City Center Encores! 2023-24 season: PAL JOEY • ONCE UPON A MATTRESS • JELLY'S LAST JAM • TITANIC — Page 5

Caught tonight’s opening and found it DEADLY. Worst Encores production since The Life.

Is “Zip” still in the show? If so, who sings it now?

It is still in; it was indeed performed by (a very game) Brooks. No, that doesn’t make any sense.



The trouble, I think, with trying to do a massive rethink of a piece as part of Encores is that there just. Isn’t. Time. Might there be a really interesting take where Joey is a Black musician dealing with racism in Chicago as he tries to make it big? Maybe! Who knows?! Certainly, what was on stage tonight didn’t make the case.



As Encores gets farther and farther from their goal of showcasing great scores from forgotten musicals, they seem to have forgotten that the two week rehearsal process gives them only enough time to mount what’s on the page, not to revamp an entire show from a new perspective.

For clarification, Pal Joey is this year's Gala Presentation, not part of Encores! season.

Suffice to say, I really don't think this one is transferring. I wasn't familiar with the original show at all and a quick Wikipedia read during intermission revealed that it's quite different. But without knowing that it still felt clunky and dated. I'm not familiar with Savion Glover's other work, but I'll admit I was a little disappointed in the tap choreography as well; it's based a lot on stomping and backing beats, which I think worked for the four dancers that were always imminently in the background, but I was expecting something a bit more virtuosic and rhythmically complex (is this just how his choreography is? Maybe I just didn't "get it").

I do think the actors are doing fantastic work, with Ephraim Sykes getting a few nice solos (both in dance and song), though not as many as I was originally expecting. I continue to adore Elizabeth Stanley in everything, and Aisha Jackson also has a great number of standout solos. Brooks Ashmanskas brings down the house with Zip, which is just a great fun number.

The musical arrangements felt strange to me, especially for some of the bigger numbers. I have a passing familiarity with some of the more well known songs, so I'm not sure if they've been done like this before, but I felt like I always had trouble picking out the melody from the performance. I'm wondering if maybe they went for more of a smaller jazz club type arrangement rather than a big band swing arrangement and that's why? It does let the actors' voices shine as a pure instrument since it feels like the orchestra disappears, but even the upbeat songs feel like they drag.

Everything I've seen about this show seems to be about how they could make Joey more of a likeable hero, but I think in doing so they've made the story toothless. It's become another story of a Black artist trying to find their own art and identity in a White-dominated world, and while admirable (and a good story in many other cases), I don't really think it works here as it carries too many of the shadows of past incarnations of the show. I still found Joey unlikeable and Linda still seemed like an ingenue who puts her faith in the wrong man. Vera is maybe a more sympathetic character than in past incarnations, but she's also weaker for it (I'm not sure exactly how she was played in the past but I was thinking I would've liked her more if she was kind of just a straight up bitch who took no prisoners). The new character of Lucille was perhaps a good idea in theory, but also a fairly weak sketch that barely got enough screen time to do any character development with. If anything, I think the character I enjoyed the most was Brooks Ashmanskas's Melvin Snyder who maybe has 15 minutes of stage time total.

After I had loved the revamped Wholesale (which I know was mixed among this crowd), I was fairly optimistic for another reworking of a famously unlikeable character, but I kind of wish they took the Wholesale approach and really leaned into that aspect of Joey unapologetically. The character that JoeyEvans1206 is describing sounds infinitely more interesting.

Robbie2 said: I wonder how and why Tony Goldwyn got this gig as he directs for tv-series and has never directed a musical.Savion's a pro in the biz. His choreography in Shuffle Along was breathtaking!!! Btw, how's the choreography?"

It was covered in the NYT piece. The revision was his idea. Glover was brought on when they decided to make the character Black.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/arts/dance/pal-joey-savion-glover-city-center.html

"Seven years ago, the director Tony Goldwyn — best known as an actor — decided to try his hand at a rescue operation. He brought in the screenwriter Richard LaGravenese, and together they came up with an idea: What if Joey were a gifted, struggling artist? That way, it wouldn’t just be a story of sex and betrayal but also one of art versus ambition. After a few readings, though, that twist didn’t seem reason enough for a revival, so they added another: What if Joey were Black?

