| Bullets Over Broadway tonight (Spoilers and VERY long) | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 04:39 am EDT 03/18/14 |
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| OK, first I should mention that I have posted several times here in the past that I wasn't sure the film was a good source for a musical, and that using songs of the past rather than a new score was a bad idea added to what was already a questionable idea. So was I wrong? Well, partly. I do think this show has a good chance of being a hit, perhaps a big one. And it is better than I was expecting it to be. (One last warning: Not only are there spoilers below, and not only is it very long, it also jumps around without much rhyme or reason. I felt like typing up my thoughts, but I didn't feel like trying to organize them, which I know also leads to some repetitiveness below.) For better or worse, while following the movie closely in general, it does not take an overly reverent attitude toward the movie. And I'm guessing this is to some degree because Woody Allen took the movie seriously but he doesn't really take musicals seriously as an art form, or at least he doesn't seem to think this one should be too concerned with coherence. The movie is basically coherent (if often distinctly silly), but the musical, not so much. One thing that always bothered me slightly in the move — and I love the movie — is the anachronism of the play having a bunch of Broadway previews. This did not happen in the '20s. If a play or musical went out of town (as almost all of them did), it either opened cold on Broadway or had, at most, one preview (but I think most opened cold). Still, there was an important plot point there: at one of the Broadway previews, Olive's understudy goes on, and this is what really pushes Cheech over the edge and makes him decide that Olive must not be allowed to open in the role. That is now gone. The understudy goes on for the first time on opening night. There is nothing in the show about Broadway previews. I doubt that Allen got rid of this because he was concerned about the anachronism. I think he got rid of this because with all the songs, stuff had to go. So Cheech just assumes that anyone would be better than Olive. But I really miss it. Allen could have gotten rid of the anachronism and kept the plot point by having the understudy go on in Boston. Does it kill the plot? No, but I think it's a loss. Speaking of anachronisms, for those who care, there are at least two not in the film: Helen at one point sings of Brecht as one of the great playwrights. (In 1929, hardly anyone here knew Brecht at all.) And we learn that David — through Cheech — has improved the play greatly by cutting a long passage of exposition and replacing it with one word: "Bullshit!" On Broadway in 1929, absolutely not. Another, perhaps more bothersome loss than Olive's understudy not going on before opening night is Cheech's final playwriting suggestion to David being cut. I'm not sure why that's gone unless it's because the play, not all that coherently presented in the movie (but just coherently enough), is even less coherently presented here. The opening night sequence is particularly silly on a couple of counts. But at least in the movie the bits we see of the play in performance seem an attempt to evoke a certain type of serious American play of the '20s, even if Warner Purcell looks increasingly ridiculous. Here it almost seems as if the play is a comedy, and that we're supposed to think that Helen, Warner and Eden are not even good actors. Which kind of destroys the point of Olive being a terrible actress. And the use of old songs that are, at best, generalized responses to the situations that lead up them also suggests that Allen does not take musicals very seriously, or at least did not think of this one as aspiring to any sort of coherence. That having been said, the "additional lyrics" by Glen Kelly do help, and a few of the songs have been made to fit pretty well. The show gets off to a good start because the first three songs work surprisingly well, and that helps a lot. (First fifteen minutes and all.) Admittedly, the first song is a production number at Nick's club, "Tiger Rag," with Olive in the chorus. I often dislike diegetic opening numbers of this sort, but I thought this one worked well. As did "Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You," which follows for Nick and Olive, and David and Ellen's first number, "Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me." Btw, some of the songs really are little-known (I will avoid using the o word), or at least were unknown to me, while others are quite famous, among them "I"m Sitting on Top of the World" (with some new lyrics), and "Let's Misbehave" (which I think sticks pretty closely or perhaps completely to the original lyric). The latter, a duet for Olive and Warner as they embark on their little affair, is a highlight. Even though I mentally groaned when it started (because they were resorting to using such a famous song), I was soon won over by Stroman's clever staging and the performances of Brooks Ashmanskas and Helene Yorke. In general, I was pleasantly surprised by Stroman's choreography and staging here. I've never been a great fan of her work, although I also have to admit that I've never seen Crazy for You. (I know, I know, but it just never sounded at all interesting to me.) A friend who's seen this told me that too many of the numbers reminded him of Stroman stuff we've seen in the past so perhaps not having seen Crazy for You is a positive if you're seeing this. Still, I've seen most of her other major New York work, and this impressed me, at least a lot of the time (although that opening-night sequence at the theatre should be rethought). Several of the numbers are so well choreographed that their lack of real pertinence is forgiven. Unfortunately, however, this is not true all the time. Several numbers can and should go, starting with "There'll Be Some Changes