Thursday, February 6, 2025

Theater Reviews: Three Shows (“Urinetown,” “Still,” “English”) Get a Second Life and They All Succeed in Different Ways

Urinetown (c) Joan Marcus


Theater: Urinetown 
Presented by Encores! at New York City Center 


There was always a problem with the title. Cheers to the publicity team of the original 2001 Broadway production of Urinetown who made the musical by songwriter Mark Hollmann and book writer Greg Kotis with the unpleasant title into a Tony-winning hit (although it lost Best Musical to Thoroughly Modern Millie) that ran for three years. Almost twenty-five years later, the title has been normalized to almost being quaint (“Remember the fuss over Urinetown?”), but the question at its new presentation by Encores! is if the show has retained its irreverence and humor, especially with its prescient plot of corrupt government and the dangers of global warming. Playing like a Charles Dickens novel adapted by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, the show takes place in the near future in a town in which a shady corporation charges its citizens to pay to use its public restrooms in response to a worldwide drought, and if they try to circumvent this (like peeing outside), they will be shipped to a mythical hellhole known as Urinetown. The corporation is run by Caldwell B. Cladwell (Rainn Wilson), who is made rich by bribing politicians. In a poorer section of town, Bobby Strong (Jordan Fisher), a young rabble rouser who sees the suffering of his family and friends and decides to rebel against this unfair law. Their power struggle is related to us by narrators Officer Lockstock (Greg Hildreth) and a young street waif, Little Sally (Pearl Scarlett Gold), who will also factor into the plot. 

Friday, January 31, 2025

The Interested Bystander’s Oscar Predictions: January 2025

The Substance (c) MUBI


We’ve been living with the latest Oscar nominations for a week now, and it seems like enough time has passed to now dash the hopes of 80% of them with my predictions of who, at this moment, would win in each category. Next month will give us a better indication, with a lot of industry awards being given out, including the SAG Awards, BAFTA, the Producers Guild and many others. I have ranked the nominees of most likely to least likely to win. 


Enjoy! 

Monday, January 27, 2025

Theater Reviews: “Kowalski” Cleverly Inserts Itself Into the Making of “A Streetcar of Desire”; The All-Asian, All-Female “Cymbeline” Is a Fascinating Take on Lesser-Known Shakespeare; Adam Lambert and Auli’i Cravalho Inject Crazy Adrenaline Into “Cabaret at The Kit Kat Club”

Kowalski (c) Russ Rowland

Theater: Kowalski 
The Duke on 42nd Street 


If I told you that the new play by Gregg Ostrin was about two men named Bud and Tom, who meet for the first time in 1947 at a summer cottage for an acting audition on Broadway, it would be a fine premise. But what if it’s based on a true incident when Tom, or maybe you may know him as the playwright Tennessee Williams, meets a then mostly unknown actor Marlon Brando (Bud to his friends) to see if he’s right for the role of Stanley Kowalski in the Broadway premiere production of A Streetcar Named Desire. That gives the play a bit more spice as one would have loved to have been in the room where it happened when the homosexual Williams (played with the iciest of Southern warmth by Robin Lord Taylor) first meets the heteroflexible Brando (the charismatic but too-cool-for-school Brandon Flynn), who will shoot to super stardom in the role of Stanley. The problem is that Williams envisioned Kowalski as a 30-year-old man (John Garfield would be his choice) and Brando is in his early-20s, but as a favor to the play’s director Elia Kazan, he agrees to audition Brando. Although Ostrin falls into the historical fiction trap of dropping references that will eventually make it into Streetcar (Stanley’s eating habits that disgust Blanche as well as the famous, guttural “Stella” scream), he does give us an evenly matched meeting between these two towering figures of American Theater, as Williams is already high on his own resume (his Broadway debut play, The Glass Menagerie, was a big hit) and Brando seems already bored with stardom, even though he’s only played bit parts. 

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Film: Oscar Nominations 2024 - 2025

I'm Still Here (c) Sony Pictures Classics


The 97th Academy Awards | 2025 
Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood 
Sunday, March 2, 2025 


Surprises (to me) in Red 


Best Picture 

Anora 
The Brutalist 
A Complete Unknown 
Conclave 
Dune: Part Two 
Emilia Pérez 
I'm Still Here 
Nickel Boys 
The Substance 
Wicked 

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Theater Review: “Gypsy” Triumphs Again on Broadway With Audra McDonald in an Unforgettable Performance; “Cult of Love” Is a Funny Tale About a Family in Turmoil; and “The Pirates of Penzance” at NYGASP Was a Necessary Primer for the Upcoming Broadway Revisal


Gypsy (c) Julieta Cervantes


Broadway: Gypsy 
At the Majestic Theatre 


It’s a no-brainer. One of the most acclaimed musical theater actresses of our generation tackling the King Lear of musical characters, and it doesn’t matter what I or anyone else says, you have to see the latest Gypsy. Audra McDonald is playing Madame Rose (never Momma Rose) and even before she yells out “Sing out, Louise” from the house, the audience is already clapping and cheering loudly in anticipation of every classic Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim song she will tackle in the next two-plus hours. And they (and you) will not be disappointed. Not to jump to conclusions (as it were) but her big finale number, “Rose’s Turn,” is explosive, emotional, exhausting and everything you expect from a consummate actress and expressive singer like McDonald. The role has only been tackled on Broadway with the biggest names (Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone and, yes, even Tyne Daly), and it was inevitable that McDonald would get her chance to unlock the ultimate stage mother/monster that is Rose. McDonald doesn’t sugarcoat Rose’s ambitions for herself and her daughters June (Jordan Tyson) and Louise (Joy Woods), no matter how many people she takes advantage of, which includes her father and her boyfriend, the ulcer-ridden Herbie (Danny Burstein). McDonald is assisted by director George C. Wolfe’s concept that this depression era musical rarely rises above its depression. You can feel Rose’s determination in McDonald, as if she were playing Mother Courage with all the sets and cow costumes strapped to her back. When there are setbacks, especially the one that ends act one, her number, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” is more a song about horror (“Momma is gonna see to it…”) to Herbie and Louise than optimism.