All in Review
“Pretty Woman: The Musical” features a painfully uninspired new score, a largely Xeroxed script, no romance, and a gaudy and cheap-looking production entirely devoid of emotion or entertainment. Turning this classic 1990 film into a stage musical was a big mistake. Huge.
“Gettin’ the Band Back Together” is a genuinely funny new guilty pleasure of a musical with a tried-and-true formulaic structure and a host of scrappy, likable characters; the score is unfortunately unremarkable, derivative, and forgettable, but the book, developed through improv rehearsals, is sitcom-light, irreverent, well-beat, and really silly. Others may pile on, but I must admit: I had fun.
“Be More Chill” is a new sci-fi, pop-rock, satirical allegory of a musical for tweens and early teens, and probably not anyone else. Based on a 2004 novel about a high school loser who swallows a pill-sized computer that makes him cool, the show is well-staged and performed, but remains an emotionally disengaging experience. Willed into production re-existence on the strength of its international, online teenage fanbase, expect to be hearing about it for some time to come.
“This Ain’t No Disco”, an original rock opera about the art, music, and dance club scenes of 1979 New York, ain’t kidding. This new musical is bland and soulless, overstuffed, overdone, and under-dramatized, with a cacophony of characters, ideas, and issues offering only a sprawling, shallow story that is neither unique, distinctly tethered to the history of the setting, or frankly, engaging. This isn’t just a flop, but a belly flop—the likes of which you rarely see on stage in New York anymore.
The Public Theater presents a free, Public Works musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” in Central Park. Featuring songs by Shaina Taub and a cast in excess of 75 professional and amateur performers of all ages, races, sizes, and abilities, this “radically inclusive” production is magical, festive, and highly accessible. Infectiously energetic and buoyantly spirited, do not miss this jubilant new musical.
The convergence of history and art, and the way stories can capture us, are explored impressionistically in “Fire in Dreamland”, a funny, heartfelt, but ultimately emotionally-thin and mysteriously-drawn new play at the Public Theater. Rebecca Naomi Jones is a standout, but the play contains too many furtive motivations and not enough stakes.
“Head Over Heels”, a new musical featuring songs by The Go-Go’s, is an upbeat, gender fluid, Renaissance retro romp that is decidedly, and refreshingly, queer. Clever enough and funny enough, though the songs are mostly lackluster, the heart of “Head Over Heels” never stops beating, and the show features a palette of diverse representation that matters.
New York City Center completes this summer’s Encores! Off-Center series of five performance concert revivals of rarely seen Off-Broadway musicals with a presentation of “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope”, composer/lyricist Micki Grant’s incisive 1971 musical revue about black life in America.
Young Jean Lee makes history as the first female Asian-American playwright with her quietly enveloping play “Straight White Men”; far from the raging jeremiad that many liberal theatregoers no doubt anticipate, this tightly directed and finely acted play is a smart, funny, and surprising look at questions of privilege and identity through the lens of America’s oldest and newest, and soon to be minority, group: straight white men.
Belgian visionary director Ivo van Hove presents a breathtaking and terrifying stage version of Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” at the Park Avenue Armory. Documenting the rise of the Third Reich through the lens of one German family, it is one of the most profoundly unsettling, memorable, and perversely satisfying experiences I have had in the theatre.
Irish Rep revives Lane and Lerner’s “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever”, a middling oddball of a musical from 1965. Gorgeously sung, and charming throughout, the romance at the heart of the plot is unconvincing and largely absent from the stage. This new adaptation gets the scale right, but doesn’t solve the flaws baked in to this simple and strange musical.
“Smokey Joe’s Cafe”, a musical revue featuring 39 songs from the pop cannon of legendary songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, is a hyperkinetic 90 minutes of pure, joyful, electric entertainment; anyone looking for a jolt of high energy, head-shaking, toe-tapping fun should check out this rocking and soulful new revival at Stage 42 Off-Broadway.
