A long line of ticket holders gathers outside the Broadway Theatre more than a half hour before the curtain will rise for the Wednesday matinee of The Color Purple. Charter buses come to a halt between 52nd and 53rd Streets, disgorging busload after busload to the back of the line -- making it increasingly doubtful that ushers will be able to seat the 1,700+ throng before the orchestra strikes up the overture.
Oprah has descended upon the nerve center of American theater. Like Disney before her, she has triumphed.
But fortunes have changed radically along the Great White Way since Beauty and the Beast started its run in 1994. Disney's dazzling confection seemed to bring fresh life, new hope and nagging misgivings to a faltering theater scene. It took vision and courage to invest in Broadway back then. When Oprah arrived, with a consortium that includes our own PAC and the Independent Presenters Network, she and her fellow investors were riding a wave of prosperity.
The mighty juggernaut threatened to derail before the holidays when MTA transit workers went on strike. Before you could say "Miracle on 34th Street," they were back on the job, saving Christmas for grateful tourists as improbably as any Hollywood script.
So 2005 ended happily, with the highest-grossing week in Broadway history capping off another record-breaking year. We saw 12 shows during the intoxicating final week of 2005 -- and during the first week of the new year. The present is very exciting -- and we're on the job reviewing it.
Broadway
The Light in the Piazza (Rating: **** out of 4) -- Victoria Clark won the Tony Award for her richly textured portrayal of Margaret Johnson, an overprotective mother who makes two very painful discoveries while on vacation with her daughter in Italy. First she realizes that her beautiful Clara is capable of falling deeply in love with Fabrizio, the sincere Florentine who worships her. Margaret wrestles with the question of disclosing Clara's developmental problems to Fabrizio and his family. While learning to let go, she realizes that the passionate love that has barged into her daughter's life has been absent from her own superficially happy marriage.
The book by Craig Lucas, interweaving the personal themes with those of Americans abroad, has a Jamesian subtlety and intricacy. It's nicely wedded to Adam Guettel's music and lyrics, which have a wit and sophistication worthy of Sondheim -- combined with a warmth I haven't experienced since Passion.
Clark is still in the cast and deserves all her accolades. As Clara, Katie Clarke came on board December 6 -- she's an absolute luminescence and makes the role her own. It may also be a plus that the new Fabrizio, Aaron Lazar, lacks the dreamboat charisma of Matthew Morrison.
Quite simply, this is as good as it gets.
The Color Purple (Rating: ***1/2) -- Once you get past the awkward opening, Marsha Norman's book navigates this sprawling narrative rather well. Before you know it, the infectious score kicks in, with a populist mix of gospel and blues, and Celie's journey from downtrodden deprivation to self-sufficient dignity takes shape with a handsome, pulsating arc.
We don't get the full Spielbergian impact of the scenes where sassy Sophia is brutally billy-clubbed or the pivotal dining room confrontation where Celie finally stands up to her abusive husband, Mister. Inexplicably, the movie's most rousing musical moment, when lascivious chanteuse Shug Avery gains forgiveness from her minister papa, is missing from the stage.
But the music gets into the hearts of these women, and LaChanze as Celie, Felicia Fields as Sofia and Elizabeth Withers-Mendes as Shug are perfectly cast. By compressing the plotline even more than the movie, we're more constantly in touch with the mutual devotion between the separated sisters, Celie and Nettie (Renee Elise Goldsberry), the soul of this story. So their reunion packs more of a wallop than it did on celluloid.
The Woman in White (Rating: ***1/4) -- Admirers of Andrew Lloyd-Webber need not hesitate. He's in his melodramatic mode, as sure-footed as he has been since his last grandiose Guignol, Sunset Boulevard. Adapting Wilkie Collins' novel, Charlotte Jones has made the ending more operatic, preserving the contours of an interesting gallery of characters.
There are no less than six plum roles in this mystery adventure, none more memorable than the villains, Sir Percival Glyde and Count Fosco. Glyde marries the lovely Laura Fairlie for her fortune, aided by the rogue physician Fosco -- as amorally charming as Glyde is explosively violent.
Norman Large replaced Michael Ball as the rotund Fosco on the night we went, and he was as delightfully reprehensible as you could wish. Tugging most effectively at our heartstrings is Maria Friedman as Laura's conflicted half sister, sacrificing romance to rescue Laura.
A fine pot-boiler of a story with a highly controversial staging technique. Instead of scenery, all is projected on panels that slide and circle around the stage. At times, the animation made me feel like I was at IMAX, floating in the air.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Rating: **3/4) -- All the impulses here are praiseworthy. Smalltown small-mindedness is satirized in this lighthearted William Finn musical while American's cradle-to-grave competitiveness gets tweaked. It's nerd against nerd at Circle in the Square. The whole theater is outfitted to simulate a gymnasium, and Rachel Sheinkin's book cleverly enfolds the audience into the action. Pleasant, but rarely potent.
