Theatre Review: Seminar

Theresa Rebeck’s latest Broadway comedy, or It’s So Hard to Be an Artist

Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe get flirty in Seminar. Photo: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

There’s not much point in reviewing a show that opened months ago to the general acclaim of critics and audiences alike. But considering its obvious Tony Award-magneticism, attention must be paid (we’ll get to that alluded star-studded revival later, promise).

In her latest comedy-parody, the author of Mauritius and Spike Heels presents four aspiring writers who meet weekly in a swanky, rent-controlled UWS apartment to take writing classes — a seminar, if you will — from Leonard, an international literary figure. They’re your expected lot: the dirt-poor, overly insecure artist-genius (Hamish Linklater); the sassy sexpot (Hettienne Park); the patrician cooly coasting on nepotism (Jerry O’Connell) and the prickly feminist emotional-eater (Lily Rabe). And, of course, there’s the contemptuous, self-aggrandizing  teacher (Alan Rickman) whose so-called mentorship consists of weary disdain marked by lacerating whips of ego-shredding criticism.

The one (un)interesting aspect of seeing a show well into its run is what the actors do — or don’t, as the case may be. Do they get a little lazy? Bored? Are they coasting along on their already glowing, filed-away reviews? Or are they actively engaged with the material, maintaining that fiery, opening-night spark?

In Seminar, it’s a little of both. Under Sam Gold’s rapid-fire direction, Jerry O’Connell effectively plays the stuffy detachedness of his entitled Douglas, but Hettienne Park’s student-slut lacks any kind of real scrappiness (and seems rather miscast). It’s the super-energized Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater that shine the brightest, cleverly crafting layers of emotional complexity in what could have been otherwise the cartoonish clichés of their familiar characters. The much-anticipated Rickman is a slow-burn: his Snape-ian scorn is nicely mined in some of the juicier snarky moments and he slyly proffers glimmers of meager praise for his feedback-starved students, but the bit worse-for-the-ware sixty-six year-old Brit  is so cooly disdainful as to seem uninterested in not only their writing, but in the play itself. Perhaps it’s for the best at this point that in just a couple weeks, the cast (excepting Park and O’Connell) will be replaced with some fresh blood, including the likes of Jeff Goldblum as Leonard.

Though Rebeck’s work is produced consistently, she isn’t one of our most original voices. Her dialogue boasts occasional moments of cutting, insightful wit, but much of the time, so much droll cleverness feels a bit forced. In Seminar, the script is marked with implausibilities — apparently you can judge a writer’s work based on half of a sentence before a semi-colon — and clichés (see list of characters). There’s also the eye-rolling self-indulgence of the subject itself: Rebeck, a writer, pens a story about the vitalness of writers and the written word. Her pretentious characters wax poetic about language and the craft of writing, and then cry and complain about how hard it is to be a writer, aka an artist. The one accomplished writer of the lot, Rickman’s Leonard, has an entire monologue about writing being forced to set aside ideals and supplement  income — not to mention ego — by teaching, writing for television, etc. The play begins as parody but then shifts to a bafflingly earnest tone about  3/4 of the way through. Considering her current credit as head-writer on the NBC musical drama, SMASH, it’s never entirely clear if Rebeck is poking fun at too-serious writers or if she’s actually taking herself — and her vocation — too seriously.

Seminar
John Golden Theatre
252 West 45th Street
New York, NY 10036
Performances from October 27, 2011
Opening  November 20, 2011
Open-Ended Run

Theatre Review: Asuncion

Social Network star Jesse Eisenberg makes his playwriting debut

Jesse Eisenberg is all geeky, nervous energy. Inexplicably unable to maintain eye contact, his gaze darts constantly, words tumbling out of his mouth in an uncensored torrent as he hunches over ever-so-slightly, as if desperately trying to disappear within himself. The only cure for his fidgety fingers is to forcefully shove them under his armpits as he crosses and uncrosses his arms in an attempt to shield himself from any kind of human contact.

As an actor, he’s a delight to watch — bounding across the stage with curls a’bouncin’, splaying his slender frame across a beanbag — even if his range seems narrowly defined (Zuckerberg’s strategic aloofness, Baumbach’s cold pretension). As a playwright… well, let’s just say he’s got potential.

Asuncion isn’t exactly his first play, but it is the only one that’s been produced (what I wouldn’t give to see his musical, Me Time!, for which he wrote the music and lyrics. Jack of all trades, this one). And it’s certainly not original in its premise: Edgar, an unemployed wannabe journalist who mooches off his ex-TA, Vinny — a (white) Black Studies PhD candidate — becomes absurdly suspicious of his brother’s marriage to a Filipina woman named Asuncion.

