Monday, December 24, 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Off Broadway: Flipside: The Patti Page Story
Lindsie VanWinkle and Haley Jane Pierce in FLIPSIDE: THE PATTI PAGE STORY |
Clara Ann Fowler
(Haley Jane Pierce) was born into a large, poor family in 1927 in Claremore,
Oklahoma, one of eleven children. Her father,
Ben Fowler (Willy Welch) worked for the railroad, while her mother and older
sisters picked cotton. Despite the
poverty of her early years (the family home lacked electricity), she somehow evolved
into the “Singing Rage” Miss Patti Page (Lindsie VanWinkle), one of the most legendary
female singers in popular recording history, with111 hits on the Billboard
charts and 100 million records sold to her credit. But through it all and beneath Patti Page’s
vibrant, sophisticated public persona, Clara Ann Fowler’s core simplicity and
vulnerability remained.
In 2011, the University
of Central Oklahoma’s College of Fine Arts & Design’s Broadway Tonight presented
the world premiere of Flipside: The
Patti Page Story, written and directed by the multi-talented Greg White
(artist, actor, director, playwright, producer, and professor) based on his
interviews with Miss Page. A year later,
the musical was selected from among nearly 3,500 productions to attend the 2012 Regional & National Kennedy Center Festivals where it won several honors including Best Musical. And now it has arrived at 59E59 Theaters where it is enjoying a limited run (only through year-end) in its New York premiere.
Flipside’s producers are planning a National Tour in 2013-14
and that’s a good thing – at least for the rest of the country.. But it’s too bad that New Yorkers won’t be
given a longer opportunity to see this show as well, since to do so is truly is
a delightful musical experience.
The musical follows
Clara Ann Fowler’s trajectory from the time she first became a featured singer on
radio station KTUL in Tulsa, Oklahoma at age 18 to her meeting with Jack Rael
(Justin Larman), a year later. When Rael heard Page sing, he asked her to join his
"Jimmy Joy Band" and the rest, as they say, was history. After leaving the band, Rael ultimately become
Page's personal manager. (Larman, incidentally,
plays multiple roles in Flipside: in
addition to Rael, he depicts Howard Hillenbrand, KTUL’s Program Director; Otto,
KTUL’s Station Assistant; Al Clauser, a country singer; Guy Lombardo; and
various announcers – and he does a wonderful job across-the board.)
Haley Jane Pierce
plays Clara Ann Fowler with great sensitivity and Lindsie VanWinkle is equally
accomplished as her much more confident alter ego, Patti Page. Willy Welch is fine as Clara’s dad, and Jenny
Rottmayer and Kassie Carroll are charmingly professional in the variety of
roles they are called upon to perform as Clara’s sisters and mother and any
number of backup singers, radio personae, announcers, and reporters. The all do a good job of moving the story
along.
And yet, you probably
won’t be surprised to hear that the pleasure you’ll get from this show will
derive mostly from the music, rather than the story line. The life of Clara Ann Lawson/Patti Page wasn’t
all that dramatic, after all, and certainly wouldn’t rival (in terms of
interest) those of, say, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Stanwyck,
Bette Davis, et al. But as for Miss Page’s
musical renditions? Well, those were terrific. And this show – with an eight piece orchestra
on stage - doesn’t stint on presenting them, coming up with more than two dozen
in all, including “Mockin’ Bird Hill,” “Frankie and Johnny,” “Don’t Sit Under
the Apple Tree,” “Confess,” “Detour,” “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?,”
“Why Don’t You Believe Me,” “Allegheny Moon,” “Old Cape Cod,” “You Belong to
Me,””Back in Your Own Backyard” and, of course, her signature song “Tennessee Waltz.”
If you do get to see
this show, I think “you’ll remember the night.”
If you don’t, you might never “know just how much you have lost.”
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Off Broadway: 13 Things About Ed Carpolotti
Penny Fuller in 13 THINGS ABOUT ED CARPOLOTTI at 59E59 Theaters |
It
didn’t take very long before Ed Carpolotti’s untimely death threw his widow’s
life into turmoil. Virginia Carpolotti
(Penny Fuller) discovered that under the terms of his will, she was now
president of Ed Carpolotti, Inc., her late husband’s construction company,
about which she knew next to nothing. But
she quickly learned that business at the company had been rather slow (not good
news) although the company did appear to have substantial assets (much better
news). But, unfortunately (and this was
much worse news) those assets had been pledged against hundreds of thousands of
dollars in bank loans (according to Bob O’Klock from the bank) and the loans
were six months in arrears.
