Word: singing
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...usual, a mixed bag for me. The Drowsy Chaperone, which I liked along with most of the critics, garnered the most nominations among the musicals - 13. But the two straight plays that drew the most nods - The History Boys, with 8, and the revival of Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing, with 9 - left me cold. For my own picks of six new Broadway shows that are worth a visit, see this week's magazine. (Add one more play that I touted earlier - Festen, the grueling and gripping family drama from London that, for some reason, got snubbed by both...
...Awake and Sing This one is sad. Clifford Odets' leftwing '30s drama about the struggles of a Bronx family in the depths of the Depression made a big impact on me during my English major days and in one previous staging I've seen. But I was let down by this slack, erratically acted Broadway production, which was (again) unaccountably hailed by the critics. I'll buy Zoe Wanamaker as the strong-willed matriarch, but the overrated Mark Ruffalo is simply grating as the gigolo next door, and the estimable Ben Gazzara doesn't seem to have the energy...
...Remember that, in 1931, the Wall Street crash had lately idled nearly a fifth of the work force and wonder that Ira Gershwin could have Wintergreen sing, in a perky love ballad, "Who cares what banks fail in Yonkers, / Long as you've got a kiss that conquers?" The Senators are less discreet: "If you think you've got depression, / Wait until we get in session, / And you'll find out what depression really means!" The reporters care not about The Issues; they pepper the Prez with questions only about his love life. "We don't want to know about...
...However dismissive Kaufman the writer was to the political process, Kaufman the director knew how to put on a splendid show. Of Thee In Sing, then and now, begins with convention delegates bearing such placards as "Wintergreen - the Flavor Lasts," "Vote for Posterity and See What You Get" and the meta-cynical "Turn the Reformers Out." The first act climax, set in Madison Square Garden, intersperses the political rhetoric with a wrestling match; the combatants briefly pause in a double-scissors lock to applaud one of the speeches, which is interrupted by the announcement of a hockey or baseball score...
...each song fits into the plot, advances the improbable story and fleshes out the characters, all the while parading its jazzy insouciance. Sometimes Ira can be just on the lyric side of lewd. In "Never Was a Girl So Fair," a hymn to Miss Devereaux's allure, the pols sing: "What a charming epiglottis! / What a lovely coat of tan! / Oh, the man who isn't hot is / Not a man!" The Encores! production, staged by John Rando (who directed the wonderful 1998 revival of the Kaufman-Gershwin Strike Up the Band), makes Kaufman's old whine bubble like...