Eisenberg plays Edgar — he stands in for his own stand in? — who, from his seeming position of privilege, comically projects his white guilt liberalism all over the sunnily naive Asuncion, who he interrogates about about post-Vietnam Cambodia (she’s Filipina, remember?), all the while insisting his brother purchased her in the sex slave trade  – or at the very least as a mail-order bride. Why else would an “untraveled” white Wall Street-er marry a “poor” “Latina”? (There are just so many quotes going on here.) Despite Edgar’s inherent obnoxiousness, Eisenberg imbues him with a likable earnestness — to “protect” his country, to  bring Vinny lunch every day even if it means getting mugged by the young hooligans in the neighborhood, to be fun (he so desperately longs to be fun).

Justin Bartha and Jesse Eisenberg in Asuncion. Photo: Sandra Coudert.

While you may be rolling your eyes by now at the slim, stereotype-driven plot (which only implodes rather ingloriously in the second act), don’t worry — it’s not all that bad. The self-deprecating Eisenberg has a knack for the funny — there are moments of sharp, satirical insight, and the banter between Edgar and Vinny is quick-witted and creates a subtle, at times disturbing, spin on the overly popular bromance (view a few scenes of the play here). It certainly helps that Vinny is played by Hangover star Justin Bartha (who recently starred in Zach Braff’s painfully unfunny attempt at playwriting): unironically sporting Black Power tees and Afrocentric beads (hilariously spot-on costuming by Jessica Pabst), Bartha’s pothead Vinny soulfully drums his bongo, finds a way to drop Malcom X or MLK Jr. quote into any conversation and strikes up a charming rapport with Camille Mana’s Asuncion (which, of course, Edgar is exceedingly jealous of). He’s pompous, ludicrous and disarmingly likable — he’s also the more darkly complex character, carefully exposing shocking moments of liberal racism.

Not a whole lot happens in the weakly premised Asuncion, but it’s still largely enjoyable as directed at a fast and funny clip by Kip Fagan. Eisenberg’s ability to craft damningly humorous dialogue and complex relationships demonstrates his potential as a dramatist and showcases his already proven talent as an actor.

Now let’s see that musical.

Asuncion by Jesse Eisenberg
Presented by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater 
at Cherry Lane Theater
38 Commerce Street, New York, NY  10014
through December 18, 2011

Theatre Review: Chinglish

David Henry Hwang’s newest is more slight than satirical

Jennifer Lim and Gary Wilmes. Photo: Michael McCabe

(chĭng’glĭsh)

(adj.) Of or relating to a language in which both English and Chinese words are used together in order to express a meaning.

In the Broadway premiere of Chinglish, David Henry Hwang blends English and Mandarin in an attempt to express that East-West relations are as complex as the languages themselves. Not exactly an earth-shattering revelation — Hwang already covered this ground 23 years ago, more compellingly, with M. Butterfly — this new play is more fluff than substance.

Springing from the author’s personal experiences in China over the past five years, Chinglish follows American businessman Daniel Cavanaugh (Gary Wilmes, the only new cast member since the premiere in Chicago, is more earnest than engaging) who  desperately seeks to score a lucrative deal for his family’s sign-making firm as he travels to China. Of course along the way he manages to fall for Xi Yan, the sharp businesswoman (a sexy-shrewd Jennifer Lim) who isn’t as honest or good as she insists him to be.

Chinglish has a light touch: the comedy almost entirely consist of redundant mistranslations (Shawn Duan’s subtitle projections are nicely clear-cut) that never quite have any bite to them, and are all drawn out indulgently. One of few comic bits not riffing on language barriers — a group of Chinese businessmen fawn over Daniel  for his involvement in the Enron scandal (which they not-so-hilariously admire) — drags on for well over ten minutes in which the Chinese inquire about each head of Enron. Moments like this add up to a production that is overlong and yet still doesn’t say enough: While the  comedy needs trimming, the characters need filling out.

For the most part, director Leigh Silverman keeps the pace quick, but with so many lost-in-translation moments, it all feels a bit sitcom-y. David Korins’s slick-yet-purposefully-bland set only adds the overall indulgence of the production: On a double turntable, it’s an overly complicated puzzle that never stops moving, as though to inspire awe when its pieces finally converge to form a new location. It’s distracting, and the “scenes” that Silverman creates, in a well-meaning attempt to justify the time spent while the set spins and conjoins, are just plain silly. Darron L. West’s “hip” Chinese pop-rap soundtrack at least keeps the energy up while the set slows things down.

Critics so largely enjoyed the show (and it impressed in its world premiere at the Goodman as well) that I have to think it’s partially due to the rarity of comedies on Broadway these days. And, honestly, who isn’t rooting for Hwang? But with thematic ground that has been covered and jokes stretched as thin as rice vermicelli, Chinglish doesn’t translate to much.

