a private conversation? Why is the meek Sidney suddenly Mr. Macho, taunting his father-in-law? Why is the kid's plate still mixed in with the regular plates if it's going to upset the father so much? There's only one reason: to artificially provoke the kind of volatile show-offy situation modern Hollywood mistakes for drama. Rinse, repeat ad nauseam, as Rachel Getting Married staggers from one contrivance to the next.

Perhaps the biggest fraud of all is the reason behind Kym's self-destructiveness: high on percocets when she was 16, she was responsible for the death of the aforementioned younger brother. The death of a child is the kind of unimpeachable backstory Hollywood hacks love because it creates viewer empathy for a character out of thin air. In this case, it's even cheaper than cheap because it isn't even the reason for Kym being the way she is now: the film doesn't address why she was high on percocets to begin with.

As for the wedding itself, you just want to slap everybody involved. So many trite irritants, like, Why does it have an Indian theme when neither of the families seems to have a connection to India? Watching the endless parade of musical guests felt like sitting through an entire year of Joe's Pub programming in 30 minutes. (The one moment that rings true in the movie is when the idiots constantly playing the lute and the violin are asked if they could just stop for a fricking minute.) The film would have been at least bearable if Jonathan Demme had mocked earnestly multi-culti upper-middle-class celebrations. But no.

Sweet on Hugh

Hugh Jackman is hosting the Oscars! Yay! I hope this means the producers will finally bring back the musical numbers that have been sorely missed in recent years. What better way to celebrate the infamous Snow White Debacle of 1989 than have Hugh let loose in a huge floor show? It would be the 20th anniversary, too. You cannot call yourself a lover of Tinseltown flakery if you haven't seen this magnificent disaster, which I believe was choreographed by Debbie Allen.

Hugh did a fantastic job hosting the Tonys, but then Tony is a lot looser than Oscar when it comes to swishing. "Dancing makes studio executives really, really nervous…" Omigod, I just adore him!!!

The gaying of Thanksgiving

A few days ago, I was hyperventilatingly anticipating the debut of Rosie O'Donnell's variety show. I ended up not being able to watch it live, but caught up with the finest moments the following day—it was part of our post-feast Thanksgiving TV entertainment, along with last year's Radio City Christmas Spectacular (the year the most excellent Linda Haberman started reshaping the Rockettes in particular and the show in general) and Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special from 1988. (Needless to say, this was a rather gay Thanksgiving. Thanks Brett and David!)

Anyway, Rosie's special was quite the cheesefest. How can she mean so well and do so wrong? It's all fixable though: She basically needs to refrain from putting herself in almost every number. I realize this is hard to fathom for someone like Rosie, endowed with both a prodigious ego and an unfettered enthusiasm for all things Broadway that, while endearing, gives her the misguided desire to be onstage with her idols. I do have to admit that "City Lights," the number I was gushing about before seeing the show, delivered because Rosie did it with Liza herself, and the sight of them desperately selling razzmatazz was chilling. At one point Liza did a bizarre high kick, which we replayed over and over, split between disbelief, hilarity and a certain joy at Liza's manic need to entertain. Still, if this is what we can expect from her upcoming show at the Palace, I'm a little scared.

Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite American holiday because it's just an opportunity to have good food and good times with friends. There's no god, no presents, no pressure. Not having family here, the Sheila and I usually end up with similar strays, who tend to be from foreign lands or gay or both. For us, it's a great time to enjoy our new life in our adoptive country.

Da bomb

The best element about Doctor Atomic may well be its title, which instantly suggests an action-packed, DC Comics–style caper. But John Adams and Peter Sellars's opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb, which I saw at the Met last night, has got to be one of the most…tepid things I've seen in a long time. I didn't think it was possible to suck all the tension and action from the atomic fricking bomb, but they did it.

Sellars's heavy-handed libretto bears a lot of the blame: "adapted from original sources," it is way too verbose, way too literal, and made me long for baroque's elliptical repetitiveness. The singers have to deliver thankless clunky lines and the music, which mostly sticks to a kind of banal beige hum, doesn't help. (Also, okay, I'm far from an expert, but at times it reminded me of Bernard Herrmann, of all people, particularly his score for North by Northwest toward the end of the first act. Weird.)

Despite a few good visual ideas, like the opening hive of scientists working in isolated cells like so many worker bees—for which we have to thank set designer Julian Crouch, already responsible for Satyagraha—Penny Woolcock's staging remains hopelessly static. When a literally electric scene comes along (a storm threatens a bomb test), there isn't enough juice onstage to short-circuit a toaster.

No one in our party of four liked the opera or the production. Here's what my buddy Tristan had to say this morning:

Instead of gaining momentum, the second act went slower and slower. There were no new musical ideas. A hundred people came on stage to watch the bomb go off…and then stood there motionless for 15 minutes, staring at the audience. That was the climactic final stage business. Made Robert Wilson look like Busby Berkeley. There was also some half-hearted fog. The meteorologist sang an entire weather report—I am not kidding. "The wind/Is out of the southwest/At three to six miles per hour/Up to 500 feet." There was a ticking noise and a rumbling noise. The sheets rose up into the air, slowly, revealing…just some more debris.

In other words, the whole thing, in so many ways, failed to detonate. It was, in fact, metaphorically, the fizzle which the scientists had feared when they tested the bomb. But perhaps that's the point. If the bomb had been as badly designed and built as the opera about it was, perhaps we would have a more peaceful world today. If only Oppenheimer & Co. hadn't been so brilliant! If only they had been more like John Adams and his colleagues!

