The Morning Line

THE MORNING LINE

DATE: Monday, December 14, 2015

FROM: Melissa Cohen, Michelle Farabaugh

PAGES: 14, including this page.

December 14, 2015

Public Theater Announces ‘Twelfth Night’ Musical By Andrew R. Chow

The Public Theater’s popular Public Works program will return in the summer with a musical adaptation of “Twelfth Night,” created by Kwame Kwei-Armah and Shaina Taub.

The Public Works program brings together professional and nonprofessional actors from across New York City’s five boroughs with song-and-dance productions of classic works. “The performers come together to create a vibrant theatrical tapestry; you may be able to tally the newcomers onstage, but in this embracing context they bring as much pleasure as the polished performers,” Charles Isherwood wrote in The New York Times about last season’s “The Odyssey.”

This season will lead off with “Twelfth Night,” Shakespeare’s comedy of crossed signals which appeared in its nonmusical form at Shakespeare in the Park with Anne Hathaway in 2009. The Public Theater puts on Shakespeare in the Park. The music and lyrics for the musical will be written by Ms. Taub, who has ample experience in both the pop and Broadway worlds. Mr. Kwei-Armah, a British actor and the artistic director of Baltimore’s Center Stage, will direct.

According to Ms. Taub, the production will be set in a port city during a carnival. While the spoken text will be in Shakespeare’s words, the songs will be in contemporary language. “It’s so amazing to start from a play that works so well, and just zoom out the emotional moments and turn them into big songs,” Ms. Taub said.

Additionally, the Public Works program will expand on both a local and national level. The Public Theater will partner with community centers around the city for workshops, classes, and the creation of theatrical pieces. And affiliated theaters in Dallas, Seattle, and Detroit will be given the chance to present their own community- based productions.

More information can be found at publictheater.org.

December 14, 2015

Josh Groban Takes Aim at His Broadway Dream

By Michael Paulson

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Josh Groban is a big fan of the theater. He acted at a performing arts high school, he sees plays in Los Angeles and New York, and his latest album is a set of show tune covers.

Now, in the midst of an enormously successful career as a recording artist, this baritone balladeer is preparing to make his Broadway debut.

Mr. Groban, 34, will star in the Broadway premiere of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” a musical adaptation of a 70-page section of Tolstoy’s masterwork, “War and Peace.” The show, opening on Wednesday here at the American Repertory Theater (without Mr. Groban), is scheduled to arrive on Broadway in September (with Mr. Groban).

The casting is a provocative combination of man and material. Mr. Groban, who has sold more than 30 million records and maintains a busy touring schedule, is best knownas a traditionalist, whose success has been built around soaring interpretations of classics and love songs. “The Great Comet,” on the other hand, is an electro- pop opera born of the experimental theater movement; the initial production was a boisterously immersive gambol set in a makeshift supper club at which vodka and pierogi were served to the audience.

In an interview on Saturday at the American Repertory Theater, where he had come to see the show and meet the current cast, Mr. Groban, who has acted on television and in film, said that in recent years he had had “some wonderful offers” to appear on Broadway, but that he chose “The Great Comet” because of a passion for the material and a desire to stretch.

“For a first time doing it, I wanted it to be something that was a little less expected, and I wanted it to be a show and a character that forced me to get a little bit out of my comfort zone and do something that people haven’t seen before,” he said. “To have the opportunity and freedom to take off the hat of ‘me,’ and to dive into a character, is something I think will be very freeing, and very fun.”

Mr. Groban first encountered “The Great Comet” in 2013, when he attended an Off Broadway performance, posed for a photo with the cast, and raved on Twitter, “One of my most favorite theatrical experiences ever. LOVED.” A commercial producer attached to the project, Howard Kagan, reached out to Mr. Groban this year to ask if he would consider playing Pierre in a Broadway production. Mr. Groban not only said yes, but went out and bought his first accordion (in the show, Pierre plays the accordion, as well as the piano) and began reading “War and Peace” (he’s now about 800 pages in).