Chinglish by David Henry Hwang opened on October 27, 2011 for an open-ended Broadway run.
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th Street
New York, NY 10036

Theatre Review: Born Yesterday

You have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a newspeech for her. It’s filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul.
–  Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

Shaw could never have predicted the world’s fascination with his version of the Pygmalion mythology – his tale has been spun and re-spun far too many times to count. Garson Kanin’s 1946 comedy, Born Yesterday, is just one of the more successful adaptations, with an initial Broadway run of nearly three years and an Academy Award-nominated film (1950) starring Judy Holiday and William Holden and directed by George Cukor. The film director clearly had a thing for the man-who-falls-in-love-with-his-own-creation tale, as he also helmed the most beloved adaptation of all, My Fair Lady (1964).

Born Yesterday beefs up the romance, padding it with politics and sex as it follows self-made junkyard tycoon Harry Brock and his ex-showgirl lady-friend Billie to Washington D.C. Hoping to expand his scrap-metal empire by getting legislation passed that will allow him certain tax exemptions, Harry must coerce a senator (Terry Beaver) and ensure that his brainless bimbo doesn’t embarrass him with her, shall we say, graceless manners. Naturally, this involves tutelage by a handsome young reporter (sensitively played by the charming Robert Sean Leonard).

This should create a damn funny set of circumstances, but in director Doug Hughes‘s current Broadway revival, most of the comedy is cut painfully short by  the presence of Jim Belushi as the uncouth crook. Appearing almost uncomfortable on stage (though he’s played Broadway and regionally many times in the past), Belushi is stiff rather than imposing and bellows, rather than acts, practically every line. So out of pace is he with his castmates, it’s as though he’s in a different show than everyone else — a slow, unfunny show. Belushi’s only exceptional moment — besides when Harry retorts that Billie is the “only cheap thing he sees in the room,” and an audience member loudly admonished “Ohh, Jimmy…” (had he only broken the fourth wall in response, he may have endeared himself to me) — is the long, nearly silent gin game. A comic mental showdown between the crook and the chorus girl, Billie hilariously and triumphantly bests him at every hand, and Belushi’s embarrassment and irritation is a physical one, building in tension as the game persists, only to erupt in a full-fledged clownish fury at the end.

Belushi and Arianda get their gin on.

While the game is the exception for Belushi, it’s certainly not for his masterful leading lady, Nina Arianda. A recent NYU grad who only last year had her critically hailed off-Broadway debut in David Ives’s Venus in Fur at Classic Stage Company, Arianda is pure comic joy as the giggly blonde bombshell who betters her mind through self-discipline and the careful dedication of her teacher-reporter. Lushly dressed in a flowy satin blouse and bold empire-waist trousers (designed by Catherine Zuber, whose penchant for period costumes can also be seen in this season’s revival of How to Succeed), Arianda commands the stage with her brilliant comedic sensibility: each gutteral giggle and wide-eyed knee-slap elicits the same in us, and her innocence, crassness, joy, confusion, and honesty reveals a layered complexity that exists nowhere else in this production. Whether she’s absentmindedly humming “Anything Goes” to her own pitchy tune, or confidently defining ‘peninsula’ as “that new medicine,” Arianda simply sparkles, giving life to an otherwise serviceable revival.

Arianda’s brilliant, believable, and hilarious progression from dimwitted broad to a beguiling and clever (but still delightfully bawdy) lady is 100% Tony Award-worthy — let’s hope this production stays open long enough to be eligible for such a nomination. But if it doesn’t, to satiate our Pygmalion fixation, I offer up this idea for a new revival of My Fair Lady (the casting of which I pondered whilst Belushi blustered his way through his scenes):

Professor Henry Higgins: John Lithgow 
Eliza Doolittle: Laura Benanti
Freddie Ensford-Hill: Matt Cavanaugh
Alfred P. Doolittle: John McMartin
Mrs. Higgins: Mary Louise Wilson
Colonel Pickering: TBD (I’m taking suggestions.)

But if Arianda sings, I’m more than willing to chuck Benanti.

PLAY VS. PRODUCTION: BACHELORETTE lucks out with stellar cast + director

I know I’m a little late in the game here. After all, Leslye Headland’s BACHELORETTE closed today at Second Stage Uptown’s The McGinn/Cazale Theatre after

Mean Girls: Katherine Waterston, Tracee Chimo, and Celia Keenan-Bolger in BACHELORETTE

having garnered nearly universal praise (the show’s StageGrade was A -).  But as I sat watching this brutally paced and quick-witted production earlier this week, I began to wonder: does this play (not the production) warrant all the positive fuss?

