THE MORNING LINE
DATE: Wednesday, April 15, 2015
FROM: Michelle Farabaugh, Jennie Mamary Cameron Draper, Katelyn Fuentes
PAGES: 17, including this page.
April 15, 2015
Review: ‘It Shoulda Been You,’ a Wedding on Broadway
By Ben Brantley
As the father of the bride might put it, “Oy.”
“It Shoulda Been You,” which opened on Tuesday night at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, confirms the sad truth that weddings — those supposed celebrations of everlasting love — bring out the worst in some people. That includes cynics, show-offs, heavy drinkers, envious have-nots and, it would seem, the creators of American musicals.
The last big wedding-themed show I remember on Broadway was “A Catered Affair” (2008), a singing adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s 1956 movie that turned the sentimental tale of a blue-collar bride into a dishwater-gray dirge. “It Shoulda Been You” takes the opposite tack. It’s so aggressively bubbly it gives you the hiccups. Or do I mean acid reflux? In any case, it’s not easy to swallow.
Featuring a book and lyrics by Brian Hargrove, with music by Barbara Anselmi, this crumbly meringue of a production would seem to be hoping to capitalize on the success of reality television shows about brides behaving badly, as well as cinematic laugh-fests like “Bridesmaids.” But this show, directed by the actor David Hyde Pierce and starring Tyne Daly and Harriet Harris as battling future mothers-in-law, also looks further back for inspiration.
I mean way back, as in the 1920s, when a sappy little comedy called “Abie’s Irish Rose,” by Anne Nichols, became a runaway hit over the strenuous objections of the New York critics. (“Just about as low as good clean fun can get,” wrote Robert Benchley.) That play portrayed the familial furor caused by the altar-bound romance between a Jewish boy and a Catholic girl.
In “Shoulda,” it’s the bride (Sierra Boggess) who’s Jewish, and the groom (David Burtka) the gentile. But there’s plenty of the same old interdenominational kvetching, except that now it’s set to music, with lyrics such as these, from the title song:
I don’t have a thing against gentiles.
I respect their heathen ways.
But everyone knows you never marry
When you’re in your goyim phase.
Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890 Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986 Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000
In other ways, “Shoulda” feels more like a product of the mid-20th century, when middle-class sex comedies had both a wholesome twinkle and a dirty leer. Think of plays like “The Tunnel of Love” and “Any Wednesday,” or television series like “Love American Style.”
“Shoulda” — set in a fancy hotel where the wedding is to take place (shades of Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite”) — occupies that treacherous comic ground between smirky and perky. Mining an illusion of charm from such terrain is hard, if not impossible, work for any contemporary performer.
Not that the eminently talented ensemble members here don’t do their best to fill out the paper-doll stereotypes they have been asked to embody. In addition to Ms. Daly (as Judy Steinberg, the Jewish bulldozer mother of the bride) and Ms. Harris (as Georgette Howard, the wasp-tongued mother of the groom), the cast includes such Broadway stalwarts as Chip Zien (as Judy’s henpecked husband) and Edward Hibbert (as a fey wedding planner).
There are some ways in which the plot diverges from the template of decades ago. Our bride and groom — and their maid of honor (Montego Glover) and best man (Nick Spangler) — turn out to have a secret or two to spring on their combined families, which is surprising only in the sense that nobody here ever seems to behave in character from beginning to end. Longstanding grievances and tensions are dissipated with the wave of a feel-good wand.
The cast also notably features the Ray Bolger-like Josh Grisetti, as a seemingly spurned suitor, and Lisa Howard as Jenny. She’s the plus-size sister of the bride who has always been a dutiful doormat of a daughter, but is ready to cut loose. She does, inevitably, in a loud and soulful torch number called “Jenny’s Blues” that inspires both huzzahs from the audience and the evening’s single best line of dialogue, delivered as an irascible aside by Ms. Daly: “Why is she talking like a big black woman?”
