Megan Hilty in "Vanities-The Musical" Reviews

[jimnysf]

Posted: 6/27/06 at 9:47pm

From the San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/27/DDGO0JJR2H1.DTL

Vanities: A New Musical: Musical. Book by Jack Heifner. Music and lyrics by David Kirshenbaum. (Through July 16. Theatre-Works, Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. One hour, 40 minutes. Tickets: $20-$62. Call [phone] or visit www.theatreworks.org).



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The vanities of "Vanities" are on display in a new format to open TheatreWorks' 37th season. Jack Heifner's popular 1976 play, following the lives of three Texas cheerleaders into adulthood -- one of the longest running plays in off-Broadway history -- is now a musical. It also traces the women's lives right up to the present, which isn't a very good idea.
The world premiere of "Vanities: A New Musical" opened Saturday at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in a production that has New York aspirations all over it. Music and lyrics are by David Kirshenbaum, whose "Summer of '42" played TheatreWorks on its way to off-Broadway. Director Gordon Greenberg has New York credits, as does choreographer Dan Knechtges ("The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee"), music director Carmel Dean ("Spelling Bee") and orchestrator Lynne Shankel ("Altar Boyz").

The performers are Broadway and national tour veterans. Megan Hilty, who plays Mary (the "wild" one), comes fresh from starring as Glinda in "Wicked" on Broadway. Leslie Kritzer ("Hairspray," "Urinetown") plays the super-organized Kathy. Sarah Stiles ("Spelling Bee") is the simpleminded Joanne, who wants nothing more than domestic bliss. Set designer John Arnone began his Tony-winning career with the original production of "Vanities."

Heifner's book is, as expected, basically faithful to his play. It's the same three-scene format, with an added prologue ("Hey There, Beautiful," sung by the teenagers at their vanities as they prep and primp for school) and epilogue, running a compact 100 minutes with no intermission.

The first scene, in a banner-strewn, rural Texas high school gym in November 1963, introduces the three self-absorbed cheerleaders practicing routines, discussing their popularity, eternal friendship and how to fend off their football team boyfriends' sexual demands, while planning social events and how to get into college without actually cracking a book. Their obliviousness to the outside world is comically betrayed by a major national event.

It's a cute scene, though not as funny as in the play. Some of the satire has been cut to make room for the songs, which serve something of the same purpose in a more generic manner. They add social context, however, with Kirshenbaum drawing creatively on peppy, period girl-group and other pop-rock styles (and Knechtges on '60s dance moves), expertly handled by Dean's crack pit band and the three potent singers -- though each is overmiked (a particular problem in the dialogue passages).

Kritzer's redheaded Kathy is the leader of the pack, organizing to maintain their popularity, even if it means fixing a vote. Stiles' Joanne, a prissy, self-absorbed brunette with a squeaky cute-girl voice, is the least intelligent and most judgmental ("If I weren't a virgin, I'd hate myself"). Hilty's blond, fun-loving Mary finds escape from her "bar-hopping mom" in the group and aches to leave the small town behind.

Greenberg's smoothly staged musical bridges cover the segues, as the actors take turns changing time periods in Cathleen Edwards' brightly conceived costumes and Sharon Ridge's wigs. In 1968, the women gather in a kitschy sorority bedroom. Kathy is busy organizing events and the future of the sorority, but troubled by her lack of plans for life after college. Joanne is tactlessly puffed up about her impending wedding, her life's goal, especially given that Kathy's boyfriend has just married someone else.

Mary, adopting hippie fashions, doesn't care that much, having found she can have all the sex she wants on her own terms. She breezes in from an anti-war protest, on her way to a civil rights meeting, and sings of longing to get out of Texas and expand her horizons in a potent folk-rock blues with a hint of psychedelic electronics ("Fly Into the Future"). Oddly, the lyrics' celebration of her hedonistic freedom also deny her commitment to the causes she supposedly espouses.

The same contradictory fault line has always run through Mary in "Vanities." It's most notable in the final, 1976 scene, set in Kathy's sumptuous Manhattan penthouse, when globe-trotting, man-hopping Mary has become a successful gallery owner with no apparent interest in art or anything much except her independence. Kathy has given up trying to plan her life, though Heifner leaves her bio unwritten. That gaping hole is made up for by the exposure of fissures in Joanne's marital bliss, dynamically expressed by Stiles in a solo trembling with angst beneath her smug superiority.

