On Stage
KANFER, STEPAN
On Stage The Fabulous Invalid By Stefan Kanfer In 1999 New York City set a record for tourism. During the last year of the millennium some 33 million visitors gawked at the sights of...
...The fact remains, though, that the writer has falsified history—there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that Salieri murdered Mozart...
...they contain no ballads or comic numbers worth remembering...
...His is not a Joycean Gabriel, and there are many other actors with stronger voices and more convincing manners...
...Downstairs, the drpsomaniacal Freddy Malins (Stephen Spinella) provides comic relief, embarrassing his upright mother (Paddy Croft) by interrupting the other guests, telling eccentric tales and laughing in the wrong places...
...John Huston's 1987 film attempted to convey these subtleties...
...All three are music teachers, and during the course of the evening naturally break into song...
...Playwright Peter Shaffer posited the theory that the prodigy did not die of disease in 1791...
...after having seen him go over the top in films like The Dead Zone and Mousehunt...
...The technique works best in the more exuberant moments...
...Upstairs in her bedroom, the dying Julia faces the ghost of her younger self (Daisy Eagan...
...As always, the master of the bittersweet gives each player a memorable speech or two...
...The movie, however, did allow the audience to hear and see long segments of the operas and orchestral works...
...For his attitude he gets twitted by the flirtatious Molly Ivors (Alice Ripley), but their backchat results in little heat or light...
...In one sense their presence was a testament to the revival of midtown...
...As the fete goes on, small revelations occur, altering the way the attendees perceive each other —and the way we perceive them...
...Even the musical theater's most innovative talents have recently been displayed in the past tense, as if they were part of the PBS program, Antiques Roadshow...
...Shaffer's revision, now running at the Music Box, views Mozart as a spirited naïf, capable of writing sublime operas, symphonies, chamber music, concerti, masses...
...Jones, who could give lessons in how to make a small part into a major role without ever hamming it up...
...Indeed, all three plays were presented last season and did exactly what was expected of them: They turned a handsome profit...
...Late in 1999 the comedy folded after a short run, and for the first time in more than half a century there was not a single new straight play on Broadway...
...At the Music Box theater, star billing is given to David Suchet as the lesser composer...
...I was unprepared for this 40-watt persona...
...Thus the play seems at war with itself, held together by Suchet's inalterable, lowkeyed performance...
...Investigating the cause of her unhappiness, Gabriel learns that she is in mourning for a lost love, ayouth who died decades before and to whom she is still spiritually bound...
...and "Naughty Girls," a funny, mildly risqué number that is performed by all three Morkans...
...The Wings" is a home for retired actresses...
...In Act II, gradually and painfully dying, he suddenly turns poignant, slow of voice and anxious of manner...
...Predictably, Lotta is scheduled to take up residence in The Wings as the play begins...
...The film adaptation had many flaws, and the current stage production has many virtues...
...It is an affection Gabriel has never known, and never will know...
...As the new millennium begins, the most provocative and original work continues to come from off-Broadway...
...The most moving tale in the book was "The Dead," amuted account of a Christmas party in the city, attended by a handful of local folk who entertain each other with anecdotes and songs...
...And in between there are bursts of balladry and dance...
...That arena will be the focus of my next column...
...Watch this space...
...Even by those who have never had the opportunity to hear Mozart's playing," wrote a contemporary critic, "he must be esteemed through his work as a composer...
...Or that he was the only one in Vienna to recognize the breadth of the young man's genius when he heard it...
...During the last year of the millennium some 33 million visitors gawked at the sights of Manhattan, shopped in its emporia and attended hit shows...
...Amadeus, for example, first appeared in London some 20 years ago, then traveled to New York, where the tragedy of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart caused a sensation...
...But she is easily outshone by everyone else, particularly Harris as the grandest of Grand Dames...
...Of course not all productions are old, but most of the new ones have the tourist in mind, emphasizing spectacle over content...
...That said, Shaffer has built a lively drama on false premises...
...Chicago opened first in the 1980s and Fosse is an anthology of earlier dance numbers...
...Yet he is capable of rising to the moment, particularly when the moment includes Brown, an impressive and generous performer...
...Stephen Sondheim was most recently represented by Patting It Together, a revue of the composer/lyricist's bygone works...
...Given these conditions, it is no wonder that Broadway producers currently spend an inordinate amount of time looking in the rearview mirror...
...Disfigured by the miscasting of his daughter Anjelica, it nonetheless achieved a Joycean tone and rhythm...