Helmed by Trip Cullman, an intuitive director who has surely met — and understands, and even sympathizes with — such greed-is-good-mean-gossip-girls-in-the-city that the comedy revolves around, this BACHELORETTE is both bitingly clever and brutally paced. Stars Tracee Chimo, Katherine Waterston, and Celia Keenan-Bolger ferociously tear into the material as the three crazy-witty and crazy-vindictive ex-best-friends who can’t bare to stop hurting each other or themselves.

Charles Isherwood has this to say in his rare rave New York Times review:

The central characters in this Second Stage Theater production . . . may be familiar: marginally more grown-up versions of the spoiled youngsters from any number of youth-aimed movies and television shows. But as written with stiletto-sharp wit by Ms. Headland, they are almost embarrassingly compelling, and expertly played by a cast of gifted actors under the pitch-perfect direction of Trip Cullman.

Isherwood points out the over-familiarity of Headland’s profane and empathetic characters, and then, for the majority of the review, sings the praises of cast and director for making said characters “embarrassingly compelling.”

While the occasional critic gently implies the distinction between writing and direction – Talkin’ Broadway‘s Matthew Murray, for example, mentions that the plot “may all sound fairly conventional, and in some ways it is” — only Alexis Soloski of the Village Voice pinpoints where the BACHELORETTE gets lucky and then runs out of it (full review here):

All the cleverness conceals some rather lazy plotting and a thematic arc that rivals Beverly Hills 90210 episodes in complexity. Happily, director Trip Cullman has marshaled an able and eccentric cast and encouraged many nicely observed moments.

When I sussed out what I truly enjoyed about the BACHELORETTE — Chimo’s hilariously antagonistically elongated valley-girl line delivery and the deliciously drunken stage choreography of the girls’ side-stepping each others’ drug-fueled land mines — I of course realized:

It’s not an A-caliber play. It’s an A-caliber production.

And it made me further wonder just how many similar experiences I’ve had in my past theatergoing:

How often to we blur the lines between script and production, bestowing praise on a writer’s work, while dismissing the  possibly more vital contributions of the director and the cast (and vice versa)?

CIRCLE MIRROR: Deirdre O'Connell, Heidi Schreck, Tracee Chimo, Reed Birney. Photo: Joan Marcus.

The best recent example I can think of is Annie Baker’s CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION. I distinctly recall walking out of the Playwrights Horizons production wondering, had the script been submitted to me as a Literary Director, would I have taken it any further? Would I have recognized it’s theatrical potential? I’m not so sure. (I would of course be kicking myself for the rest of my career, as I even listed it as one of the Best of 2009.)

Is BACHELORETTE on par with CIRCLE MIRROR? No. To my mind the latter consistently demonstrates more insight, depth, and theatricality than the former (which would work better as a film –and which adaptation may already be in the works). But what if CIRCLE MIRROR had premiered without the pitch-perfect cast (including that fabulous Tracee Chimo) and direction? Would the play(wright)  have received the accolades it(she) rightfully deserves?

And so my questions to you, my thoughtful readers:

• For premiere productions, how often do you find that credit — via critics, friends, etc — is misplaced? (If you have your own examples of plays/productions, I’d love to hear ‘em. Lord knows I have more)
• Does it, in the end, help or harm emerging writers to have a creative team that significantly improves upon their work?
• Should critics be held responsible for more precisely distinguishing between the writing and the production?
• Does it even matter who’s to praise/blame if the audience generally loves/loathes its two hours spent in the theatre?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Tony Awards 2010: Best Book of a Musical + Best Original Score of a

BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL

1. Memphis (Joe DiPietro)

2. Million Dollar Quartet (Colin Escott + Floyd Mutrux)

3. Everyday Rapture (Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott)

4. Fela! (Jim Lewis + Bill T. Jones)

Joe DiPietro’s book for Memphis certainly doesn’t break any new ground — structurally, thematically, or otherwise.  It’s more a retread of of similarly conventional works like Hairspray and Dreamgirls. But it’s by far the most cohesive and serviceable, with defined (if cliched) characters, a distinguishable plot, and quite a bit of warmth and humor. If this appears to be rather lame praise for the predicted Tony-Award winner of Best Book, it’s true: it’s been a sad year for the Broadway musical theatre. Escott and Mutrux’s work on Million Dollar Quartet tells of the single day four music legends meet and hold a jam session, and while the writers work hard to create some drama in between the well-known hit songs, not a whole lot happens, and whatever does is made enjoyable by the hardworking performers — not the work itself. Sherie Rene Scott’s “semi”-autobiographical trifle Everyday Rapture is all over the place structurally and tonally (sentimental to sardonic and back again), though it does contain some true comic gems, such as her ode to Jesus and Judy (Garland). And while Fela! has many wonderful things going for it, the unfocused and overambitious book by Jim Lewis and director-choreographer Bill T. Jones is simply not one of them.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (MUSIC AND/OR LYRICS) WRITTEN FOR THE THEATRE

