Archives for October 2016

This show has always been polarizing. On the one hand, many of Webber’s usual detractors often harbor a secret soft spot for this early-career work simply because, in contrast to most of his other shows, it never takes itself remotely seriously for a moment. But the fact remains that the show is deliberately inane, and many people will see that inanity as a flaw rather than a feature or even fail to comprehend that it was done on purpose.

Joseph is, in reality, a work of intentional camp, it and The Rocky Horror Show being perhaps the only wholly successful incarnations of that style in musical theater. But while Rocky Horror represented an deliberately manufactured version of the trashy, explicit, sexploitation kind of camp, Joseph is going for the giddy innocence found only in the most gloriously goofy children’s stories. It does so quite successfully, actually, with endlessly catchy, upbeat melodies, a thick layer of cheesiness in both music and lyrics, and gloriously inappropriate bits of randomness sprinkled throughout, as when, just at the tensest moment in the story as Benjamin is about to be arrested, the entire cast suddenly breaks into an exuberant calypso number.

The show’s bizarre use of pastiche styles really adds to the overall atmosphere of camp, from the hilariously godawful hillbilly number “There’s One More Angel in Heaven”, to the rueful French-inspired Drinking Song “Those Canaan Days”, to “Song of the King (Seven Fat Cows)”, the Pharoah’s showstopper in the style of Elvis. (Yes, they made Pharoah an Elvis impersonator. Those of us who know the show are often so familiar with it that we tend to forget how downright weird it really is.)

Only twice in the show does Webber abandon his lighthearted silliness for the kind of sweeping dramatic ballads he’s more generally known for…on the soaring anthem that bookends the show, “Any Dream Will Do”, and the melodramatic lamentation “Close Every Door”. These mostly exist to give the actor playing Joseph center stage for a while, since otherwise the score is largely dominated by its nameless female narrator, making it more pop oratorio than pop opera.

Of course, as actually told in the Bible, the story of Joseph was a harsh and cynical one even by Genesis standards and not exactly suitable for children, and Joseph was an unscrupulous and ruthlessly pragmatic protagonist even by the usual standards of Old Testament heroes. The musical completely leaves out the story’s real ending, where Joseph is basically responsible for the enslavement of the Jewish people that led to the whole Book of Exodus thing, but given that the show is essentially intended as a parody, one can allow it some leeway in terms of fidelity.

The show is, in its own way, actually just as irreverent towards its source material as Jesus Christ Superstar, something that seems to escape the notice of the otherwise easily offended religious right, some of whom have been claiming it as a positive alternative to Superstar since that show’s release in the early 70s. This might be partly because, while Superstar mocks religion in order to make a serious point, Joseph does it just because it thought it would be funny.

The show makes no sense at all, consists more than half of narration rather than portrayal, and never offers the remotest glimmer of emotional depth, but it remains fantastically entertaining as a viewing or listening experience. Moreover, the fact that it’s already supposed to be ‘bad’ in some sense means that it’s almost impossible to screw up, so not only will you see High School and even Middle School productions of this, but they’ll actually be good productions. So, with plenty of productions being put on everywhere you look, and more than half-a-dozen cast albums to choose from, it’s both ridiculously easy and well worthwhile to give this deceptively weird little show a listen.

This was the third major effort by the team of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, the librettist and composer who had given us such classics as Les Miserables and Miss Saigon back in their genre’s heyday. But while it fared little better than Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s shows at the time, it was actually a much more worthy and successful piece than any of Webber’s late-career efforts prior to his 2015 comeback. Indeed, it seems likely that the ‘Pop Opera’ genre falling temporarily out of fashion contributed to this show’s failure more than the other way around, since there’s really no other obvious reason for the lukewarm reception it received on both sides of the Atlantic.

