Posted: 10/27/16 at 3:33pm
Saw Falsetto's Wednesday night after seeing the added matinee of Sunday In The Park With George and came away disappointed by the bland casting of Marvin and Whizzer. I am a huge fan of the piece and have seen numerous productions including the original Playwrights runs and the Broadway mash up. I went up to Hartford to see a glorious staging by Graciela Daniele with the most spectacular coup de theater ending which should have been borrowed for this production. I even travelled to Trinity College to see an all day cycle of In Trousers, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland. I loved something about all of those productions but came away from this revival with just a great appreciation for a few of the actors - there was no cathartic reaction for a piece which always has me reaching for tissues. Those very much appreciated actors were Brandon Urbanowitz as Mendel, young Anthony Rosenthal as Jason and the always spot on Betsy Wolfe as Cordelia.
As I continue to try to understand my reaction to what I saw at the Kerr last night I start to circle around two major elements - the two leading men and the staging. The building block set piece concept and stingy scenery design that has been heaped on the show continually draws attention to itself. The sophisticated simplicity of the original staging and design placed the show where it belongs - between the actors and the audience. I got the feeling here that the returning original director tried to add flourishes where none were needed and kept drifting back to the original staging during the more important scenes. Going to very literal hospital room furniture for the penultimate scenes and then back to the Fred Flintstone Styrofoam Boulders (am I showing my age?) was jarring, distancing and anti-climatic. The final set piece felt like a nod to Graciela and would not have been necessary if the two male leads had really brought the material home.
Andrew Rannells took to heart and literally gives us a smarmy unlikeable Whizzer whose only saving grace is his feigned alignment with Jason. Rannells voice came off as grating and his 11 o'clock number "You Gotta Die Sometime" had me agreeing with the lyrics overt literal sentiment because that's all Andrew played. Character actor Christian Borle was all wrong for Marvin. His take on the character seemed to be of someone superior to his situation and very much in control rather than someone finding himself in the situation and being swept up in passion and love. The two actors together made for a very unsympathetic pair which bled out and over the other characters. Why would anyone love Marvin or Whizzer for that matter? Why would the lesbians from next door be friends with them and poor Mendel the most likeable of the bunch how could he not run from everyone involved?
What years ago seemed like a very real and quirky -from a character and lyric perspective -show now felt like a series of musical comedy skits with literal blackouts performed by grown up chorus boys rather than an examination of a specific disastrous time of our lives with true heart felt performers inhabiting fantastically neurotic characters who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I did not see any benefit from the writer/director James Lapine revisiting the material.
At the other end of the spectrum was James Lapine's niece Sara Lapine's direction of her uncle's Sunday In The Park with George which was so character specific that it brought new life to another cathartic inducing musical and created goose bumps and tears that her uncle could not find in Falsettos the second time around. Sunday's casting made the afternoon soar while Falsettos casting made it thread water. Sara didn't need to let her direction get in the way of the piece where James seem to think the piece and some new staging would be enough. It was a day of exhilaration and disappointment.
PS: Stephanie Block was fine as Trina - of course she would knock "I'm Breaking Down" out of the park - the casting of a musical comedy behemoth insures that. I would have rather the knowingness of a Barbara Walsh type or the eccentricities of a Faith Prince type - the revival went with safe.
Updated On: 10/27/16 at 03:33 PM
