Word: guettel
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Here she shines brightest when performing the work of Adam Guettel, a musically progressive Broadway composer. He provides the title track, which relates an emotional gulf in a relationship as a river, mirroring the widening break by increasing harmonic intricacy...
...probes the depths of “Dividing Day,” a Guettel masterpiece from his recent Broadway musical, “The Light in the Piazza,” adding anger to the melancholy of Tony-winner Victoria Clark’s original interpretation. The song features jazz pianist Fred Hersch, who balances harmonic tension and melodic release, an appropriately unsettling touch to a song that chronicles a loveless marriage: “I can see the winter in your eyes, telling me, / ‘Go now, we did it, you curtsied, I bowed. / We are together...
Every song on “Build a Bridge” resonates with the vocal intensity poured into “Dividing Day.” Unfortunately, some of the pop songwriters represented on the album don’t provide McDonald with material as emotionally rich as Guettel does, making her inspired recreations of John Mayer’s facile “My Stupid Mouth” and Neil Young’s boring “My Heart” seem vapid in comparison...
...mixed bill of old favorites (The Man That Got Away) and postmodern show tunes (Come Down from the Tree). Her silver voice is smoky yet refined, her diction clear as a cold mountain stream. Best of all is a passionately sung medley of Leonard Bernstein's Somewhere and Adam Guettel's How Glory Goes (from Floyd Collins), which she turns into a haunting declaration of doubt-flecked faith...
...White Way has become a neon-lit recycling bin for tributes (Fosse), revivals (Annie Get Your Gun, Cabaret), retread movies (Footloose) and British imports that were creatively dead on arrival (any Andrew Lloyd Webber show). Yes, Stephen Sondheim still strikes sparks, while a few up-and-comers, especially Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins), show signs of vibrant life. But it's long past time for something really fresh. Contact, the exhilarating dance play by choreographer Susan Stroman and writer John Weidman that opened last week at Manhattan's Lincoln Center, is just what the play doctor ordered...