Beau the Musical (c) Valerie Terranova Photography
Theater: Beau the Musical
At Theater 154
The hero of Beau the Musical, Douglas Lyons and Ethan D. Pakchar’s country-rock musical making its Off-Broadway debut in a downhome, charming Out of the Box production, is not our narrator. That would be Ace (Matt Rodin), who is performing at a club in Nashville and telling the story of how his reunion with his thought-to-be-dead grandfather Beau (Chris Blisset) led him to become a country singer. Most of the story takes place in the high school life of Ace, being raised by a loving-if-gruff single mother, Raven (Amelia Cormack). She has just started dating a likeable but trying-too-hard Larry (Matt Wolpe), who wears the best piece of tacky clothing in costume designer’s Devario D. Simmons’ lived-in collection, whom Ace can’t stand when he gets a call from a Memphis hospital that Beau is in the ICU and Raven is his emergency contact. Without a strong male figure in his life, Ace starts to bond with this man he never knew existed. Beau turns out to be no-nonsense, but also a very compassionate man, trying to coax Ace out of his shell with walks in the country, teaching him guitar and getting Ace to open up about his life. Ace is a closeted, gay kid who is being harassed and makes out with his bully Ferris (Cory Jeacoma). A lot more happens in Beau the Musical, which gives each of the band members a character to play, but at almost two hours with no intermission, the show needed a couple of plot prunings, especially the acting out of a big secret in Beau’s past that could have just been a concise monologue. The acting is the draw in Josh Rhodes’ production. Rodin is better suited here as Ace than he was in All the World’s a Stage earlier this year as a closeted teacher, and Cormack is convincing as a mother who loves and wants to strangle her son at the same time. But the heart of the show (and probably why the musical is named after him) is Blisset as Beau. Blisset may start out a gruff country stereotype, but he gets more interesting as the show goes along, especially the heart-tugging finale. Beau the Musical may focus on the trauma of family life, but it’s mostly an enjoyable and fun country-fried ride.
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Call Me Izzy (c) Emilio Madrid
Broadway: Call Me Izzy
At Studio 54
Jean Smart was last on Broadway as a gossiping socialite in 2000 in a revival of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s The Man Who Came to Dinner as she successfully shed her southern belle persona from TV’s Designing Women. 25 years later, after finding her new niche as stand-up comedian Deborah Vance in Hacks (which was just renewed for its 5th season on HBO), it’s sort of a homecoming that for her Broadway return, she has chosen a one-woman show about a poor Southern woman (this time from Louisiana) who finds her penchant for writing poetry. Call Me Izzy, written by Jamie Wax, is a one-woman show and it is a credit to Smart that most of the play takes place in the bathroom of the trailer she shares with her husband, whom she’s been married to since she was 18. But the reason she takes refuge in the bathroom in the middle of the night is sad (her husband doesn’t want her writing) and sort of a cheat (can’t she write when he’s at work?) but it’s a good enough starting point to have the audience be her confidant as she tells her of finding salvation in reading books and writing poetry. And while both Smart and Wax give Isabelle (but please, call her Izzy) depth, humanity and humor, their portrait of her husband Ferd (rhymes with…) doesn’t go deeper than the usual red state view of women as men’s property. And while Izzy finds allies in people who cross her path (a neighbor, a night school teacher), they all seem to accept that an abused wife in 1989 doesn’t have any options. Director Sarna Lapine occasionally opens up the stage to give Izzy a view of life outside her trailer park prison, and Smart really shines in those moments, but the play stubbornly ends with an image that could mean one of two wildly different things. By leaving us hanging at its crossroads, Izzy loses the power of its intended message.
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My Son's a Queer (But What Can You Do?) (c) Marc J. Franklin
Theater: My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?)
At New York City Center (Closed)
Rob Madge is a fascinating character, and as played by British actor Rob Madge in his autobiographical solo show, My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?), they brings the audience into their inviting arms to tell about their childhood, and how they became the Rob we see before us. Madge was a child performer on the West End (they did the 25th anniversary concert of Les Misérables and was in a West End production of Mary Poppins, but even before that, they were a precocious and imaginative child who was obsessed with everything Disney and performed shows videotaped for his family of which we now see snippets and highlights. Madge is very proud of their younger self, and director Luke Sheppard (& Juliet) gives Madge ample space to run around the huge City Center stage (along with his onstage band) in beautifully elaborate outfits as they tells us how they recreated the tea cup ride from Disneyland in their living room for their grandma to enjoy or how they filmed their own version of The Little Mermaid with the help of their parents. The show (the title is from a lyric in Les Miz) has been around for four years, including numerous West End runs and a planned Broadway stint that was unfortunately scrapped. But just in time for Pride Month, the show got a limited run and New York audiences got a taste of Madge’s flair for the dramatic and musical. And while Madge’s story is definitely not unique (as long as there are Disney heroines, there will always be little boys who dream to be them), the most interesting character in Madge’s story is not Madge, but their father, a burly blue collar working class man, who never (at least not in Madge’s script) judged his son’s choices and tried his hardest to be a supportive father, even though he knew his son’s personality didn’t fit society’s norm. Whenever we get a glimpse of Papa Madge in the videos, it’s sort of obvious where the drama of the show should have focused on. Instead, My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?) is a pretty traditional tale of an artistic kid in a sports-centric society. Happy to have had the chance to meet Rob Madge, I just wish the show could have been as deep as it is funny.
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