For the most part, the score sticks so relentlessly to the same up-tempo jauntiness that you expect a bouncing ball to materialize. What dancing there is, choreographed by Josh Rhodes, is usually of the soft-shoe variety. The gold-trimmed hotel set (Anna Louizos) and tastefully tasteless costumes (by William Ivey Long) are pretty much what you’d expect them to be.
There are lots of classic domineering mother and mother-in-law jokes, and for a while it looks like the show is setting up an all-out catfight between Ms. Daly’s and Ms. Harris’s characters. But before they can build up a head of steam, these stylish actresses are smothered by a fuzzy blanket of cheery political correctness.
The show’s happy ending — and surprise! it does have one — may be purely 21st century. But even this conclusion has the feeling of something borrowed. There’s not an element in “It Shoulda Been You” that hasn’t been used, and wrung dry, before. Adding latter-day twists to this cocktail of clichés somehow makes it taste all the flatter.
It Shoulda Been You
Book and lyrics by Brian Hargrove; music and concept by Barbara Anselmi; directed by David Hyde Pierce; choreography by Josh Rhodes; music direction and arrangements by Lawrence Yurman; sets by Anna Louizos; costumes by William Ivey Long; lighting by Ken Billington; sound by Nevin Steinberg; hair design by Paul Huntley; makeup design by Anne Ford-Coates; associate director, Shelley Butler; associate choreographer, Lee A. Wilkins; orchestrations by Doug Besterman; orchestra coordinator, John Miller; production stage manager, Bess Marie Glorioso; technical supervisor, Juniper Street Productions; general manager, Foresight Theatrical/Allan Williams. Presented by Daryl Roth, Scott Landis, Jane Bergère, Jayne Baron Sherman, Patty
Baker, Broadway Across America, Clear Channel Spectacolor, Gloken LLC, James L. Nederlander, John O’Boyle, Judith Ann Abrams/Jacki Barlia Florin, Old Campus Productions/Ready to Play and Sara Beth Zivitz/Passero Productions. At the Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47th Street, 877-250-2929, itshouldabeenyou.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.
WITH: Tyne Daly (Judy Steinberg), Harriet Harris (Georgette Howard), Lisa Howard (Jenny Steinberg), Sierra Boggess (Rebecca Steinberg), David Burtka (Brian Howard), Montego Glover (Annie Shepard), Chip Zien (Murray Steinberg), Josh Grisetti (Marty Kaufman), Adam Heller (Walt/Uncle Morty), Michael X. Martin (George Howard), Anne L. Nathan (Mimsy/Aunt Sheila), Nick Spangler (Greg Madison) and Edward Hibbert (Albert).
April 14, 2015
Review: Alexandra Collier’s ‘Underland’ Mines Rich Performances By Anita Gates
Anyone who has ever lived in a deadly dull town will understand why two bawdy-mouthed Australian schoolgirls dig a hole to China in Alexandra Collier’s “Underland.” It’s the only way out, they decide, from stone-quarry country. But they’re bad at geography, so the nice man who crawls out of their tunnel one day is from Tokyo. Back at school, the girls’ physical education teacher turns into a crocodile.
Ms. Collier, who is Australian-born and New York-based, has created six vivid, droll characters. In Terra Nova Collective’s polished production of “Underland” at 59E59 Theaters, Mia Rovegno has directed six assertive, beautifully delineated performances. The meaning of the play, however, is swathed in enough metaphor to suffocate Samuel Beckett.
Some motives are obvious. The tunnel diggers, Violet and Ruth (Angeliea Stark and Kiley Lotz), seek escape, sometimes through drugs. Taka (Daniel K. Isaac), the Japanese visitor, just wants to go home, as soon as someone brings him a glass of water, please. His Tamagotchi pet dies.
The teachers are less transparent. Miss Harmony (Georgia Cohen) is new in town, and no one can figure out why she’s there. Mr. B (Jens Rasmussen), whose instructional style suggests Marine boot camp, is also literally a killer. There are sightings in town of a real crocodile, but maybe it’s just Mr. B after his nighttime transformation.