1. Enron (Music: Adam Cork, Lyrics: Lucy Prebble)

2. Memphis (Music: DAvid Bryan, Lyrics: Joe DiPietro, David Bryan)

3. The Addams Family (Music/Lyrics: Andrew Lippa)

4. Fences (Music: Branford Marsalis)

Though the virtues of Adam Cork’s corporate composition for Enron have already been extolled here, it’s hugely important to draw attention to the fact that the best use of music this year was not in fact found in a musical. Not only does this speak to the lackluster offerings of the Broadway musical, but it also serves to highlight the blurred line between musical theatre and theatre with music (what is/should be the difference?). Give me the quirky-techno musical effectiveness of Enron — play, play with music, musical play, whatever you want to call it — any day of the week over such dismal offerings as Andrew Lippa’s Addams Family. A competent composer, Lippa has given us the lovely, chamber musical john and jen as well as the (lesser, but still good) The Wild Party, and now he provides one of the most forgettable, unintegrated “scores” in recent memory (excepts for Uncle Fester’s love song to the moon, which was wonderfully — and absurdly — whimsical). Fences‘s music by Branford Marslais is jazzy and tuneful but entirely misused in the tragedy (read more here), and the Motown-inspired Memphis provided the one competent and conventional original musical score this year — and was written by a member of Bon Jovi. That about says it all.

[Side note: When the award says it's for "music and/or lyrics"? Does that mean a show be nominated in the Best Original Score category for it's lyrics alone? Does anyone else find this problematic? If a musical's categories are to be broken down into Best Book and Best Original Score, shouldn't there also then be an award for Best Lyrics?]

Tony Awards 2010: Best Featured Actor + Actress

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY

1. Stephen Kunken (Enron)

2. Stephen McKinley Henderson (Fences)

3. Jon Michael Hill (Superior Donuts)

4. Eddie Redmayne (Red)

5. David Alan Grier (Race)

In Red, Eddie Redmayne is properly earnest and assiduous as protege to Molina’s masterful Rothko, and David Alan Grier, who surprisingly has more than a few Broadway (musical!) credits under his belt, energetically went head-to-head with co-star James Spader in the David Mamet drama, Race.  But Jon Michael Hill stepped it up a notch with his frisky performance in the otherwise forgettable and sentimental Superior Donuts, and with all his boundless energy, it’s amazing that none of it wore off on his spiritless co-star, Michael McKean.  While I have more than a soft spot in my heart for Enron‘s nefarious nebbish portrayed with glee by Stephen Kunken, the August Wilson regular, Stephen Mckinley Henderson, is likely to go home with the coveted award. As Bono, Henderson acts as the constant, the quietly restrained moral compass to Washington’s impetuous braggadocio. Certainly his is the least showy of the performances, but that makes Henderson’s ability to arrest our attention so much more noteworthy.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY

1. Jan Maxwell (Lend Me a Tenor)

2. Jessica Hecht (A View from the Bridge)

3. Scarlett Johansson (A View from the Bridge)

4. Maria Dizzia (In the Next Room, or the vibrator play)

Rosemary Harris (The Royal Family)

These ladies are all so smart and fabulous — though I missed seeing Rosemary Harris, I’m quite positive she belongs here — that it’s actually uncomfortably difficult to pick a winner. Maria Dizzia hilariously vacillates between chilly prudishness and orgasmic hysteria. The performances in A View from the Bridge are so finely intertwined as to form a true ensemble, and as such, placing Jessica Hecht‘s staunchly vigilant Beatrice above Scarlett Johansson‘s burgeoning self-awareness as Catherine, seems rather pointless; it does not seem possible for one to exist as such without the other. But it’s Jan Maxwell‘s comic genius as the temperamental Italian wife of the titular tenor. With the snap of a finger, she instantaneously switches from railing against her dopey husband (in Italian, no less) to cooing sweet nothings to flinging herself in and out of doors, onto sofas, onto beds, into closets, and into fits of tears and tirades of abuse . The best part? You can tell she’s having so much fun doing it (check out a clip of her as the Italian diva here).