Yow! Tell it like it is! (Tristan also tipped me off to composer Mark Adamo's insightful take on Doctor Atomic.)

On the plus side: There were clips of Robert Lepage's forthcoming La Damnation de Faust playing in the Met's lobby and that production looks ka-razy! Really, really looking forward to it. Which could be famous last words since I was also really, really looking forward to Doctor Atomic. And I once wrote that 30 Rock sucks. And I thought John Kerry could be elected in 2004.

The theater's gilded ceiling

Playwright Theresa Rebeck has been contributing to the Guardian's theater blog, and her latest post is a doozie. Basically she addresses a New York Times article that trumpets a renewed focus on men on Broadway—as opposed to the estrogen-flooded past 100 years, no doubt. Rebeck takes that idea to task and I cannot emphasize how great it is to see her anger boil over, especially since she remains funny to the end.

You have to laugh—and Rebeck does, darkly—when reading such lines from Charles Isherwood's piece as "Broadway is also shining a bright spotlight on the male psyche this autumn." The thing is, looking at the male psyche is interesting, but there's a myriad issues swirling around the manner in which it's done on Broadway. For instance, why does the looking have to be done by men? They are controlling the discourse from beginning to end, putting on a great party honoring themselves, and women—who, Rebeck reminds us, make up 60 percent of Broadway audiences—should feel honored to foot the bill.

"Is it a reaction against last season, when the New York stage seemed to be overtaken by domineering women?" Isherwood wonders. He's referring to the main characters in August: Osage County and Gypsy, by the way, not to headstrong playwrights or directors. And since when did two women amount to an overtaking anyway?

Let's bring a teeny tiny bit of perspective and look at that exact same 2007-08 season. What do we find? Men with image issue (Cyrano de Bergerac), men dealing with revolution (Rock ’n’ Roll), drunk men talking to other drunk men (The Seafarer), men inventing cool stuff then fighting over it (The Farnsworth Invention), men finding art (Sunday in the Park with George), men finding themselves (Passing Strange), men running the country (November), men counselled by bad, bad women (Macbeth). Good thing there will be more about them this year, right? Cause it was getting a little tight for them on Broadway for a while.

Cream of the Fringe

Not enough blogging because of too much life, including a vastly entertaining trip to the US Open earlier this week.

But life also involved checking out the Fringe Festival, with a review making it to the pages of Time Out New York this week. As I point out in it, Peter Barr Nickowitz’s The Alice Complex is the second play to be inspired by something that actually happened to Germaine Greer in 2000 (she was held hostage in her own house by a deranged female student). This summer, Joanna Murray-Smith’s take on the episode, The Female of the Species, played in the West End to mixed reviews, with Eileen Atkins in the role of the older woman.

From penning The Female Eunuch (retitled The Cerebral Vagina by Murray-Smith, The Alice Complex by Nickowitz) in 1970 to being a contestant on the 2005 edition of Celebrity Big Brother alongside the likes of Jackie Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen and the Happy Mondays' dancer/mascot Bez (she lasted five days), it's hard to find a better subject for a drama than Germaine Greer. Seriously: forget about the hostage business—her entire life could, should be a movie.

Weirdly enough, The Female of the Species was scheduled to open on Broadway early this year, starring Annette Bening in the Germaine Greer part, but Bening ended up withdrawing and the show never made it to New York. The Fringe play, though rather more modest than what you'd see on Broadway, did boast two excellent actors: Lisa Banes, displaying a sharp elegance that reminded me of Fiona Shaw at times (though like Shaw, Banes had a tendency to ACT) and Xanthe Elbrick, who had already impressed me in Coram Boy; why we don't see her more onstage in NYC is puzzling.

La failure de Simone

Boredom made way to disgust today, as my friend Tristan and I endured La Passion de Simone, a 75-minute oratorio by composer Kaija Saariaho and librettist Amin Maalouf, and part of the Mostly Mozart festival.

Boredom because this "musical journey in 15 stations" was so short on musical ideas that I could not figure out on what basis Saariaho is hailed as an important contempory composer. To stay in the piece's spirit of portentous self-aggrandizement, I'll say it was us going through the stations of the cross.

Inappropriate? We're talking about a piece that, under the pretext of looking at the tragic struggle of Simone Weil—who starved herself to death when she was 34, in 1943, refusing to eat in empathy with those lacking food in the camps—tries to elevate to the sublime a tale that's much more down to earth: that of a selfish, childish woman endowed with a monstrous egotism. A stupider, more futile gesture is hard to find: She accomplished nothing, her death creating all the ripples of a tree falling where no one can hear it.

"She was trying so hard to solve some of the problems of our existence," Saariaho has said. Not at all: Weil was trying to solve her own problems, that's all. That inner struggle can be more than enough for an oratorio or an opera or a movie—characters wrestling with their faith was Bergman's crisp bread and butter. Perhaps Saariaho should have watched Winter Light to see how it's done. Art about someone wrestling with the idea of god is quite different from art glorifying useless martyrdom, especially when said martyrdom is couched in a pompous, vacant mysticism—here, the ultimate refuge-slash-excuse for an anorexic egomaniac.

Tristan nailed it when he said Weil was nihilistic and narcissistic. I can't remember now precisely if it was Weil herself (in one of the voiceover readings from her writings) or Maloof who drew a parallel between her factory-worker idea and the number tattooed on the arms of concentration-camp prisoner, but there's quite a difference between the two. But then, you're talking about a woman who mused that Alexander and Jesus were also close to 34 when they died. No wonder the Resistance didn't want her.