| in contrast, here's the ecstatic NYT piece from 1997, "Why Whisper About It? 'The Life' Is a Joy" | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 11:20 pm EDT 03/17/22 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 11:19 pm EDT 03/17/22 | |
| In reply to: This could well be the death of Encores. - ShowGoer 08:26 am EDT 03/17/22 | |
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| I think this is very worth reading for a sense of why people who love it love it (despite its flaws, or even with consideration for the flaws), and for a bit of perspective from in the year it played it opened and ran for over a year. If you can look past his use of the word "whore" instead of even hooker... this is, I think, what defenders of the ample pros (vs cons) the show provides would have as the record and defender of it, and what Billy Porter, it sounds like, was hell bent on revising the show in opposition to. (also have to note, i believe he misquoted a lyrics... 'So what if you're a whore?/ Everybody's there. Nobody cares/What you're famous for!'' Isn't it "everyone stares. Nobody cares"? It is. But this article certainly pin points a key reason why the cast album is one of the most played albums in my car, and when I'm doing chores, and when I'm at the gym. From Oct 5 1997 SUNDAY VIEW; Why Whisper About It? 'The Life' Is a Joy by Vincent Canby BROADWAY'S BEST-KEPT secret isn't that ''The Life,'' the Cy Coleman show at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, is the best musical of 1996-97. It was given that not always significant distinction by the Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle and the Drama League. Awards don't really tell you much when the competition is feeble or simply nonexistent, as was the case the year that ''Sunset Boulevard'' won its Tony. Such prizes are for use in advertising and promotion and to impress the folks back home. The seemingly dark secret about ''The Life'' is that it's by far the most entertaining new musical to have opened last season. Joy is the show's operative word, which may seem odd since the ebullient folk tale, directed by Michael Blakemore, is about the whores and their pimps who worked 42d Street before the street's soul was saved by miraculous Disneyfication. The time is unspecified, though it would seem to be the late 1970's. It's before AIDS had been identified, when the members of an aggressively visible demimonde crowded sidewalks, made deals in doorways and snoozed in bars, when buying a newspaper at 10 P.M. could be as chancy as a trek up Everest, and when the marquees of all-night movie theaters and porn parlors rendered street lights redundant. ''Joy?'' you might well ask. ''Joy?'' Well, yes. Among other things, ''The Life'' displays more fresh, fully realized talent and go-for-broke pizazz than can be found anywhere else on Broadway except at the Shubert, where the revival of ''Chicago'' is in residence. Its roots are in the pre-''Rent,'' pre-''Bring In da Noise/Bring In da Funk'' era. ''The Life'' doesn't deal in documentary truth. This isn't a stage equivalent to ''La Vida,'' one of Oscar Lewis's seminal sociological studies of the culture of poverty. It's musical theater, whose romantic, extremely simplified (you might say Disneyfied) view of life is transformed each night into something joyful through the conjunction of singular talents and one-of-a-kind performances. This is what Broadway can do, if only on rare occasions, and what separates live theater from its various prerecorded offspring. Yet the joy of ''The Life'' appears to have been effectively overlooked when it opened last April during the rush of musicals to qualify for the Tony Awards. It received mostly mixed reviews; even the good ones failed to communicate its sense of pure, old-fashioned show-biz brio and elan, qualities in short supply these days when the choice tends to be the big musical statement or the truisms of pallid operetta. But then April was a hysterical month. Also pushing and shoving for Tony attention were such other arrivals as ''Steel Pier,'' ''Titanic,'' ''Jekyll and Hyde'' and Harold Prince's revival of ''Candide.'' ''Steel Pier'' and ''Candide'' have since succumbed. Of the three survivors, ''Titanic,'' which was given the Tony for best new musical, is the most stately and solemn. Though musically impressive in fits and starts, the show and the ship are so inert that you might suspect a speeding iceberg had smashed into them instead of the other way around. ''Jekyll and Hyde'' is an inside joke: a sendup of the kind of fustian musical theater that even Andrew Lloyd Webber seems to have abandoned, though the joke isn't intentional. When I finally got around to seeing ''The Life'' several weeks ago, it was with a certain reluctance. In addition to the mixed reviews, the word of mouth was either dismissive or defensive. Said one friend whose judgment I trust, ''It's so . . . so . . . retrograde.'' Another friend looked around as if afraid of