The creative team, in turn, has been expanding the role of Pierre, who during the time frame of the musical, is a wealthy and unhappy Muscovite in his mid-30s, characterized, according to the play’s director, Rachel Chavkin, by “degeneracy, rottedness and decrepitude.”

The show’s creator, Dave Malloy — who came up with the idea for the musical when reading “War and Peace” while working as a pianist on a cruise ship — originated the role of Pierre, and has long thought the character was underdeveloped. Mr. Malloy, who wrote the book, music and lyrics for the show, has already given Pierre a new aria (“Dust and Ashes”), and he has been listening to Mr. Groban’s albums while contemplating other changes to take full advantage of what he calls Mr. Groban’s “beautiful, angelic instrument.” (The show is evolving in other ways, as well: At the start of a duel, there is now a cheeky musical quotation from the score of “Hamilton.”)

“The Great Comet” has been in production since 2012, when it wasstaged at Ars Nova, an Off Broadway theater. In 2013 and 2014, the show was presented in large tents, first in New York’s meatpacking district, and then in Midtown.

The staging here in Cambridge, which is in previews and opens on Wednesday, is the first time the show has been presented in a proscenium-style theater. The show’s MacArthur-grant-winning designer, Mimi Lien, seeking to replicate the intimate experience the show had in less conventional settings, has covered the walls with red velour drapery as well as 400 paintings of wars, landscapes, religious icons and historical figures; she has built seating around the stage, and small stages amid the seats, so that the action can take place around and among the audience.

The Broadway production, which will use the same design, will be produced by Mr. Kagan, along with his wife, Janet Kagan, and Paula Marie Black. The cast, other than Mr. Groban, has not been announced.

The production team would not say how long Mr. Groban would be with the show, other than to say that he had made a substantial time commitment. Mr. Groban called theater acting “something that I have wanted to do my whole life,” and said this project, while “it may seem like a bit of an odd fit,” was one that he would embrace and recommend to his fans.

“As soon as I find something that I feel people recognize me for, that’s my cue to say, ‘O.K., let’s explore, let’s wander a little and see where we land,’” he said.

December 14, 2015

‘Fun Home’ Recoups on Broadway By Michael Paulson

The producers still remember the reaction of theater world mavens when they said they wanted to bring “Fun Home” to Broadway. Sure, the show had ecstatic reviews and was selling out off Broadway, but it was the coming-of-age story of a lesbian cartoonist whose gay father killed himself. Could that possibly succeed in the famously flop-rich environment of for-profit theater?

“They said we were insane to do this,” said Mike Isaacson.

“Really? You’re bringing that to Broadway?” recalled Barbara Whitman.

“I think crazy was the word we heard most,” said Kristin Caskey.

But this weekend, eight months after opening on Broadway, “Fun Home” hit a milestone many thought would never come: It recouped its capitalization, meaning it made back the money investors raised to mount the show, according to Mr. Isaacson, Ms. Whitman and Ms. Caskey, the three lead producers. It is now officially a hit.

The show’s weekly box office grosses have slipped recently, having peaked at $817,665 the week ending July 19 and dropped since to $571,715 the week ending Dec. 6. The producers say they are nonetheless making money every week (they would not specify the weekly running costs) and intend to continue the show’s run on Broadway, even after the contracts of the lead actors expire in March.

The producers have approved the first licensed production of the show in the Philippines, with Lea Salonga as star; they have booked a yearlong national tour, starting next fall and including Chicago; and they are still discussing a possible London production. And the show’s original cast recording was just nominated for a Grammy.

The show, with direction by Sam Gold, book and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine Tesori, beat the odds as a result of several factors.

First, the producers kept costs quite low: With a cast of nine, an orchestra of seven, a limited advertising budget and a small in-the-round theater (Circle in the Square), “Fun Home” cost just $5.25 million to mount, at a time when many Broadway musicals cost more than $15 million.

Second, the show won this year’s Tony Award for best new musical, which is an important marketing tool, especially for works that are hard to explain to tourists, deal with difficult subjects and do not feature movie stars. “Best musical” has become the show’s de facto slogan.

