#1
Posted: 4/14/06 at 12:12am
Just back from IRON CURTAIN, the second self-referential Valentine to musical comedy I've seen this week (after DROWSY CHAPERONE). If CHAPERONE is derivative of both MILLIE and NEVER GONNA DANCE and if SPAMALOT's ads refer to it cheekily as a musical lovingly ripped-off from MONTY PYTHON & THE HOLY GRAIL, then IRON CURTAIN has taken similar, and rather blatant inspiration from THE PRODUCERS.
Virtually every character in IRON CURTAIN has a cousin at the St. James: Failed Broadway songwriters Murray (Jeff Edgerton) and Howard (Marcus Neville) in for Max & Leo; Onanov, the Communist director of the "Ministry of Musical Persuasion" (Gordon Stanley) in for Roger/Franz; while another side of Roger & Franz - with a dash of Carmen - is embodied by the riding-crop-wielding East German director Hildret (Bethe B. Austin) and Masha (Jessica Grove) the heavily accented Russian blonde bombshell with a huge last name whom Howard falls for, is Ullayin in the extreme. There's a "Springtime for Stalin" like number and a "Harvest Moon" number where everyone looks like they are wearing the same neo-Bavarian costumes that appear in the prologue for "Springtime for "You-Know-Who!" And the finale is thisclose to "Prisoners of Love".
What seperates IRON CURTAIN from the above mentioned pack of musicals is that while it's self-referential and silly, it's also smarter, with a surprisingly juicy story (Failed 1950s songwriters get kidnapped and sent to Russia to produce sassy Broadway-like Communist musicals and crib from their abandoned baseball-hero-sells-his-soul-to-the-devil musical "Faustball" to make it work, with romantic and artistic complications aplenty) by Susan DiLallo and brilliantly clever lyrics by Peter Mills. The Music by Stephen Weiner is fine, if not quite on the level of DiLallo & Mills' contributions , but the score features a number of terrific numbers: "Missing", sung by Murray's girlfriend Shirley (Maria Couch) "The Interrogation" (Edgerton & Austin), the hysterical "That's Capital" sung by Grove and company as a Communist paean to GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and Austin's showstopper "A Frau Divided" which manages to reference Brecht and Weill in fresh ways.
It's not a perfect show - it lacks the creamy romantic melodic enchantments of THE PURSUIT OF PERSEPHONE and at times it was "in too deep" in its resemblence to Bialystock & Bloom & Co., but unlike my DROWSY experience, I found it continually engaging and I laughed a lot more.
In short - if you liked DROWSY, [title of show], THE PRODUCERS and other "musicals that love musicals", I would definitely recommend it - and the price (fifteen bucks!) can't be beat.
Virtually every character in IRON CURTAIN has a cousin at the St. James: Failed Broadway songwriters Murray (Jeff Edgerton) and Howard (Marcus Neville) in for Max & Leo; Onanov, the Communist director of the "Ministry of Musical Persuasion" (Gordon Stanley) in for Roger/Franz; while another side of Roger & Franz - with a dash of Carmen - is embodied by the riding-crop-wielding East German director Hildret (Bethe B. Austin) and Masha (Jessica Grove) the heavily accented Russian blonde bombshell with a huge last name whom Howard falls for, is Ullayin in the extreme. There's a "Springtime for Stalin" like number and a "Harvest Moon" number where everyone looks like they are wearing the same neo-Bavarian costumes that appear in the prologue for "Springtime for "You-Know-Who!" And the finale is thisclose to "Prisoners of Love".
What seperates IRON CURTAIN from the above mentioned pack of musicals is that while it's self-referential and silly, it's also smarter, with a surprisingly juicy story (Failed 1950s songwriters get kidnapped and sent to Russia to produce sassy Broadway-like Communist musicals and crib from their abandoned baseball-hero-sells-his-soul-to-the-devil musical "Faustball" to make it work, with romantic and artistic complications aplenty) by Susan DiLallo and brilliantly clever lyrics by Peter Mills. The Music by Stephen Weiner is fine, if not quite on the level of DiLallo & Mills' contributions , but the score features a number of terrific numbers: "Missing", sung by Murray's girlfriend Shirley (Maria Couch) "The Interrogation" (Edgerton & Austin), the hysterical "That's Capital" sung by Grove and company as a Communist paean to GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and Austin's showstopper "A Frau Divided" which manages to reference Brecht and Weill in fresh ways.
It's not a perfect show - it lacks the creamy romantic melodic enchantments of THE PURSUIT OF PERSEPHONE and at times it was "in too deep" in its resemblence to Bialystock & Bloom & Co., but unlike my DROWSY experience, I found it continually engaging and I laughed a lot more.
In short - if you liked DROWSY, [title of show], THE PRODUCERS and other "musicals that love musicals", I would definitely recommend it - and the price (fifteen bucks!) can't be beat.
"Christ, Bette Davis?!?!"