...Like George Santayana, Sir Noël believed that there is no cure for life and death save to enjoy the interval...
...Nixon, who has been the offscreen voice of Audrey Hepbum, Deborah Kerr and Natalie Wood, is finally allowed a Broadway tum and makes the most of it...
...Howes can belt or thrum with equal skill, and the extraordinary Spinella shows that comedy and tragedy are within his easy reach...
...Everything onstage was either a revival (Arthur Miller's The Price...
...The hosts are the graying Morkan sisters, Kate (Marni Nixon) and Julia (Sally Ann Howes), along with their niece, Mary Jane (Emily Skinner...
...Many current main stem productions are long-running musicals (Cats has been mewing for nearly two decades, Les Miserables has gone on for a dozen years, Miss Saigon for eight, Rent for four...
...Peter Hall's direction is every bit as magisterial as James Levine's conducting of Don Giovanni...
...The real epiphany occurs when Gretta, weary from the alcohol and dancing, bursts into tears...
...and Hughes, the picture of a stage door Johnny 60 years after he attended his first play and was permanently aislestruck...
...As the narrator, Walken is surprisingly low-key...
...The writers manifestly chose to echo the simple intervals and basic rhymes of Ireland's songbook...
...And as Dame Edna, female impersonator Barry Humphries does the same thing to the Booth Theater, savaging audiences and mocking the very middle class who chortle at his insults in drag...
...These performers signal the beginning of a trend, just as Epic Proportions marked the end of one...
...That he did, and that his creations do, with stoicism and grace, working their way around a banal miniplot: A gossip columnist (Crista Moore) pretends to be someone else, reports on the parlous condition of the retirees and their home, and winds up raising money for The Wings...
...As the villain, Suchet is a crossbreed of cat and fox, now purring compliments, now murmuring scurrilous rumors in the ear of Joseph (David McCallum...
...A hit on both continents, this version of Amadeus went on to become an Oscar-winning film, with the hero/victim played as a kind of 18th century rock star getting high on his talent...
...Some are moving, others comic...
...Still, if the champagne has lost much of its fizz, it is at least a signal of good times (and more diverting revivals) to come...
...The audience consequently becomes an eavesdropper, like Scrooge given the privilege of seeing through walls by the Ghost of Christmas Past...
...Athird show, in tune with the latest theatrical fashion recently opened at the Belasco Theater...
...The rest of the evening is spent lamenting the passage of time and the ravages of alcohol...
...To her credit, Cindy Katz interprets the woman as an unfinished yet sympathetic helpmate, amused by her husband's teasing and anxious to help him get on...
...Lotta stole away May's lover and married him...
...The anticipations of this crowd are amusing enough...
...Shaffer claims to have rewritten the drama to give his villain a more human face...
...This is the centenary year of Noël Coward's birth, and we may expect revivals of his songs and plays for months to come...
...Despite its faults, this is a work to be cherished for its modesty and delicacy, two attributes seldom found in Broadway musicals...
...The occasional conflicts that surface are swiftly ameliorated, as if Sir Noël had an allergy to friction...
...What is airborne is Coward's dialogue...
...Clutching their Bendel bags and wandering five abreast, they clogged the midtown streets and provided endless amusement (as well as frustration) for native New Yorkers...
...Let the games begin...
...There the reigning star is May Davenport (Rosemary Harris), a regal personage who had one main competitor in the London theater, Lotta Bainbridge (Lauren Bacali...
...Nelson has directed his 16-member cast to perform upstage, as if they were speaking only to each other...
...Wearing Alvin Colt's '60's costumes, they travel easily through Ray KJausen's pleasant scenery, illuminated by Ken Billington's complementary lighting...
...in another sense it summarized everything that stands to go wrong with Broadway 2000...
...Moreover, in the movie Tom Hulce impersonated Mozart, and was quite rightly billed over F. Murray Abraham, who played Salieri...
...The physical aspects of the production are everything a theatergoer could wish for: William Dudley's period sets and costumes are correct to the last gold button, and Paule Constable's lighting knows exactly when to dazzle and when to depress...
...All are under the firm direction of Michael Langham, who moves 18 people around with delicacy and flair...
...N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker), a commercial musical or a one-man show...
...ANOTHER SOUVENIR from by gone days is Waiting in the Wings...
...The approaching war causes a general buzz, amplified by lesser luminaries who once graced the stage (wittily played by Rosemary Murphy, Elizabeth Wilson and Patricia Conolly...
...As Mozart, Sheen is really two men...