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL

1. Levi Kreis (Million Dollar Quartet)

2. Kevin Chamberlin (The Addams Family)

3. Christopher Fitzgerald (Finian’s Rainbow)

4. Robin De Jesús (La Cage aux Folles)

5. Bobby Steggert (Ragtime)

Bobby Steggert is the throwaway nominee here;  few things stands out in Ragtime‘s sub-par revival and his stoic performance as Brother, the near-terrorist-in-the-making, is simply not one of them. The adorable Robin de Jesús (La Cage aux Folles) has energy to spare as the boundlessly enthusiastic assistant to the glam chanteuse ZaZa, and Christopher Fitzgerald‘s feisty leprechaun has all the luck — and cheekiness — of the Irish in Finian’s Rainbow. It’s the rare performer who can rival the scene-stealing abilities of musical theatre’s #1 funny man, Nathan Lane, but Kevin Chamberlin holds his own and then some in the dreadful-cute Addams Family.  His Uncle Fester is less melancholic than he is whimsical; pining romantically after the moon, Chamberlin is never ironic or condescending in his portrayal of the one true optimistic Addams; he genuinely delights in his character’s eccentricities, and because of this, we do too. But Levi Kreis epitomizes the flamboyant, effusive showman, Jerry Lee Lewis (Million Dollar Quartet). Kreis (who more than slightly resembles Harry Connick Jr. in not only musical talents, but handsomeness as well) enthusiastically imbues a production full of mellow performances with the endless energy and charisma it would otherwise lack, and dramatically needs.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL

1. Katie Finneran (Promises, Promises)

2. Angela Lansbury (A Little Night Music)

3. Barbara Cook (Sondheim on Sondheim)

4. Lillias White (Fela!)

5. Karine Plantadit (Come Fly Away)

The competition here is really only between two. The rest, marvelous as they may be, are all terribly restricted by the confines of underdeveloped — or entirely undefined — characters in this exceedingly depressing year for female musical roles (the dearth of which is the only explanation for dancer Karine Plantadit‘s nomination). Poor Barbara Cook (Sondheim on Sondheim) is stuck and directionless in the biggest show choir spectacular of the year, and Lillias White (Fela!), for all her vocal prowess and aplomb, is offered no motivation as Fela Kuti’s mysteriously estranged mother. On the other hand, Angela Lansbury wins even if she doesn’t: as the spicy Madam Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, she’s just as wickedly funny and deliciously on pointe as she was thirty years ago in the original Sweeney Todd.  But because Dame Lansbury took home the Tony last year (for Best Leading Actress in Blithe Spirit), Tony voters will more than likely award Katie Finneran‘s scene-stealing, smashlingly funny turn as the boozy floozy  in Promises, Promises. And they should: Finneran’s randy and brash Marge MacDougall doesn’t just fling, but practically launches herself at, Sean Hayes’s unassuming Chuck Baxter, in a too-short performance that is riotous good fun.

Harry Potter in H2$: Inspired or Ridiculous?

Daniel Radcliffe

There’s been a lot of to-do over the announcement that  Daniel Radcliffe will be hoofing it over to the Great White Way for in a revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying set for next season. (This focus is somewhat surprising consider that the same day saw plans for a musical Dances with Wolves announced. Please picture a Kevin Costner-type actually dancing with wolves. Best. Visual. Ever.)

It could be titled How to Get Cast in a Broadway Musical Without Really Trying since Radcliffe has only one theatre credit to his name.  Equus, which tells the true tale of an English lad who inexplicably attacks and blinds six horses, and which Radcliffe starred in  doesn’t exactly scream musical comedy talent. In my own review of the London production of that Peter Schaffer psychodrama, I declared Radcliffe “an inexperienced teen who has yet to fully develop his acting talent.” His performance was “passable,” and I was underwhelmed. When I read the playbill announcement of his musical casting, my entire body twitched violently. I reflected in horror: a screaming Katie Holmes ruining classic Arthur Miller. Shrill Lauren Graham struggling to sing-speak-dance her way through “A Bushel and a Peck.”  A painfully dull Jena Malone stumbling through Mourning Becomes Electra.I wanted to punch, hard, the dim-witted casting director who decided to put another ill-equipped film actor on stage.

And then I actually thought about it.

And now I’m going to defend Harry Potter’s casting in How to Succeed as quite possibly inspired, and here’s why:

1) How to Succeed is musical comedy gold. They don’t get any better than this: A 1960s gem boasting a crazy-witty book by Abe Burrows and the buoyant brilliance of Frank Loesser’s score (in my opinion, his best). Hell, it even won the Pulitzer (not that that really means anything, as proven by this year’s winner). Radcliffe’s never been in an out-and-out comedy, but funny-guy J. Pierrepont Finch doesn’t earn laughs through hoodwinking buffoonery or silly slapstick; he’s a crafty conman who stealthily charms his way up the corporate ladder. While the Harry Potter series demonstrated a young Radcliffe’s easy ability to charm through sweet innocence, Daniel’s since become a strikingly handsome guy whose quiet effortlessness could give Finch a mysterious edge to his cockiness (not unlike Matthew Broderick in the 1995 revival). While Finch is a pretty heavy singing role, it’s mid-range and not difficult, so while I have no idea of Radcliffe’s vocal training if any, as long as he can carry a tune, all else will be solved by reason #2…