Made," used as Cheech's warning to Warner, a moment that I think does not merit a number at all. It makes Cheech seem too personally invested in the matter, much more so than in the film. And bringing on the chorus line of gangsters does kind of confuse things. If they know about what's going on between Warner and Olive, might not one of them say something to Nick? If it were up to me, I'd also get rid of the number that follows, even though a number there for those two characters — Helen and David — would make sense if the song seemed like something those two people would sing. But "I Ain't Gonna Play No Second Fiddle" simply doesn't, although the audience seemed to like it. That number brings up something else. We heard that Woody Allen wanted a soprano for Helen, but in the show that's currently playing at the St. James, Helen goes into her upper register very little. Most of the role lies in belt range, and the few times when Mazzie goes higher hardly seem essential. The second act really could also lose the "Yes, We Have No Bananas" finale, but I've seen much worse. Stroman makes a misstep, I think, but an easily correctable one, in the next-to-last number, "She's Funny That Way," Helen and David's song of reconciliation and commitment, which occurs at the opening-night party at Nick's club. She has Zach Braff and Betsy Wolfe upstaged by the dancers behind them doing fancy moves that reminded me of Rob Ashford's silly choreography for the party scene in The Sound of Music. That final scene generally is one in which Allen rather surprisingly seems to be trying to add coherence, diverging from the movie in a couple of big ways and trying to tie things up more thoroughly and neatly. I'm not sure that I love these changes, but they do suggest that Allen is not overly attached to the movie. Speaking of changes, the agent character played by Harvey Fierstein is gone. Instead, some of his lines are given to the producer, which works well enough. Where Allen, or Stroman, or both, seem a bit too devoted to the movie is in several of the performances. It's not that every line reading of the movie cast is imitated. They're not. Sometimes the readings are rather different (and the lines are different often enough). But general vocal patterns and choices of the film performers show their influence with several performers here. Some of Allen's new lines are good, but some of them seem to have been written by some Broadway hack called in to provide gags. Santo Loquasto has made the already not-very-wide St. James stage (as musicals houses go) feel even a bit tighter. This actually helps preserve a certain intimacy (although I can't imagine it feels intimate to the folks in that high St. James balcony). I wasn't in love with everything he did, but he makes it all fit. I did love David and Ellen's apartment, and I loved the effect when the apartment was far upstage as David was singing of his opening-night nerves with "The Panic Is On," a number that nonetheless could perhaps go. But if every number that I think might be cut from the second act were cut, it would be a very short second act. (The show was over around 10:40, and the intermission was, of necessity, on the long side.) Both of the numbers that David and Ellen sing in the apartment worked well in terms of dramatic coherence, but in the second-act breakup scene, why does Ellen seem about to go out in her slip? Is that dress something a woman would have worn on the street in the '20s? Maybe, but it seemed odd to me. The cast is generally good if you don't mind how much some of them evoke their screen predecessors. Zach Braff and Betsy Wolfe in relatively straight roles are probably under less pressure in this way and they don't much evoke their predecessors. He does well, giving a much more overtly comic performance than John Cusack (with his inflections sometimes sounding a bit like, yes, Woody Allen). She kind of seems like a star in the making here. Personally, I wouldn't mind if she and her Tales of the City co-star, Judy Kaye, were reunited in a certain upcoming revival for which another star has been announced. Karen Ziemba doesn't have a huge amount to do, and if you're sitting close, she is clearly rather older than the character is meant to be, but she's such a great performer. For me, she brightens every show she's in. And it may be mostly thanks to her (and to good staging from Stroman) that the second-act opener, "There's a New Day Comin'," is entertaining enough that you don't mind it being not exactly necessary and that the lyric is not terribly specific to the situation. Marin Mazzie seemed to me like a supremely competent understudy, but the friend I was with felt she was completely great and the audience also seemed to love her, so perhaps it's just me. Anyway, her competence here is certainly not in doubt. I wish that Nick Cordero as Nick was allowed a bit more of the shading that Chazz Palmintieri was allowed or encouraged to bring to the character in the movie, but as written in the show, he probably has to play it this way. I don't especially feel the need to comment on anyone else. They all do what they do very professionally. I like that a couple of older and heavier guys are among the dancing gangsters. (Jim Borstelmann and Kevin Ligon, I think.) I can't help but wonder a bit if the show would make a lot of sense to anyone who hasn't seen the film. The orchestra sounds like it's in another building, and after the show I was told that it is in another building. Don't know if that's true. The deck is very high for this show. I was sitting fourth row center, and I would not have wanted to be any closer. So that is a warning. I would really not want to sit in the first row for this. Also, if you're in the first few rows, you will get lights in your face at several points. It's not really pleasant. OK, I've gone on quite long enough. A lot of people will enjoy this show, and for all my quibbles, I enjoyed it. | |
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