“There are plenty of people who just say, ‘Oh, it’s the best, and I want to see the best,’” Ms. Whitman said.

And then there was the 11-year-old Sydney Lucas’s poignant performance on the Tony Awards broadcast, which boosted ticket sales, and the appeal of the show to college students, many of whom read Alison Bechdel’s graphic-novel memoir, “Fun Home,” on which the musical is based.

“The American public continues to impress with how much they’re willing to embrace the new — every time we thought we had reached the limit for the audience base, it turned out we hadn’t,” said Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, where “Fun Home” began off Broadway. “This also means that we have turned a corner on what it means to be gay in the United States. ‘Angels in America’ was the first time I could see mass audiences identifying with gay characters — Prior Walter was an Everyman — and that’s what Alison is. She’s a lesbian, and one never forgets that, but she’s a lesbian who speaks for all of us.”

In a commercial theater market that often emphasizes entertainment value, “Fun Home” has emphasized emotional punch, which, the producers said, is what the show’s audience most seems to talk about.

Ms. Whitman said the producers have been reassessing their marketing material, “making sure our quotes capture the emotional experience of the show, because that’s what people really respond to.” And the producers have repeatedly emphasized the show’s universal themes — of family, of father-daughter relationships, of “seeing your parents through grown-up eyes,” as Ms. Caskey put it.

The show seems to have benefited from good timing, having arrived on Broadway just before same-sex marriage became legal nationwide and when sexuality is an increasingly mainstream theme in popular culture.

“This is a musical of its time — we do not know if this show could have existed five years or 10 years ago,” Ms. Caskey said. “It cannot be ignored that it is also that kismet of the perfect time for a piece of this nature, in light of how far we’ve come. And look at television today — a number of shows diving into rich emotional topics. It’s that type of show, and there’s an audience for that.”

December 14, 2015

Review: In ‘Once Upon a Mattress,’ Jackie Hoffman as Paradoxical Charmer By Ben Brantley

If you happen to be on Grand Street around 8 p.m. during the next few weeks, do not panic if you hear a noise that threatens to shatter the windows and buckle the sidewalks. It’s only Jackie Hoffman, telling the world that she is shy.

“I’m SHY,” sings Ms. Hoffman, in the number that introduces her (it’s called “Shy”) in the Transport Group’s genial, patchy revival of the 1959 musical “Once Upon a Mattress,” which opened on Sunday night at the Abrons Arts Center. It’s a moment guaranteed to make audiences both flinch and grin like imbeciles, as one little word takes on the aural dimensions of a stampede of megaphone-wielding Ethel Mermans.

Ms. Hoffman is portraying Princess Winnifred (Fred to her friends), a galumphing fairy-tale princess who doesn’t know her own strength, or lung power. And while she is several decades older than the young Carol Burnett was when she originated Winnifred on Broadway 50-some years ago, the diminutive Ms. Hoffman proves to be every inch — and decibel — the ingénue she needs to be.

An arch and antic reworking of “The Princess and the Pea,” one of the folk tales that Hans Christian Andersen made his own, “Mattress” has always been close kin to British pantomimes, those grab-bag holiday entertainments that fracture classic fairy tales for family audiences. It also brings to mind those perky Greenwich Village revues of the “Mattress” era that were showcases for brightly eccentric new talents.

Designed as a framework to be stuffed with tuneful songs, vaudeville turns, sprightly dancing, insinuating jokes and cartoon characterizations, “Mattress” has its charms, but they do wear thin. When last seen on Broadway, in a 1996 revival starring a miscast Sarah Jessica Parker, it felt awfully long in the telling. And so it does still.

This version features an agreeable visual production, in which the plot’s medieval kingdom seems to be drawn into existence via video projections (by Andrew Lazarow) of children’s-book-style illustrations by Ken Fallin. (Sandra Goldmark did the set, and Kathryn Rohe the costumes.) And it has a pleasant and eager supporting cast, which includes Jason SweetTooth Williams as the mother-smothered Prince Dauntless (son of Aggravain), who falls for Winnifred, and the downtown favorite David Greenspan as his kingly dad, who can express himself only in mime.