Hammy Robert Morse reprises his role as Finch in the 1967 film (he originated the Broadway production in ’61)

2) Rob Ashford is directing. Choreographer-cum-director, Ashford is currently in the midst of his Broadway debut as director with Promises Promises, but he’s already demonstrated his mastery of the musical form as choreographer for movement-minded musicals like Thoroughly Modern Millie, Curtains, and Cry-Baby (you laugh, but did you see that jail-house number on the Tonys? Ridiculously brilliant.)  Not to mention his exquisite re-conceptualization and direction of  the once-troubled Parade at London’s Donmar Warehouse (Hal Prince, eat your heart out. Read more about Ashford’s production here). Based on that production alone — which also boasted a lead played by an actor with no musical credits to his name — Ashford is more than capable of bolstering an actor’s strengths while maintaining the integrity of the artistic work and making it his own.

John Stamos took over for Matthew Broderick in the '95 Revival

3) Corbin Bleu. Anne Hathaway. Sienna Miller. Norbert Leo Butz.
From screen to stage, Bleu flawlessly transferred his musical charms. The quirky Hathaway startled with her sensitive interpretation of Shakespeare in the Park. Model-actress Sienna miller smoldered in Strindberg (no lie). And Norbert Leo Butz, a classically trained actor lacking any kind of vocal training, is most widely known for his musical roles. I’d say Radcliffe’s got a decent chance of graduating to this group.

Matthew Broderick in the 1995 Broadway Revival

So stop your chortling, your bitching and your moaning, and give the Potter a chance; he may surprise you. That is, if this revival doesn’t go the way of ill-fated-Rob-Ashford-set-to-helm Brigadoon. Or the Gavin Creel and Diana DeGarmo-starring Godspell. Or the drama-filled 2005 production of Sweet Charity. Or the abruptly cancelled Megan-Mullally-drama of Lips Together, Teeth Apart.

Let’s face it: this thing’s probably not going to happen anyway.

But boy oh boy, I sure hope it does.

By doing nothing, Baumbach does quite a lot in his latest, Greenberg

“I’m trying not to do anything,” Roger Greenberg, with a seeming shrug, informs each person who inquires what he’s doing with his life  on his dreary visit to hazy Los Angeles.  A bitter ex-musician visiting his well-off and trendy brother — who’s taking his family  on vacation to Vietnam of all places — Greenberg is a staunch New York carpenter just coming off of an indeterminate stay at a mental hospital. He’s defiantly proud and strangely unembarrassed by this declaration of the dismal state of his life, fiercely brandishing it like a sword whenever accosted by those he deems threats to his preferred aimlessness: the caustically cool twenty-somethings who carelessly consume cocktails of coke, pills, and booze and  take spontaneous trips to hip locales just to ensure their own hipness; the estranged and sad-eyed best friend who has grown up and apart from him, even as Greenberg himself stubbornly refuses to age and mature; the idolized ex-girlfriend who has married, divorced, and so moved on and beyond him that she, in one of the film’s most uncomfortably agonizing scenes, cannot manage to recall a single moment from their history together that he so clearly treasures; and finally, the younger, charmingly irresolute assistant, who genuinely — and quite bafflingly — likes  him despite his best and most intense efforts to make her feel otherwise.

Greenberg is writer-director Noah Baumbach’s latest in his patented string of highly intellectual meanderings full of difficult characters expressing their personal pain by violently thrusting it upon others while feigning self-deprecation. Sisters savagely squabble and cruelly manipulate each other in Margot at the Wedding and in The Squid and the Whale, his most acutely painful and darkly droll work, we experience a bitter and painful divorce through the perspectives of two damaged sons (Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline) who startlingly mirror their parents’ aggressive pretensions and sharply cruel wit. While none of his films could ever be mistaken as plot-driven, Baumbach loosens his grip on his characters even more so than usual in Greenberg, lovingly allowing Roger to digressively funnel his unfocused energy into hilariously articulate complaint letters to American Airlines and Starbucks (its “attempt to manufacture culture out of fast-food coffee…sucks”) and  Florence, Roger’s young and listless love interest, to drift quietly from art gallery opening to open mic night to one-night stand.