Mrs. Butterfat (a very funny Annie Golden), though, appears to be the theme-speaker, while talking to her dead husband, Glen. “Crocs. They’re just down there, waiting,” she says. She dismisses a divine-retribution explanation of why so many locals are dying: “It’s not God; it’s the land. It’ll swallow you whole.” Aha! Living in a horrible place can eat your soul.
“Underland” continues through April 25 at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, Manhattan; 212-279-4200, 59e59.org.
Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890 Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986 Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000
April 15, 2015
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April 14, 2015 How Is This Musical Comedy Like Breaking Bad?
By Mark Blankenship
The surprisingly deep themes of Something Rotten!
On first glance – or maybe even fifth –Something Rotten! doesn't seem anything like Breaking Bad. After all, the former is a raucous musical comedy about Elizabethan playwrights who actually invent musical theatre while trying to compete with Shakespeare, and the latter is an era-defining television series about a high school chemistry teacher who evolves into a homicidal meth kingpin.
But according to Karey Kirkpatrick, who co-wrote Something Rotten's music and lyrics with his brother Wayne and co-wrote the book with John O'Farrell, there's a real connection between the two. Take a look, he says, at how aggressively Walter White defends his terrible choices on Breaking Bad, then notice how Nick Bottom, one of the struggling brothers, does exactly the same thing in the musical.
If you haven't seen Something Rotten!, which is now in previews at the St. James Theatre, here's a clarification: The Bottom brothers want to compete with Shakespeare because the Bard is sucking up all the money and fame in town. If they don't write a hit, they're going to be broke, and since Nick has a wife to support, he can't let that happen. Therefore, he hires a fortune teller to reveal what the next theatrical trend will be, and when the
mystical man tells him about musicals, Nick commits one hundred percent. Even though his brother Nigel wants to write a heartfelt show about their own lives, Nick insists they have to create a song-and-dance spectacular called Omelet. (To learn the story behind that particular title, you'll have to see the show.)
Brian D'Arcy James (as Nick Bottom, center) and the Something Rotten! Cast
Complications – and comedy – arise because once Nick has decided he's makingOmelet, he refuses to be talked down. "Nick is desperate for something that's gonna turn his life around, and the analogy is that it's like he went to somebody and got a hot tip on a pony," says Kirkpatrick. "And if someone says, 'This might be a little bit crazy,' Nick is saying, 'I've got to see this race run. Because if I don't, I've spent all my money and I just have to admit I was a fool.'"
This twisted train of thought recalls Walter White. As Kirkpatrick explains, "If you use Breaking Bad as an example, it's like, 'I'm gonna leave this money behind for my family, and they won't resent me.' And you go, 'Hmmm… right idea, but they'd probably respect you more if you just went in and said, "I'm struggling here."' And that's what Nick's wife is saying. 'Don't take this all on yourself. Let me help you.'"
So Nick Bottom, then, is part of a long line of misguided heroes – both comic and tragic – whose best-laid plans lead to disaster. "The story could be he robbed a bank, or the story could be that he's a playwright who's taking rewrites from a thug in the mob, like in Bullets Over Broadway," Kirkpatrick says. "And we're sitting here going, 'I understand your motive, but your actions are wrong.'"
If we recognize Nick's failings, then the show is succeeding. Kirkpatrick hopes audiences will enjoy themselves, but he also wants them to see the humanity beneath the manic jokes and the musical numbers about making breakfast. "We are all flawed individuals, and we have all been in situations where we are doing things out of good intentions that may not be the wisest choice," he says. "Some of my favorite comedy is comedy that comes out of that desperation. How do you still sympathize with their character? How do you understand their plight?"
Photos by Joan Marcus. Top photo: Brad Oscar as Nostradamus and Brian D'Arcy James as Nick Bottom.