And
then it got even worse. Turns out that
Virginia unwittingly signed papers assuming personal responsibility for those
loans, as a result of which the bank has now frozen her bank accounts and
threatened to seize all her personal assets – her checking account, savings
account, CDs, IRAs…. And then it got
worse yet: Dino Disperbio, the owner of Smith Trucking (a company with no
trucks and no one named Smith in its history) has just contacted her to say
that Ed had borrowed another half million dollars (at a 50% interest rate, no
less!) from him and, because of other papers Virginia signed, she’s on the hook
for that too. And so, naturally,
Virginia turns to family – Ed’s brother, Frank – only to learn that Ed owed Frank
another $300,000 but that soft-hearted Frank, being family and all, is willing
to settle with Virginia by just taking her house. Could she be out by March?
It
doesn’t seem that Virginia’s plight could get any worse, right? Well, it does. She receives an anonymous note from a
blackmailer threatening to reveal thirteen embarrassing and scandalous things
about her late husband and others unless she gives him a million dollars within
a week. At her wit’s end, Virginia pours
out her heart to her friend, Tootie Vaughn (despite having been warned to say
nothing to anyone).
We
learn all of this and more from Virginia herself in what turns out to be something
of an hour long monologue interspersed with music, without ever really meeting
Ed or Bob or Dino or Frank or Tootie or Danny (Ed and Virginia’s attorney) or
Debbie (their daughter) or Debbie’s husband or children or Joy (Ed’s secretary)
or Virginia’s parents - all of whom are talked about, but none of whom actually
shows up. In fact, the only character other than Virginia herself to actually
appear in this musical, 13 Things About
Ed Carpolotti, now premiering at 59E59 Theaters, is the very accomplished pianist
(Paul Greenwood) who plays a double role as her musical accompanist and her
unconscious mind.
Virginia’s
problems and all the chicanery and mysterious goings-on ultimately are resolved
but I won’t tell you how for that would ruin all the fun. Suffice it to say that the original play by
Jeffrey Hatcher, on which this musical is based, is very cleverly constructed
and charmingly written and that, to the extent that the musical sticks to the
original play, it is fun to see. Penny
Fuller does a first rate job in a demanding role and Paul Greenwood brings a
light hearted charm to his part. But,
unfortunately, converting the play into a musical didn’t bring anything special
to the mix. The score is pleasant but
derivative and the lyrics sophomoric at worst and unmemorable at best. The show is definitely worth seeing and if
you go, I think you’ll enjoy it, but that will be despite the music, not
because of it.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Lincoln Center: Golden Boy
Golden Boy, one of Clifford
Odets’ least politically charged and most commercially successful plays,
originally opened at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway in 1937 where it ran for
more than 250 performances. The play had
a short-lived revival in 1952, served as the basis of a musical starring Sammy
Davis Jr., and was twice adapted for the movies, but otherwise was seldom
revived. Now it is receiving a
well-deserved long overdue revival by Lincoln Center at the Belasco Theatre
where it first premiered three-quarters of a century ago. As it turns out, this revival is terrific and
it was well worth having waited for.
The
plot revolves around young Joe Bonaparte (Seth Numrich), who is torn between
pursuing a career as a musician (he is a highly talented violinist) and a
potentially much more lucrative career as a prizefighter (which could result in
injury to his hands thereby limiting or even destroying his ability to play the
violin). Complicating matters, Joe and
Lorna Moon (Yvonne Strahovski) fall in love.
Lorna, a self-described “tramp from Newark” is the mistress of Tom Moody
(Danny Mastrogiorgio), Joe’s manager.
Tom is married and Lorna has been waiting patiently for him to divorce
his wife so that she might marry him; the entrance of Joe on the scene
complicates her emotional life enormously.
Numrich,
Strahovski, and Mastrogiorgio are wonderful in their respective roles but it is
Tony Shaloub in the role of Mr. Bonaparte, Joe’s father, who really steals the
show. Shaloub’s acting range is
extraordinary: best known for his memorable television roles (as Adrian Monk in
“Monk,” as Antonio Scarpacci in “Wings,” and as a cabdriver in “Taxi”), Shaloub,
an Arab-American, proves equally adept in his depiction of Joe’s tortured,
loving Italian father on stage in this, his Lincoln Center debut.