As Greenberg, a low-key (and totally fantastic) Ben Stiller casually slings the sharpest of insults when (he believes himself to be) provoked, but mostly, this keen disdain is meant for himself, and the self-awareness that Stiller infuses into the zingers is painfully obvious and remarkably acute. But it’s those moments sans dialogue that Stiller nails Greenberg’s so-slight-you-could-miss-it-if-you-blink vulnerability: surrounded by joyful children at a party, he awkwardly shuffles his feet and aloofly looks to the sky for fear of connection, or when he struggles to stay afloat whilst pathetically dog-paddling across his brother’s pool. Despite these super-brief moments and Greenberg’s signature defense that “hurt people hurt people,” Baumbach still doesn’t fully expect u

s sympathize with this outwardly selfish man-child who only confesses affection when assisted with a little cocaine courage. So in the final moments, what was building rather slowly toward the harsh realization that we simply must accept that life never turns out the way we expect it to, the film veers suddenly

into rom-com territory. It’s only when Greenberg finally gets a clue and makes a mad dash for happiness that we realize that, despite all of his contemptuousness, intentional belittling, and self-imposed isolation, we’d actually been rooting for him along. Churlish behavior and seemingly indifferent assertions a

side, Roger Greenberg was never really not doing anything; he was simply learning — in his own painstakingly guarded and grudging way — to embrace the unexpected life. In Greenberg, Noah Baumbach has once again created a hard-to-love character that we can’t help but love.

Oscars 2010: Best Director + Best Picture

Note: My personal rankings are listed in order from best to least accomplished, with #1 being my favorite, while predictions for the actual winners appear in orange.

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Kathryn Bigelow
The Hurt Locker

1. Quentin Tarantino
Inglourious Basterds

3. James Cameron
Avatar

4. Jason Reitman
Up in the Air

5. Lee Daniels
Precious

What I believed would become my favorite film of the year, Up in the Air, is decidedly low on my list, and that’s due to Jason Reitman’s slick, gimmicky direction (could we possibly show Clooney’s Bingham precisely and efficiently packing a suitcase one more time? We get it, we get it). What should have been emotionally striking (reactions of “real” people to their sudden unemployment) was not; instead, focus was on clever camera angles and the earnest indie soundtrack. I wanted to love this film, and the screenplay seems to indicate that that was a real possibility. Unfortunately, Reitman’s direction left me rather indifferent to it all.

Quentin Tarantino’s directorial choices matched the boldness of his historical rewrites in Inglourious Basterds, and Lee Daniels did the best he could with messy screenplay of Precious, churning out some of the year’s finest performances; in fact, if there was a “Best Ensemble” category, I’d vote for Precious without hesitation.

Admittedly, James Cameron took on the most tremendous task in his directing of the epic Avatar, and the film, regardless of its horrible screenplay and oft-times cringe-worthy performances, is striking to behold largely thanks to his helming. But let’s be honest: Kathryn Bigelow deserves this one. In the Academy Awards’ 82 years, only four women have been nominated in for Best Director, and it’s time to make some history. Just like Jeff Bridges, Bigelow deserves it. The woman made a super-tense, fantastically acted film about an incredibly difficult subject; how many other Iraq-war films can we actually say that about? (Bonus: sweet, sweet revenge of the Ex)

BEST PICTURE

1. The Hurt Locker

2. District 9

3. Up

4. Inglourious Basterds

5. An Education

6. Up in the Air

7. Precious

8. The Blind Side

9. Avatar

10. A Serious Man

Remember the simpler days of yore when voters cast their ballots for one film and the film with the most votes triumphed? This is no longer, my friends.

With the new 10-nominee craziness, there’s a chance that a film with only 11% of the vote could win if we played by the old rules. So now we’ve got a brand-spankin’ new system that makes everything a bit more complicated. Voters will now rank the films from 1 to 10. All the #1 votes will be counted and if no film has more than 50% of the votes (which will probably be the case), the last-place film will be eliminated (see ya, A Serious Man), and the voters who cast their ballots for that film will have their #2 selections counted instead. That process will continue until one film has a majority of votes. This means that the film with the most #1 votes may not actually win. (Al Gore would certainly sympathize.)

Whew.

While an upset would be fantastic – all signs point towards my #2 + #5s not garnering a single award, so wouldn’t it be ridiculously fun if either won the Big One? – it’s clear that this race is solely between the The Billion Dollar Green Screen Epic and the Little Indie War Movie That Could. Each has won approximately the same number of awards up until now, but usually the Best Picture goes hand-in-hand with Best Director, and most everyone has their money on Bigelow. But that certainly doesn’t mean you should count out Avatar just yet: remember that just 5 years ago Crash took home the gold even after Brokeback Mountain’s Ang Lee earned Best Director. As whack as that possibility is, it truly is anyone’s game.

Next Up: Oscars 2010 Postmortem