Off-Broadway
Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead (Rating: ***1/2) -- Unfolding through a series of vignettes, Bert V. Royal's unauthorized sequel to Peanuts has a comic-strip pacing true to its source. But good grief, we're a long way from Charles Schultzville from the outset. Snoopy is dead, put down after going rabid. There's a rabid glee in the way Royal goes about puncturing other characters in the Peanuts pantheon beginning with CB, nee Charlie Brown. Grieving over his lost pooch, CB discovers an affinity with the reclusive Beethoven (Schroeder) that mushrooms into intimacy.
Barely crossing the threshold of their teens, this cavalcade of once-adorable grade-schoolers is shockingly on the skids. Drugs, homophobic bullying, pyromania and suicide pick them off one-by-one. This is one compelling, amusing and ultimately harrowing ride through the treacherous terrain of New Millennium adolescence in America.
Candida (Rating: ***1/4) -- With this beautifully staged problem play by Shaw, Jean Cocteau Repertory passed the halfway mark in a season dedicated to great heroines of the stage, ranging from Medea to Mother Courage. Handsomely mounted at the quaint Bouwerie Lane Theatre -- a converted bank! -- this thinly plotted Candida was in no hurry to grab us by the throat.
An au currant playwright would zip us directly from Act 1 to the Act 3 denouement, where idealistic artist Eugene Marchbanks and Candida's husband, the orotund Rev. Morell, face off for the lady's love.
Obviously, Mr. Shaw never heard of TV, video games, e-mail or other necessities that today's audiences must run off to. But in his antique way, he managed to write a dandy play.
Abigail's Party (Rating: **3/4) -- No doubt about it, the performances in this New Group production are outstanding, but they're lavished on a trivial script by Mike Leigh that has been wildly overpraised. If this is a savage satire on British life, why is all the music at this drunken party so American? Elvis and Feliciano in 1977, like so many other details, just don't compute.
While our suburbanites are getting liquored-up, teenage revelries are going on nearby. To dramatize the main point -- that more damage is being done here by the so-called adults -- Act 1 climaxes with one of Abigail's guests running off to the loo to vomit.
It's a steep descent from Albee's Virginia Woolf to this. Overall, I like Jennifer Jason Leigh in the title role, but one of the chief irritants in this toothless satire is her insistence on inserting a v in her husband's name. Kindly call him Laurence and look for laughs elsewhere.
Jewtopia (Rating: **1/2) -- I was pleased to find that this comedy, co-written by co-stars Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson, wasn't at all as offensive as its title threatened to be. Nor was this saga of a Jew teaching a gentile how to pass as Jewish as fresh, original and funny as I had hoped.
Hit-and-miss, almost perfectly mediocre, Jewtopia takes us through the Borscht-Belt stereotypes of the Chosen People. And with a Christian protagonist (Fogel) who wants to be Jewish, marry a good Jewish girl and never have to make another decision for himself again -- rim shot -- the question is put, nonchalantly but pointedly, to the lapsed Jew (Wolfson) who guides him. Why are you so ashamed of being Jewish?
We get a smattering of funny answers as Chris learns the primacy of hypochondria in Jewish life -- and the absolute necessity of buying wholesale.
Altar Boyz (Rating: **1/4) -- This musical is framed as the farewell concert of a Christian boy band -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan and Abraham -- whose mission, every time they perform, is to purify the souls of every member of the audience. Maybe the original cast, all gone now, put over the premise, the peccadilloes and the purposely insipid music with more gusto and bite. I found the most of 83 minutes long and tedious.
Opera
Lucia di Lammermoor (Rating: ***3/4) -- The current Metropolitan Opera production of this Donizetti safari through Sir Walter Scott's bloody melodrama reminds us of how powerful this drama can be.
Youngok Shin sang the celebrated mad scene with a purity and a light precision that added a chilling, bloodcurdling luster to her preceding murderous exploits offstage. Giuseppe Filianoti merely succeeded, as few tenors do, in elevating Edgardo's regrets and agonies safely above anticlimax in the wake of Lucia's final arias -- particularly difficult when executed with Youngok's sensitivity and bravura.
Wozzeck (Rating: ***1/2) -- Met maestro James Levine knows this Alban Berg masterwork to the bone, so the music sweeps thrillingly over us from beginning to end. Alan Held brings a powerful presence and a slightly robotic attitude to the title role, nicely balancing Franz Wozzeck's menace and malleability. As Marie, the ultimate victim of Wozzeck's volatility, Katarina Dalayman is the best I've seen live, easily comparable to the best I've heard on CD.
So where does this Met production fall short? In the utterly uninspired set design by Robert Israel, which makes Wozzeck look too small for the house, however fine it sounds.
L'Elisir d'Amore (Rating: ***) -- Sweet-sounding tenor Ramon Vargas is as short on charisma as ever, but he finds an ideal outlet as the nebbishy Nemorino in Donizetti's tuneful farce. Trouble is, he's paired with Ruth Ann Swenson, whose Adina doesn't justify Vargas' transports of desire.
Peter Coleman-Wright (as the foppish Sergeant Belcore) and Andrew Shore (as Doctor Dulcamara) come comically to the rescue, immersing themselves with brio in John Copley's bubbly production concept. I think it's C-W who sports the painted mustache. Even if Swenson is past her prime, it's all a delightful prank.