The
play is rife with sub-plots and secondary attractions, mostly of a
two-dimensional nature: as Odets has written them, none are particularly creative
but taken for what they are, they are mildly entertaining. Anthony Crivello plays the part of the gangster
Eddie Fuseli seeking to wrest control of Joe from Tom Moody in classic grade B tough
guy gangster movie fashion. Lucas Caleb Rooney plays the part of Frank Bonaparte,
Joe’s union organizing brother, in similar caricaturish fashion. And Jonathan Hadary brings a measure of comic
relief to the play as Mr. Carp, Mr. Bonaparte’s neighbor and friend.
This
is not a deep play and it breaks no new ground.
But given the limitations of the play itself, it is highly entertaining
and this production (including set design, acting and direction) is as good as it
gets.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Lincoln Center: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Sonia (Kristine Nielsen), Masha (Sigourney Weaver) and Vanya (David Hyde Pierce) in VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE |
Vanya
(David Hyde Pierce), Sonia (Kristine Nielsen), and Masha (Sigourney Weaver)
were named after characters in Chekhov’s plays by their now deceased parents
who had been college professors and lovers of community theatre in their prime. Vanya and Sonia devoted their lives to their
parents care, remaining in their ancestral home and foregoing any other meaningful
personal relationships, while Masha established herself as a successful actress
(although she was somewhat less successful on the marital front with five
failed marriages to her credit). Sonia
and Vanya are resentful toward Masha who, as they see it, left the entire
burden of caring for their parents to them, while she was gallivanting about on
the world’s stages and enjoying a glamorous life. True enough, perhaps, but to be fair to
Masha, it was she who provided all the money to maintain her parents’ and
siblings’ home and to support them all while she was away; absent her financial
support, who knows what might have come of them all. Now Masha has returned to visit her brother
and sister, with her latest boy toy, Spike (Billy Magnussen) in tow to let them
know that she intends to sell the house.
The
play that Christopher Durang has constructed around these premises, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,
now playing at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, is replete with heavy-handed
allusions to Chekhov’s work. Vanya’s and
Sonia’s ethereal next door neighbor Nina (Genevieve Angelson) might have just
wandered in from Chekhov’s The Seagull
and then takes to calling Vanya “Uncle Vanya.”
The siblings quibble over whether or not the ten or so cherry trees on
their property constitute a true “cherry orchard.” (And there is at least one allusion to Ibsen
as well: Sonia may not see herself as a “wild duck” but she does persist in referring
to herself as “a wild turkey.”) And yet,
according to the playwright, Vanya and
Sonia and Masha and Spike is not a parody of Chekhov at all; rather, as
Durang puts it “The play takes Chekhov characters and themes and puts them into
a blender.” And, Durang might have added
(though he didn’t), he threw a big dollop of comedic good humor into the
blender as well.
The
net result is a play that gets off to a slow start but then turns out to be
rollicking good fun. The first half of
the first act is a bit flat with the characters coming across more as two
dimensional caricatures than fully fleshed out individuals. But by the second half of the first act, and
especially in the second act, Durang hits his stride and at least some of the actors
are given the opportunity to turn in truly superlative performances. Which two of them – Nielsen and Hyde Pierce –
do with a vengeance.
Nielsen’s
impersonation of Maggie Smith playing the role of the Evil Queen in Snow White
is absolutely priceless and is one of the play’s high points. So too is Hyde Pierce’s Chaplinesque portrayal
of Doc, one of Snow White’s seven dwarves.
But the play’s finest moment occurs in the second act when Hyde Pierce
goes off on a rant about how much better things used to be back in the fifties,
when families gathered together in front of their black and white TV sets,
sharing the experiences of watching “I Love Lucy” or “The Adventures of Ozzie
and Harriet” or “Bishop Sheen” or “Howdy Doody.”
Nielsen
and Hyde Pierce really do steal the show although Magnussen and Angelson turn
in perfectly adequate performances as Spike and Nina, respectively. I was a bit disappointed in Weaver’s portrayal
of Masha which struck me as rather pedestrian.
But Shalita Grant, the sixth actor in the play, did a fine job as
Cassandra, Vanya’s and Sonia’s cleaning lady who is also a soothsayer and voodoo
practitioner.
In
sum, this is a good (albeit not great) play, providing a couple of hours of
cheerful entertainment. And while a
familiarity with Chekhov isn’t absolutely required to enjoy the play, such a
familiarity would, I think, enhance your experience.
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