To tell that story, Goldwyn and LaGravenese, who are white, felt they needed Black collaborators, which is why their production of “Pal Joey,” opening at New York City Center on Nov. 1, is co-directed by Goldwyn and the tap dancer Savion Glover, who also did the choreography; and has a new book by LaGravenese and Daniel Beaty."

Sauja said: "The trouble, I think, with trying to do a massive rethink of a piece as part of Encores is that there just. Isn’t. Time."

There were workshops and dance labs of this last year with much of the same cast (incl principals). So for once, there WAS time!

Tony Goldwyn & Richard La Gravanese were attached to this revisal prior to Savion and the rest of the team getting involved. The first iteration of this idea for the show (Joey being a Black jazz singer in Chicago in the 40s) occurred back in 2016, with Marin Mazzie as Vera.

It may be that neither he or Savion are great directors for the stage.

halfhourcheckwithmerman said: "Did the "Bewitched" arrangement for Stanley ever get to the sensitive feeling seen here? The video NYCC posted made the song seem very flip and forgettable (somehow)."

BEWITCHED is probably the best post-coital musical number in Broadway history. I don't know the context of the NYCC production but there are many ways to depict that feeling: wistful, tired, euphoric, romantic & content, beguiled, vexed, perplexed...ideally all of the above.

If I had to infer from the short song clips of Stanley, this arrangement leans into the "I'm in love and don't I show it like a babe in arms" and "wild again" part of the lyric. I'll report back after I see it.

Updated On: 11/2/23 at 12:51 AM

The Wrap:

‘Pal Joey’ Off Broadway Review: Bewitched, Bothered and Completely Misbegotten

The Rodgers and Hart classic takes a hit from writer Richard LaGravenese, director Tony Goldwyn and others

https://www.thewrap.com/pal-joey-off-broadway-review-rodgers-hart-musical-savion-glover-tony-goldwyn/

" Joey is a Black musician who wants to sing “our sound,” which — he tells us incessantly — is “new.” Apparently, someone forgot to tell the new Joey that he is still singing old songs written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, music that came not out of the jazz tradition but Italian verismo opera. As rewritten musicals go, the mess that Aaron Sorkin made out of last season’s “Camelot” looks downright inspired compared to the misbegotten “Pal Joey” that kicked off the Encores 2023-24 season Wednesday at New York’s City Center."



"Since the musical is now set in not only a nightclub but a recording studio and a radio sound booth, Rodgers and Hart standards like “My Funny Valentine” and “Where or When” are dropped in willy-nilly. Most curious is how Joey sings “Blue Moon” to open his new nightclub, but becomes overwhelmed by guilt for having sold out his people’s “sound,” so he breaks into a syncopated “Lover.” Why the one Rodgers and Hart song is a sellout and the other is the epitome of being a committed jazz musician is not explained."

TaffyDavenport said: "For clarification,Pal Joey is this year's Gala Presentation, not part of Encores! season."

I'll be honest, this has always confused me. I know there's a difference. But it's all NYCC to me.

My first experience of Pal Joey is when Encores did it in 1995.

Not the best of quality but here is LuPone singing Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. I believe this might have been the first show LuPone did after Sunset.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YJmLCVaZig

George in DC said: "Huss417 said: "My first experience of Pal Joey is when Encores did it in 1995.

Not the best of quality but here is LuPone singing Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. I believe this might have been the first show LuPone did after Sunset.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YJmLCVaZig"
It was. I was there for the first performance. The ovation she got when she made her entrance was thunderous (before this became the norm).It was the audiences way of welcoming her back."

It's funny. I was at her final performance in Sunset and was also at Encores for opening night of Pal Joey. Have been a subscriber since the first season.

NYT pan

"You can certainly count on coherence from the songs themselves, no matter how randomly they sometimes seem to have been placed in one Rodgers and Hart show instead of another. Even completely shorn of plot relevance, they are evergreen for a reason. Though this “Pal Joey” rightfully questions the appropriation of Black voices in American popular song — referring to the King of Jazz, Paul Whiteman, and the King of Swing, Benny Goodman, Joey says, “Awful lot of Kings out there playing our music” — it’s strange to build that argument on the back of these standards. If they’re the problem, why celebrate them, and make them sound so good in the process?"

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/theater/pal-joey-review-city-center.html