Archives for March 15, 2019

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review two Broadway musicals, the transfer of Be More Chill and a new revival of Kiss Me, Kate. The first is terrific, the second lousy. Here’s an excerpt.

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“Be More Chill” has moved to Broadway after a sold-out downtown run whose popularity was fueled by an unexpected tsunami of grass-roots social-media enthusiasm. It now looks set to replicate its off-Broadway success, as well it should. Grudging reviews notwithstanding, “Be More Chill” is one of the strongest new musicals of the past decade, a charming, astutely crafted tale of neurotic post-millennial geeks in love whose appeal is in no way limited to those whom it portrays….

“Be More Chill” plays like a cross between “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Napoleon Dynamite.” Jeremy (Will Roland), the protagonist, is an incapacitatingly shy New Jersey high-school junior whose congenital nerdiness prevents him from asking out Christine (Stephanie Hsu), an explosive enthusiast who acts in school plays in order to ameliorate her own social awkwardness (“Life is easy in rehearsal/You follow a script/So you know what comes next”). Then he’s introduced to the Squip, an under-the-counter drug that instantaneously turns those who consume it into popular kids. Of course there’s a catch, about which I’ll say no more than that it has dystopian implications…

The score comes at you like a fistful of Roman candles: Not since “Hamilton” has a musical opened on Broadway that is so closely in tune with contemporary pop-music style. Just as important, though, Mr. Iconis’ songs are embedded in a book that follows to the letter the time-honored structural rules of school-of-Hammerstein musical theater….

“Kiss Me, Kate,” Cole Porter’s ingenious 1948 transformation of “The Taming of the Shrew” into a backstage musical, is back on Broadway for the first time in more than 17 years. The Roundabout Theater Company has reunited the production team behind its 2016 revival of “She Loves Me” for a big-budget version directed by Scott Ellis and choreographed by Warren Carlyle whose cast is headed by Kelli O’Hara and Will Chase. Would that it were even half as good, but this “Kiss Me, Kate” is bland and unimaginative….

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To read my review of Be More Chill, go here.

To read my review of Kiss Me, Kate, go here.

A rehearsal for “I Love Play Rehearsal,” a number from Be More Chill:

We’re back! The twenty-seventh episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading.

Here’s an excerpt from American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings:

First, we discuss recent cease-and-desist notices sent to regional companies putting on the 1969 Christopher Sergel adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird by the producers of the current Aaron Sorkin adaptation running on Broadway. Then we look into our mailbag and address your concerns about the coverage of Slave Play, your disagreements on our discussion of filmed theatre, and a question as to what the day-to-day work of criticism really entails.

To close the show, the critics discuss Madeleine George’s Hurricane Diane, Roundabout’s Merrily We Roll Along, and Peter gets in the ring again to pound on Be More Chill, this time because it just opened on Broadway.

To listen, download the latest episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.

The Hallmark Hall of Fame TV version of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, adapted by Wilson from his 1987 play and directed by Lloyd Richards, originally telecast by CBS on February 5, 1995. This version of the play, which stars Charles S. Dutton and Alfre Woodard, is based on Richards’ original 1990 Broadway production of the play and features most of the cast of that production:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty