Friday again, and my drama column in this morning’s Wall Street Journal covers three Broadway openings, The Glass Menagerie, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and All Shook Up. None passed my muster:
Two of the greatest American plays of the 20th century were revived on Broadway this week. Both feature familiar faces: Jessica Lange and Christian Slater in Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Both were directed by Brits, David Leveaux and Anthony Page–and both productions are crash-and-burn disasters.
By far the worse of the two is “The Glass Menagerie,” now playing at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, for which Mr. Leveaux (“Fiddler on the Roof”) wins the Eurotrash Award of 2005 by inserting a spectacularly gratuitous subtext into Williams’ fragile tale of a dysfunctional family caught in the choking web of genteel poverty. Did it ever occur to you, even for a millisecond, that the shy, crippled Laura Wingfield (Sarah Paulson) might want to have sex with her sensitive brother Tom (Mr. Slater)? No? Well, it did to Mr. Leveaux…
Similarly misguided things are happening at the Longacre Theatre, but at least Mr. Page’s version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” spares us the interfering touches beloved of so many postmodern directors. His blunder was a simpler one, if no less devastating: He cast Bill Irwin as George, the small-time college professor whose marriage to Martha (Ms. Turner), the boss’ drunken daughter, has turned him into a monster of passive aggression. I yield to no one in my admiration for Mr. Irwin’s great gifts as the tragic clown of such self-written extravaganzas as “The Regard of Flight,” but his flip, flat readings of George’s blood-soaked quips are as far off the mark in one direction as Mr. Slater’s regular-guy Tom Wingfield is in the other….
As for All Shook Up, well…
Think of it as an exercise in commodities trading. The jokes are strictly from Bob Hope’s 1955 reject pile (“Hey, you’re wearin’ blue suede shoes!” “Nobody step on ’em”). The dances, mysteriously credited to two different choreographers, are as memorable as a stump speech by Michael Dukakis. Stephen Oremus’ musical arrangements are loud and anonymous….
The rest of “All Shook Up” is theme-park trash, a Broadway musical for people who don’t like musicals, or Broadway. Or music. If you found “Mamma Mia!” too intellectually demanding, you’ve come to the right place.
No link, so if you want to read the whole thing–and there’s plenty more where that came from–pick up a copy of this morning’s Journal and look me up in the “Weekend Journal” section. Or go here, pull out your credit card, and start clicking.