Even embodied by the resourceful Mr. Greenspan, a miming king is a wearisome thing, especially when he is required to explain the facts of life to his son via charades. The show also features prancing choreography by Scott Rink and songs of love and exposition prettily delivered by Jessica Fontana, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka, Cory Lingner and Zak Resnick.

Yet this production is never quite smooth enough, on the one hand, or wild enough, on the other, to consistently hold the attention. That is, except when Ms. Hoffman is blushing and belting or Mr. Epperson is doing Lypsinka doing Aggravain, who in this telling has a knack for fleetingly transforming herself into Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn or Gloria Swanson. Mr. Epperson can’t really sell an old-style Broadway number, but he does comic wonders in transforming standard-issue lines just by stretching out his “a’s,” British aristo style.

Ms. Hoffman isn’t a natural physical comedian, as Ms. Burnett was in the part. (It was recorded twice for television.) She is instead a vocal slapstick artist of both speech and song, shifting registers and styles with madcap virtuosity.

More surprisingly, Ms. Hoffman’s Winnifred is genuinely affecting, an alien princess (she hails from the swamps) who doesn’t expect or even hope to fit into a conventional storybook kingdom. The spectacle-wearing Ms. Hoffman, who here looks more than ever like a Roz Chast illustration, doesn’t oversell her character’s oddball qualities.

Instead, she makes Winnifred involuntarily loud and clumsy; her royal klutziness simply is what she is. That turns out to be quite enough to win the hearts of a prince, and an audience.

December 12, 2015

Review: In ‘Oh Hello,’ Sour and Crotchety Old Men at Their Best

By Ben Brantley

Far be it from me to suggest that the great David Mamet was looking over the shoulders of the great Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland when they composed their latest chef-d’oeuvre. Or that the respectable Messrs. Faizon and St. Geegland might have been eavesdropping on Mr. Mamet in rehearsal.

But is it really just a coincidence that two brand-new plays from eminent American dramatists have arrived in New York within days of each other and just happen to feature septuagenarian men with agitated gray hair and mushy accents sputtering though one-way phone conversations? I mean, great minds and all that, but still.

A week after Mr. Mamet’s “China Doll,” starring Al Pacino, opened on Broadway, Mr. Faizon and Mr. St. Geegland’s “Oh, Hello, Live! on (Off) Broadway” opened at the Cherry Lane Theater on Thursday night. Both plays are shtick-driven two-character shows that portray ambition-addled, desperate men in the autumns of their lives, and both are attracting hard-core cult audiences.

There are some big differences, though. For one thing, “Oh, Hello, Live!” is a hoot. I mean, an intentional hoot. And even Pulitzer Prize-winning pros like Mr. Mamet might pick up some tips from Mr. Faizon and Mr. St. Geegland’s hilariously self-aware — and silkily clumsy — use of classic theatrical devices.

These include disseminating information by having a character talk on the telephone (as in “China Doll”) and marking the passage of decades with lyrical time-capsule monologues (in the sentimental spirit of Billy Crystal’s “700 Sundays”). Then there’s the sharing of secret revelations with the audience that nobody else in the play knows about; and turning an inane-seeming line into a haunting climax that brings down the curtain via lighting cues. Heck, there’s even a dream ballet, which so drastically lowers Mr. St. Geegland’s sodium level that he is left gasping for Rold Gold Pretzels.

I suppose I am obliged to report that Mr. Faizon, an actor who almost became the voice for CBS, and Mr. St. Geegland, the author of an unpublished novel in the style of early Philip Roth, are fictitious. They are the long- running alter-egos of Nick Kroll and John Mulaney, comics in their 30s who have been regularly transforming themselves into Gil Faizon (Mr. Kroll) and George St. Geegland (Mr. Mulaney) in sketches on Comedy Central’s “Kroll Show.”