The open-ended ambiguity of the last scene was part of the play's appeal. But Heifner and Kirshenbaum take advantage of revisiting it for a "Looking Good" epilogue that brings the women's stories up to date in the three decades since. It's a feel-good, circle-of-life ("a river that sweeps us along") song crammed with experiences emblematic of the Boomer generation. But it cheapens the ending by letting the characters off easy. "Vanity of vanities," as the Preacher saith, "all is vanity."
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From the San Jose Mercury News




`Vanities' musical taps themes that are so over

By Mark de la Viña
Mercury News

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/14911069.htm

Be careful what you cheer for.

The three cheerleaders from Texas in TheatreWorks' world premiere production of ``Vanities, A New Musical' are an inseparable lot. They can withstand the pressures of grabby boyfriends, daunting pep rallies or any other high school trauma.

But as much as the audience wants to urge them on, their lives, as presented in this adaptation of Jack Heifner's off-Broadway comedy, are so self-centered that they probably won't inspire anyone to do cartwheels.

``Vanities' -- which opened at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, with a new book by Heifner and a dozen pop-flecked tunes by David Kirshenbaum -- might seem like the perfect piece to revisit. Three decades have passed since Kathy, Mary and Joanne, that troika of tumbling Texans, arrived on the New York stage.

But time has been unkind to the play and its characters. As the lives of the three friends diverge, each comes off as so fixated on her own world that they give as little to the audience as to one another.

In many ways, the original ``Vanities' was a product of its time. Staged on the heels of Watergate and the American withdrawal from Vietnam, it was a outlet for an audience flummoxed by life's curveballs and unwilling to buy into Mary Tyler Moore's belief that love is all around. In 2006, it comes off as a sad portrait of alienation.

At TheatreWorks, it almost makes up for its shortcomings on the script side with a perfectly cast group of performers, all with Broadway credits.

Megan Hilty, who starred recently in ``Wicked' in New York, plays Mary, the world-weary globetrotter always up for a new adventure. Sarah Stiles, a veteran of ``The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,' is the squeaky-voiced Joanne, a conservative conformist who believes ``people are only as happy as they want to be.' Leslie Kritzer plays Kathy, the leader who learns that an inexhaustible drive is worthless without direction.

Off-Broadway veteran Gordon Greenberg has directed ``Vanities' nicely, with a nod to the original staging: Each scene opens with each actress perched at her own dressing table. Tony Award-winning designer John Arnone has created concise visual time capsules for each of the scenes, which are set in 1963, '68 and '74.

Kirshenbaum's tunes, which draw from Motown, Carole King and assorted pop stylists of the '60s and '70s, show another dimension of the composer, whose credits include the boogie-woogie-ing ``Summer of '42.' But even with the varied influences and some rousing arrangements, the music in ``Vanities' always verges on generic.

To update the play, Heifner tacked on an overly-talky epilogue to explain how the three friends have fared since 1974. Though his intentions were to help put the outmoded characters into context, it's a clunky conclusion to a play that perhaps is better left in the era of the Pet Rock.

`Vanities, A New Musical'

Book by Jack Heifner, music and lyrics by David Kirshenbaum; staged by TheatreWorks

The upshot: An unsatisfying adaptation of the long-running off-Broadway hit. About the only thing to cheer is the cast.

Where: Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays; 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 7 p.m. Sundays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays

Through: July 16

Running time: One hour, 40 minutes (no intermission)

Tickets: $20-$62; [phone], www.theatreworks.org

Updated On: 6/27/06 at 09:47 PM

[Unknown User]

Posted: 6/27/06 at 10:02pm

Good for Megan.
I'm happy for her.
She deserves success.
She was great in WICKED.

[WickedGeek28]

Posted: 6/27/06 at 10:13pm

Thanks for the post. I love Megan.

[TheEnchantedHunter]

Posted: 6/27/06 at 10:15pm

Such a bad idea. And why would anybody let Kirshenbaum near a musical after the thoroughly tepid SUMMER OF '42? Ugh.