...In Act I he is a ninny, giggling and flirting (and overacting) outrageously, uncomfortable in society and uneasy in his skin...
...From time to time the others join in, performing their favorite ballads...
...They are abetted by members of the staff (Dana Ivey, Simon Jones and Amelia Campbell), and an elderly admirer (Barnard Hughes...
...In past productions Mozart's wife Constanze was portrayed as a fluffy girl-toy...
...It takes more than a million dollars to mount the cheapest play, and there is no guarantee that it won't fold in a fortnight...
...Jekyll & Hyde and The Scarlet Pimpernel, for example, are all about costumes and scenery...
...And en route to the final curtain he expresses an agreeable philosophy about aging...
...But he is unable to master flattery, flummery, intrigue, and all the other assets necessary to survive in the court of Joseph II...
...A footnote: The Dead begm at Playwrights Horizons, and then moved uptown...
...Although Broadway is always in financial trouble, Arthur Miller has a point when he pronounces this situation "a crisis...
...Most of the other shows are revivals clearly aimed at the expense account crowd...
...he was instead poisoned by a fellow composer and rival for the Austrian Emperor's patronage...
...David Jenkins' intimate sets, Jane Greenwood's nostalgic costumes and Jennifer Tipton's lighting do much to sustain the illusion of Dublin before the Great War, as does Sean Curran's charming choreography...
...Though some scenes are shrewdly composed, though the theme is a valid one of dignity in old age, Waiting is disappointingly short of incident...
...It, too, suffers from miscasting yet conveys the author's intent...
...A pity he was not given a piece worthy of his gifts, to say nothing of Mozart's...
...Michael Sheen may play the title role, but his name is in much smaller print...
...Sir Noël wrote far more impressive works than Waiting in the Wings...
...But a revival of, say, Tennessee Williams' Not For Nightingales, Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh or Miller's Death of a Salesman is practically a guarantee of serious critical attention and respectful audiences...
...The first of them, at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, was his 50th play and opened on the West End in the winter of 1960...
...Jackie Mason, a skillful standup comedian who likes to skewer political correctness and incorrectness, has turned the Golden Theater into a nightclub, cracking his one-liners in the place where legitimate theater once reigned supreme...
...Then the two divas meet, circle each other, engage in a frosty silence —and make an uneasy peace...
...Better still, in the eyes of producers, are classic musicals—that is, the ones that got raves during the Truman Administration...
...The rest of the cast is worthy and sometimes a good deal more...
...The shortcomings of this Amadeus are writerly...
...Now Richard Nelson, adapter and lyricist, has joined forces with composer Shaun Davey to produce an intermissionless stage version of The Dead...
...The most effective of these are the sentimental "Adieu to Ballyshannon," sung beautifully by Howes and uncertainly by Walken...
...The decades-long rivalry was more than professional...
...The story within the story concerns a long-married couple, Gretta and Gabriel Conroy (Blair Brown and Christopher Walken...
...Lauren Bacali, once a model, often a box office attraction, never an actress, is the big draw for audiences...
...The collection of short stories contained haunting insights into love, death, society, politics, and Ireland itself, with none of the stream of consciousness that was to make the author's reputation only two years later when A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man appeared...
...The theater audience gets merely a hint of the catalogue, wafted over the proceedings from time to time...
...Unfortunately, even he cannot save the scenes in which, Tevye-like, Salieri addresses the Christ who touched the brain of an Austrian bumpkin—and gave the Italian a commonplace talent in everything except connivance...
...A look at what actors call the ABCs— the alphabetical listing of theatrical fare —offers a fever chart of the Fabulous Invalid...
...James Joyce's Dubliners was initially published in 1914...
...These are bound to attract visitors, nostalgia fans and lovers of melody, a quality hard to find in modem works...
...Two productions honor the late choreographer Bob Fosse...
...All are derivative, but that is not a mark against Nelson and Davey...
...These include such proven hits as Irving Berlin's 1946 smash Annie Get Your Gun, and Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate, which opened two years later...
...emotions tend to get muffled during the subdued conversations...
...It also closed in the winter of 1960, for understandable reasons...
...A well-traveled teacher, Gabriel has grown uncomfortable with Irish custom, gossip and politics...
...Perhaps more ominously, Broadway is sometimes indistinguishable from downtown Las Vegas...
...As an added benefit, there is always the chance of an original cast CD raising even more money for investors...
...Since the gentleman they competed for is dead, and neither of them performs anymore, sparks never fly...
Vol. 83 • March 2000 • No. 1
