THE MORNING LINE
DATE: Tuesday, February 10, 2015
FROM: Emily Meagher, Michelle Farabaugh Faith Maciolek, Eliza Ranieri
PAGES: 9, including this page
February 10, 2015
Audra McDonald and Will Swenson to Star in ‘A Moon for the Misbegotten’ in Williamstown By Patrick Healey
The six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald will star opposite her husband, the Tony nominee Will Swenson, in a production of Eugene O’Neill’s drama “A Moon for the Misbegotten” in August as part of the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts, the festival’s artistic director, Mandy Greenfield, announced on Monday. Ms. McDonald will play the strong-willed Josie, a farmer’s daughter who plots against their alcoholic landlord, James Tyrone Jr. (Mr. Swenson), only to find charged emotional connections with him. Gordon Edelstein will direct the play, which will run Aug. 5-23 on the festival’s main stage.
The two other main stage productions will be world premieres of “Off the Main Road,” a play by William Inge (“Picnic”) that was thought to be lost, and “Paradise Blue,” a drama by Dominique Morisseau about a trumpeter and his struggling Detroit jazz club. “Off the Main Road” will star the Emmy Award winner Kyra Sedgwick (“The Closer”) as an emotionally fragile mother on the run with her daughter. The play will run June 30-July 19, and Evan Cabnet will direct. Casting will be announced later for “Paradise Blue,” which will run July 22- Aug. 2 and be directed by Tony winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson.
On the festival’s Nikos Stage, the Tony winner Cynthia Nixon will play a newspaper editor in a power struggle in Carey Perloff’s new play “Kinship,” directed by Jo Bonney. Daniel Goldfarb’s new play “Legacy” will star Eric Bogosian and Jessica Hecht as a married couple dealing with professional letdowns and personal trials; Halley Feiffer and Greg Keller will also star, and Oliver Butler will direct. The musical “Unknown Soldier,” about a woman trying to learn the truth about a soldier in a photo found in her grandmother’s house, will also have its world premiere, with book and lyrics by Daniel Goldstein, music and lyrics by Michael Friedman, and direction by Trip Cullman.
The festival will also mount a double-header of two British plays: the solo work “Chewing Gum Dreams” by Michaela Coel, and “An Intervention” by Mike Bartlett (“King Charles III”), which will feature rotating pairs of actors.
This summer’s 61st festival season is the first under Ms. Greenfield, formerly the artistic producer of Manhattan Theater Club. She succeeded Jenny Gersten in Williamstown.
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“Texas in Paris” runs through March 1 at the York Theater Company at St. Peter’s, Lexington Avenue at 54th Street; 212-935-5820, yorktheatre.org.
February 10, 2015
Review: ‘Tuck Everlasting’ Swaps Out the Circle of Life for an Eternally Unspooling Ribbon
By Charles Isherwood
ATLANTA — A ballet was once a staple of the American musical in the 1940s, when the form first grew to maturity. But dancers swirling through dream sequences haven’t been seen much for the past few decades or more, as more vernacular movement — or little dance at all — has become standard. So it’s a wonder, and a pleasure, that the stirring climax of the new family musical “Tuck Everlasting,” making its premiere at the Alliance Theater here, consists of a gorgeous, sweeping ballet that dramatizes the life of its heroine, as she grows from young girl to young woman to motherhood and beyond.
More surprising still is the man who created the steps: Casey Nicholaw, the choreographer and director known for his boisterously comic work on musicals like “Aladdin” and the cheerfully foul-mouthed blockbuster “The Book of Mormon.” Refreshingly — and necessarily — Mr. Nicholaw brings a softer touch to this period fable about a restless young girl who befriends a family with a mysterious secret.
The musical is based on the popular 1975 children’s book of the same title by Natalie Babbitt, which became a Disney film in 2002. There are marked differences between musical and film. (Disney’s theatrical arm is not involved in this production.) The musical, with a book by another somewhat surprising participant, Claudia Shear (“Dirty Blonde“), and a score by the team of Chris Miller (music) and Nathan Tysen (lyrics), together best known for “The Burnt Part Boys,” tracks the book more closely.