But though they are summoned into being with blatantly artificial silver wigs and wrinkles that appear to have been drawn with felt-tip pens, Gil and George have their own undeniable and autonomous reality, with its own special language, logic and even rules of pronunciation. They are angry, insular, out-of-touch, egregious cultural stereotypes who perceive the rest of the world in similarly stereotypical terms.

What’s more, they think they’re really funny, which they’re not. Which is exactly what makes them really, really funny.

I didn’t have high expectations for “Oh, Hello, Live!” I’d seen Gil and George only in television segments, in which they played pranks on guest stars by serving them obscenely overstuffed tuna sandwiches. (The punch line: “Too much tuna!”) They felt like hiply square vaudevillians, to be enjoyed only in hit-and-run appearances.

On the contrary, it turns out that these sour, crotchety guys are best savored in large doses. Mr. Kroll and Mr. Mulaney don’t so much portray Gil and George as allow themselves to be taken over by them, as if by dybbuks. The joy in watching them comes from seeing what at first registers as a single, obvious joke keep growing bigger and bigger and bigger, until its warped, silly worldview takes over your mind, too.

According to George and Gil, this production is not their first venture into live theater. They have already presented, among other plays, “True Upper West,” their take on “True West,” Sam Shepard’s play about battling brothers. (They paid homage — which they insist on pronouncing as “home-page” — to the celebrated revival in which Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly switched parts by switching medications instead.)

For their appearance at the Cherry Lane — and they are most respectfully aware of this institution’s legacy in great experimental drama — they have created a work about two longtime roommates on the Upper West Side. When their characters lose their rent-controlled status (their monthly bill jumps from $75 to $4,000), they face the tough choice of whether to sell out creatively to NY1, which wants to turn them into television stars.

The plot provides a loose structure on which the pair hang all manner of baggy jokes, terrible puns, offensive insults and groaning malapropisms. There’s room for at least one guest-star appearance. (That was a happily accommodating Richard Kind on the night I attended, though we were promised that F. Murray Abraham — whom the fellows refer to as “F” — would show up; like Godot, he didn’t.) And, yes, tuna is served.

“Oh, Hello, Live!” has been given a charming full-dress production on which the nimble director Alex Timbers (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”) served as creative consultant, with a “Sesame Street”-style set by Connor W. Munion and crucial witty lighting by Jake DeGroot. Another unseen, but much mentioned presence is that of Gil and George’s unpaid intern, Ruvi Nandan, whose name inevitably inspires a multitude of ethnic nudges.

Gil and George worry from time to time that their audience might not be tuned into their “pool of reference.” Do theatergoers today appreciate the depths of Alan Alda’s wit and Steely Dan’s music? Toward the end of the production, they begin to wonder if it’s really worth wasting their time on stupid people like us.

Let’s hope that’s only a passing mood. Early in the show, after all, they note that theater has become “cool again,” going on to add, “There’s ‘Hamilton’ and” — oceanic pause — “nothing else.” The noise from the audience throughout their performance — that of people blind drunk on their own laughter — suggests that the roster of cool theater has now been swelled by the uncoolest dudes on the planet.

December 14, 2015

Review: Andrea McArdle and Kip Gilman Puzzle Out Love in ‘2 Across’ By Laura Collins-Hughes Catch a subway home from the San Francisco airport at 4 a.m., and you’d think you could have a quiet ride, just you and your crossword puzzle, duking it out. That’s not the way it goes, though, in “2 Across,” a meet-cute, sitcom-style two-hander starring Andrea McArdle as Janet, a puzzle aficionado in need of cheering up — but maybe not right this second, O.K.?

Her unmistakable leave-me-alone vibe is catnip to Josh (Kip Gilman), who boards Janet’s otherwise empty car, carrying the same crossword, and instantly begins a conversation. Josh is an affable extrovert, and, against steep odds, Mr. Gilman makes him quite charming. It will surprise no one that these two attractive individuals, each somewhere in middle age, keep talking — and flirting, and arguing — until they get to the end of the line.

