A summary of our short New York City trip, last week, which proved that if I drag my wife to enough Stephen Sondheim shows, she'll end up liking a couple of them (she's a saint for indulging me):
Tuesday -- Here We Are. I've had nearly a week to mull this musical over. A few thoughts: Rachel Bay Jones is a marvel in this, especially in the second act. It's hard to pull off emptyheaded but openhearted this well, and every quality her spoiled rich character possesses, Jones creates a hilarious but warm person out of it. The first act, based on "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie," is quite funny - and Sondheim, while composing songs that reminded me in structure and sometimes in melody of other of his songs, has a lot of fun while integrating the music with bookwriter David Ives' score very successfully. Other highlights include David Hyde Pierce, as a bishop in spiritual crisis, and Denis O'Hare - who is especially good playing a variety of characters, including one who turns out to be a bit of a surprise. There are a few conventional songs early in the second act, and one - by Jones - created the one meta moment in the show for me, because it was obviously the last Sondheim song. The second act has spurred some gripes, but it didn't bother me at all. Ives and director Joe Mantello create a show that departs from Bunuel's "The Exterminating Angel" in the second act with its sweetness and humanity that I wasn't entirely expecting - and which many of the characters - most of whom aren't as richly drawn as Jones' Marianne or Pierce's bishop - arguably don't earn. But the entire show, lovingly directed and staged, felt complete to me, ending on a properly ambiguous note. It's a bit much to have expected Sondheim, in his late 80s or early 90s, to dash off another "Sunday" for the cast to sing at the end.
Wednesday -- Merrily We Roll Along. If Tuesday brought the excitement and unexpected pleasures of a new Sondheim show, Wednesday was a spectacular remount of a famously-flawed musical that I had never seen in person before but knew very well. It was the best revival I have ever seen, thanks to the brilliant directing choices of Maria Friedman and the terrific trio of Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe. Not to be overlooked, because it's such an impossible role, is Krystal Joy Brown as second wife Gussie and her ex-husband Joe, played by Reg Rogers. Merrily is the unusual Sondheim show in which the women are less well-drawn than the men, but the problem with the show was always what to do about Frank. Groff, as I suspected he might be, is the perfect Frank - his insecure smarm barely hides his self-loathing - and he's likeable enough of an actor to pull it off. Plus, his friends Mary and Charley were always too dependent on him, and that issue feels addressed - balancing the show. Friedman's staging of Merrily as a memory play is brilliantly simple and solves a multitude of problems. I knew, by the time the overture and title song were done that we were in good hands. I even thoroughly enjoyed "Bobby and Jackie and Jack." Frank's son gets one too many lines, almost designed to make one forget that Mary attended the older Frank Jr.'s graduation when Frank didn't. But that small quibble was easy to forgive as the show reaches its emotional climax and then comes full circle.
Thursday -- Little Shop of Horrors. I worried without reason about how Constance Wu would handle the role of Audrey, at least the singing, but she was terrific. The performance suffered from one important problem: sound design. The "urchins" were so loud that it was often hard to make out the lyrics, a problem that often cropped up with the plant and occasionally with a game Corbin Bleu, who was having a blast. When Howard Ashman is writing the lyrics, you want to catch every word. Wu and the extremely funny Bryce Pinkham (as the dentist and many other roles) were easily understood.
Updated On: 10/24/23 at 03:46 AM
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