While in the movie, the heroine was 15, ripe for a romantic infatuation, in the musical, as in the book, Winnie Foster (Sarah Charles Lewis) is around 11, too young for such flutterings to disturb her when she meets the younger boy of the Tuck family, Jesse (the genial Andrew Keenan-Bolger), who’s 17.
Or 104, depending on which way you count. Unavoidable spoiler ahead: Jesse and his family, his mother, Mae (Carolee Carmello at the performance I saw, but now Beth Leavel); father, Angus (Michael Park); and 21-year- old brother, Miles (Robert Lenzi) are all trapped at the age when they first drank from a mysterious spring at the foot of a tree in the New Hampshire woods. In the many decades since they first happened upon this rustic fountain of youth, they have not aged, and they cannot die. (Walt Spangler’s handsome sets are dominated by this tree, which might have been designed by Frank Gehry, with its thick, undulating strips of bark.)
We meet the Tucks in a prologue that may confuse anyone not familiar with the story. Each member of the family sings of wanting to “stop time and live like this forever,” but they are manifestly (or not so manifestly) singing from different time periods. The young Mae and Angus are still in the first rapture of their love — long before children came along. But Miles and Jesse are present, too, more or less the age at which their lives stood still. It’s a slightly bewildering introduction.
The story proper takes place in the late 19th century. Winnie, played with a firm voice and natural spunk by Ms. Lewis, chafes at her constricted life with her overprotective widowed mother (Liza Jaine), which is only mildly
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softened by the wry, slightly cracked backtalk of her grandmother (a dry Shannon Eubanks). When a carnival proprietor, called only the Man in the Yellow Suit and played with boisterously seedy energy by Terrence Mann, invites Winnie to come see the fair, she throws a tantrum at her mother’s refusal and heads out into the woods, with fateful consequences.
Following the lead of a small toad (a cutesy detail wisely excised from the movie), she happens upon Jesse drinking from that pool. For fear that Winnie will reveal their secret and bring them unwanted attention, the Tucks essentially kidnap the girl. After some more foot-stomping, Winnie finds herself warming to the tight- knit clan, and in fascinated thrall to the tale of their strange fate.
This is related in a funny number in which Mae, Miles and Jesse all try to make Winnie understand the oddity of their predicament. Mr. Miller’s rousing music, like his work on “The Burnt Part Boys,” draws strongly on the sounds of country and folk, with an emphasis on fiddles and piano. (The story might more sensibly be relocated somewhere south of New England.)
Mr. Tysen’s lyrics are accomplished, with mostly precise rhymes. Winnie’s discomfort with her corseted life is satisfyingly announced when she sings, demurely but with a hint of submerged temper, that she’d like “to raise a little more than heaven.” But as with “The Burnt Part Boys,” the score could use more variety. Many of the songs run along similar grooves, relying on laid-back melodies that gradually expand into soaring climaxes. Since the story itself is fairly static — suspense derives primarily from the question of whether Winnie will be tempted to drink from the spring before being discovered — the score’s repetitiousness lends the middle passages a certain sleepiness.
A comic song in the second act, performed by Fred Applegate as the dimwitted town constable, and his assistant, Hugo (the likably goofy Michael Wartella), almost qualifies as a showstopper. They’ve been on the trail of the man Winnie’s grandmother amusingly refers to as an “evil banana,” and sing of their distrust in a jaunty number with a string of clever jokes:
You can’t trust a man dressed in yellow
Hugo, only a rogue wears that hue
A man who is fondest
Of suits that are jaundiced
Puts the yolk on him and the joke on you
That “evil banana” joke is surely the work of Ms. Shear, who manages to wedge some audience-friendly contemporary humor into the sentimental grooves of the story. Still, I wonder whether a 19th-century woman would say, “Here’s where it all goes pear-shaped,” as Mae does.