Directed by Evelyn Rudie at St. Luke’s Theater, “2 Across” is a battle-of-the-sexes throwback written by Jerry Mayer, a playwright with several decades’ worth of television comedy credits. An executive producer for“The Facts of Life,” he wrote for “Bewitched,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Bridget Loves Bernie” — the last of which “2 Across” echoes with an archaic Catholic-Jewish romance angle.

Set in the present and peppered with comic references to Will Shortz,the crossword editor of The New York Times, the play nonetheless seems stuck in the era of those TV shows. Its rhythms belong to television, but Mr. Gilman, a veteran character actor, knows just how to ride them for laughs. Ms. McArdle’s role as the supposedly sharp-edged, uptight Janet is less fun, but she and Mr. Gilman have an appealing rapport that makes the play surprisingly palatable.

Until, that is, Josh — who’s chattier than Janet — begins complaining that he can’t get a word in edgewise with her. This is right after he tells her she’s the first woman he’s “wanted to talk to for more than five minutes without my mind wandering.”

Ah, he’s a Neanderthal. Run, Janet, run!

But about that rapport: After the play ends, and the actors take their bows, they add a musical nightcap: a brief song-and-dance divertissement, with Ms. McArdle (Broadway’s original Annie) taking the lead, and Mr. Gilman in the supporting role.

Unrelated to the play, it’s lovely, like something lifted from a cabaret act. I’d go to that.

December 12, 2015

Review: ‘The Golden Bride’ Walks Down the Aisle Again

By Laura Collins-Hughes

The Russian shtetl in the long-lost, newly reconstructed Yiddish operetta “The Golden Bride” has a dreamy look about it, all latticework and whitewash, like the setting for a garden party. The people here may dream of riches — who doesn’t? — but they’re doing all right. If they leave this place for America, it’s only because an even better life awaits.

A farcical, tuneful romance that’s part old-fashioned musical comedy, part straight-up opera, “The Golden Bride” (“Di Goldene Kale”) is an immigrant fantasy that looks as fondly on Mother Russia as on Uncle Sam. With music by Joseph Rumshinsky, lyrics by Louis Gilrod and a libretto by Frieda Freiman — immigrants all — it was a hit when it opened in 1923.

In a handsome new large-cast production, presented by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, it’s still deeply satisfying.

Performed largely in Yiddish, with English and Russian supertitles, the story is simple. Goldele (Rachel Policar), a formerly poor, seemingly motherless young woman raised in the shtetl, is moving to America to claim her millions.

“Long live my dead father, who left me such a large inheritance!” she exults.

Goldele’s fortune has transformed her into the shtetl’s most sought-after bride, but she is convinced that her mother is alive somewhere. Goldele promises to marry whichever young man can reunite her with her mama. Misha (Cameron Johnson), devoted to Goldele since childhood, is among those who take up the challenge.

I, for one, was rooting for Misha and Goldele as a couple from the first time they sang together, in the love song “My Goldele,” if only so we’d get to hear their voices together again. The fine orchestra, conducted by Zalmen Mlotek, imbues the score with warmth, while Ms. Policar and Mr. Johnson supply the show’s greatest vocal richness.

When Goldele sings a lullaby she remembers from earliest childhood, Ms. Policar colors it with intensity and pain. When Misha, newly arrived in the United States, sings a nationalistic anthem called “A Greeting From the New Russia,” Mr. Johnson hits it out of the park — though the number, which has nothing to do with the plot, made me wonder if Cold War jitters helped to nudge this operetta from the repertoire after 1948.

Directed by Bryna Wasserman and Motl Didner, this streamlined reworking of the show mostly has more frivolous things on its mind. Its funniest moments concern a second pair of lovers, Khanele (Jillian Gottlieb), Misha’s sister, and Jerome (Glenn Seven Allen), an American.

The pair have delicious chemistry, and Ms. Gottlieb is a revelation: effervescently daffy like a young Georgia Engel but also sassy and deadpan. The show is not the only discovery here. 22

December 21 & 28, 2015