Winthrop Paroo
River City, Iowa

[EugLoven]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 2:51pm

More photos available here:
https://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=10821

I won't get a chance to see this, but from the photos, it looks like Hilty's role as a younger Mary isn't a far cry from Galinda (Act I)

[gustof777]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 2:55pm

so glad to see Megan out doing new work! I wish her the best

[blueroses]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 3:02pm

I don't know. I loved Vanities, but I don't see it translating well as a musical.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 3:32pm

Yeah, i wouldn't say it's much of a stretch, but at least it's something new?

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 3:38pm

Maybe they should just call it "ME! The Musical"

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 6:20pm

Kritzer has been so terrific in several PaperMill shows (FUNNY GIRL and GREASE, to my memory, if not more) and was amazingly funny in TRAILER PARK off-B'way. Stiles is a real up and comer just waiting for the right break, with a lot of regional credits. I'd like to see this just for the performances.

[Becoz_i_knew_you21]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 7:16pm

If her character is like Glinda her next project after doing Glinda on tour, sould be something very different. If she dosn't pull away from roles like Glinda she could end up bieng type-cast.

[hortonhearsasam]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 7:20pm

I've seen the show twice now, and I can confidently say that none of the roles in Vanities are anything like Glinda in Wicked... especially not Megan Hilty's. Hers is probably the farthest from it.

It's a great show, by the way, but you could probably tell I thought that since I went back to see it again.

[TLKfan]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 11:07pm

I've been hearing mixed reviews, but I am excited to see a show. Plus to see Megan Hilty in something different.

[to wherever]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 11:56pm

I saw the show last night and Megan's character is definitely NOT Glinda-like.

At the beginning, I can see why one would think that because the three girls are cheerleaders in high school and can't imagine anything other than being popular... but it's a far cry from Wicked.

Megan was absolutely fantastic in the show -- it was really good to see her in something different and spend some time with her.

Updated On: 7/12/06 at 11:56 PM

[sondheimboy2]

Posted: 7/13/06 at 12:49am

Living in Pittsburgh (where Megan attended CMU), I saw her in a couple of shows. The biggest part I saw her in was as the mother in the musical version of "Kiss of the Spider Woman". She was very good. I believed her more as a middle aged woman than I did that the guy playing Molina was supposed to be in his '30's and gay.

[hiltyfied]

Posted: 7/19/06 at 8:45am

I went to CA to see the show. I thought it was very good, although the epilogue did wrap things up a little too neatly for my tastes. Megan was amazing in it and her role was NOTHING like Glinda in Wicked - the vocals and her character were nearly polar opposites. Based on what I've seen, I don't think she's in much danger of being typecast; she's extremely talented and diverse.

[blueroses]

Posted: 7/19/06 at 9:37am

I never saw the play with Kathy Bates. I did see the televised staging on HBO with Annette O'Toole, Shelley Hack and Meredith Baxter Birney in the '80s and loved, loved, loved it (especially Annette O'Toole). I still can't wrap my head around the idea of it as a musical, but I'm curious to see if it works.

[lite2shine]

Posted: 7/19/06 at 10:28am

I saw this show but I wasn't impressed. I felt what was the point of musicalization of the story? All the characters were too predictable, so you can see through the conflicts that are ahead of them. I haven't seen the play version but I thought it would be better off left alone as "play."

What was annoying was that in this version, they added "epilogue" which is mostly told by a song, and essentially, they wrap up what happened to them during next few decades after the scene three (1976 or so) and they kept in touch and lived happily ever after. Boy I felt it was the biggest cop-out. But in a musical, I guess you need some kind of closure that you can leave the theatre feeling some what content. That's why I said the show should have been left as a play, in that case, a sad/tragic ending is okay.

Because this is a one act show with all female characters who are freinds, it reminded me of "ART," which is all male trio. However, characters are much more unpredictable in ART and conflicts were not superficial like Vanities.
Updated On: 7/21/06 at 10:28 AM

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 7/21/06 at 1:42am

Does anyone have a song list for Vanities? I'm so intrigued.