Already polished and enjoyable in this developmental run, “Tuck Everlasting” makes for the kind of kid- friendly musical that might find the waters choppy in the commercial sphere, with its Hallmark-specialish period warmth and lack of spectacle. Indeed, the most dazzling passage is probably the culminating ballet, wordlessly conveying the circle of life, as it were, without benefit of spectacular puppetry and a familiar pop song. It had the woman next to me repeatedly wiping away tears, and I understood how she felt. Tuck Everlasting
Book by Claudia Shear; music by Chris Miller; lyrics by Nathan Tysen; based on the novel by Natalie Babbitt; directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw; musical director, Rob Berman; sets by Walt Spangler; costumes by Gregg Barnes; lighting by Ken Posner; sound by Brian Ronan; associate director, Patrick Wetzel; associate choreographer, Stacey Todd Holt; production stage manager, Holly Coombs; associate musical director/conductor, Nils-Petter Ankarblom; orchestrations by John Clancy; dance music arrangements by David Chase. Presented by the Alliance Theater, Susan V. Booth, artistic director. At the Alliance Theater, 1280 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta; 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org. Through Feb. 22. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.
WITH: Fred Applegate (Constable Joe), Carolee Carmello (Mae Tuck), Shannon Eubanks (Nana Foster), Liza Jaine (Betsy Foster), Andrew Keenan-Bolger (Jesse Tuck), Robert Lenzi (Miles Tuck), Sarah Charles Lewis (Winnie Foster), Terrence Mann (Man in the Yellow Suit), Michael Park (Angus Tuck) and Michael Wartella (Hugo).
February 10, 2015
Crossing an Ocean in Attitudes
‘Texas in Paris’ Stars Lillias White at York Theater Company
By Lara Collins-Hughes
It always seems slightly superhuman, that luminosity some actors possess. Lillias White had it back in 1997, when she won a Tony Award for playing a middle-aged prostitute in “The Life,” and she is incandescent still as an elderly poet-songstress in Alan Govenar’s “Texas in Paris,” at the York Theater Company.
Giving a glorious, glamour-free performance in sensible shoes, Ms. White provides the emotional center of gravity for a musical play that is as much about race relations in America as it is about the spirituals and cowboy songs that run through it.
Based on a real concert series that Mr. Govenar produced in 1989, “Texas in Paris” is a kind of adventure for an unworldly odd couple of outsider musicians: Osceola Mays (Ms. White), a South Dallas widow and the granddaughter of a slave, travels to France with John Burrus (Scott Wakefield), a former rodeo cowboy and a white man who is sure he has “nothin’ against black folks.”
“You on welfare?” he asks Osceola, before they even get on the plane.
If Mr. Govenar were following the conventional trajectory of such tales, we would watch John evolve. “Texas in Paris” tells a more interesting and uncomfortable story, even if it does end on a musical high note and even if too much of the dialogue might be deadly in lesser hands.
“Don’t like tryin’ new things,” the taciturn John tells Osceola, looking askance at a croissant, but Mr. Wakefield’s simple delivery pulls it off. Continue reading the main story Write A Comment That the 80-minute show largely succeeds is a credit to the direction of Akin Babatundé, who collaborated with Mr. Govenar on an earlier musical at the York, “Blind Lemon Blues.” The actors’ performances, too, are beautifully calibrated. Mr. Wakefield is restrained yet unflinching, while Ms. White’s Osceola is meant to outshine John in their concerts, and does.
The show’s music may go over best with those who have an affinity for Americana. “Git Along Little Dogies” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” are among the dozens of tunes. But these two performers’ energy and skill are irresistible. Ms. White, in particular, has a storyteller’s way with a song — and when she sings “Oh Freedom,” she imbues it with strength, defiance and tears.
Osceola is at once wide-eyed and steely, buoyed by the unexpected pleasures of Paris and weighed down by the inescapable ugliness of the world. This is an extraordinary woman who has had a hard life, and Ms. White makes her glow.