being overheard. She spoke softly, italicizing the first pronoun. ''Well, I liked it,'' she said, then added, ''and I really don't think it's offensive to women.'' Both friends are right. ''The Life'' is retrograde, gloriously so: for all of the whores' raw language and nasty habits, they have hearts of purest gold, while their pimps are either sadistic monsters or made unreliable by the grip of drug addiction. Yet the show leaves you with the high that comes with the discovery of something new, which in this case is something quite traditional. Mr. Coleman has composed not only his most driving, big-beat score since ''Sweet Charity'' but also his most varied and melodic work since ''On the Twentieth Century.'' The book, written by David Newman, Ira Gasman (who also did the lyrics) and Mr. Coleman, is serviceable. That's not a putdown but to acknowledge that it is always in the service of the composer and the performers, who realize the characters that are defined and made particular by the score. And what splendid performers these are! Three enchanting, gifted singing-actresses dominate the production: Pamela Isaacs, Lillias White and Bellamy Young. Remember their names. A slim, fragile but intense young woman, Ms. Isaacs plays Queen, an emigre from Savannah, who, when first seen, has just spent the night in jail. It's not her first time. Queen has been on the street awhile. Yet as she sings of her resolve to get out of the life, pick up her man (who is also her pimp) and return home, the show suddenly comes to startling life. Ms. Isaacs's voice has the suppleness of Lena Horne's and a purity that is never sabotaged by its range. It's an instrument to cause goose bumps of pleasure. She rivets attention from her first appearance until the ambitious finale. As sung by Ms. Isaacs, Queen has backbone that only a good score can express with such immediacy. Queen is important. So, too, is her best friend, Sonja, played by the dynamic Ms. White, who won the Tony for best featured actress in a musical. On paper, Sonja would be easily recognized as a character you have met before in many disguises: she is the wisecracking sidekick. But when Ms. White tears into her big number, telling us that she is ''getting too old for the oldest profession,'' the sardonic, almost gospel lament defines Sonja as one of a kind. Fine theater performances are spooky in the way they can slice through cliches to find original truth. MS. YOUNG SNEAKS UP on you. She is Mary, just off a Greyhound bus, cheap suitcase in hand, a very blond innocent who has come to make her fortune in Big Town. The pimps immediately spot her and drool over the possibilities she represents. Yet there is something wrong with the picture. At first you think her heavy makeup, covering what seems to be a natural peaches-and-cream complexion, is simply a theatrical convention. After all, she's the ingenue. Very quickly, though, it turns out that Mary knows exactly where she is and what she's doing, first as a go-go dancer and then as a whore headed to Hollywood where she dreams of becoming a star in porn movies. She's not overburdened with mind, but what mind she has is ruthlessly, hilariously focused. Ms. Young, who is making her Broadway debut in ''The Life,'' defines Mary with a sweet, beautifully trained singing voice that has a big, no-nonsense brassy edge to it. The way she handles two of Mr. Coleman's funniest Broadway show tunes, ''Easy Money'' and ''People Magazine,'' recalls a kind of musical theater that's supposed to have died before she was born. There is a prodigious amount of talent in this show. Note also the Tony winner Chuck Cooper (best featured actor in a musical), who plays Memphis, the most vicious of the pimps, with a bass voice that seems to rule the world; Kevin Ramsey as Fleetwood, Queen's feckless lover and pimp, and Rich Hebert as Lou, the white john who takes Mary to Hollywood. It's Lou who, with Mary, sings the two-part ''People Magazine'' in which he tells the rapt hooker, ''You can be famous, just by being famous,'' adding with cheeky assurance: ''So what if you're a whore?/ Everybody's there. Nobody cares/What you're famous for!'' One of the most mysterious aspects of musical theater is how the score, the book, the choreography (in this case by Joey McKneely), the sets (Robin Wagner), costumes (Martin Pakledinaz) and the rest of the contributions come together, not only coherently but also without revealing the wear and tear. It must be as difficult as creating a crossword puzzle in the sand. Which is why success, when achieved, is always an astonishment. ***** Also, later in this piece when he writes about the 1776 revival that year, he says: "That review was as defensive as my friend had been when she admitted having liked ''The Life.'' Certain shows do that to you. You feel you have to justify being entertained by something that, for one academic reason or another, shouldn't measure up." |
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