The version of this show that toured the U.S. and almost came to Broadway was actually inferior to the original version seen in London in the mid-Nineties, which was arguably a better show than Miss Saigon. The main difference was that the English-language lyrics to the piece had been rewritten from start to finish, and whereas the original lyrics were about on a level with those of Les Miserables, the new ones tended to be fairly uninteresting cliches. Granted, “The Deluge” is a huge improvement on the stupid comedy number “Where’s the Child?”, whose melody it shares, and “Who?” is more interesting than “Me”, the original solo for village fool Benoit, but other than that, the original lyrics were vastly superior.

However, as disappointing as these unnecessary changes were, the second draft still retains two great strengths—the strong story, which is based largely on the 1982 film The Return of Martin Guerre and which actually gains in tension in the second draft, and a largely glorious score. The actual retelling of the Martin Guerre story may have little to do with its historical basis, but the overall ambiance and cultural mindset of the period is captured meticulously and with great regard for accuracy. The picture of a desperate, drought-stricken town turning to religious hatred and prejudice as a outlet for their fear and desperation is vividly captured, and the complex triangle of characters caught at the center of it are portrayed with great ambivalence and emotional nuance. Unlike in Les Miserables, the guiding hand of Providence does not seem particularly discernible to either the characters or the audience (one song is titled, “When Will Someone Hear?”), and the ending, in contrast to the inspiration uplift at the end of Les Mis or the tragic but triumphant sacrifice at the climax of Miss Saigon, is barely short of despairing, especially in the British version.

The music for this show is vintage Schonberg, lyrical and ravishing, with his usual blend of Pop-Rock and Classical influences and the emotional weight that has become his trademark. Highlights include the lilting “Louison”, the first-act finale “All That I Know”/”The Day Has Come”, the tender “Someone”/”All That I Love”, the fascinating choral number “The Imposters”, and the melody that forms both the title-song and “Tell Me To Go”/”Don’t” (the dual song titles are a result of the lyrical rewrites, which obviously resulted in many of the songs having new titles in the second version). The new version also adds an entirely new opening number, “Live With Somebody You Love”, which is beyond ravishing.

I understand why the American version of the show is considered inferior to the earlier version…in addition to the lower quality of the lyrics, it tended to place more emphasis on the central triangle, whereas the British version was as much about the village as a whole as it was about the supposed main characters…but in spite of all that, this is still an excellent show in both versions. Perhaps it just seemed a little too similar to the team’s earlier smash hits (it does deal with their favorite themes…religion and social unrest…and while far from a carbon copy, it does echo several individual plot elements from Les Miserables and Miss Saigon). Still, it deserved a far better reception in both countries than it received, and certainly did not deserve to be treated as a signpost of the supposed ‘decline and fall’ of the ‘Pop Opera’ genre (which obviously failed to happen, but was treated as an article of faith among theater snobs throughout the late 90s and 2000s). In any case, for a glimpse of what real declining quality looks like, one need only look as far as this team’s next show, the disastrous The Pirate Queen.

This is, quite simply, a beautiful show. To start with, it’s a beautiful story, gentle, tender and intimate, in the tradition of Light In the Piazza and A Man Of No Importance. It’s also a very unique kind of love story rarely seen on Broadway, or anywhere else for that matter. Based on a simple, bare-bones Indie film from 2007, it relates a beautiful, low-key story of love and art between two singer-songwriters.

The script is superb, with the relationship between the leads (who, in the interests of making the story more universal, are never given names) written with impressively conscientious naturalism, with little openly expressed…and indeed, they part without ever acknowledging that there was anything between them. The characters are beautifully drawn, he a charming, brooding slacker who’s lost his sense of direction and she a solemn, Gibraltar-like visionary who refuses to give up on him.

The ending is certainly palpably bittersweet, but it’s not so much a story of love lost as it is a story of love never quite found. Admittedly, the two leads come closer to acknowledging the odd connection between them here than they do in the original film, but they still never quite speak the words.

It’s also a beautiful production. The stylized Irish-flavored choreography is exhilarating, and the show makes a much more natural-feeling use of the technique where the cast plays its own instruments than John Doyle’s productions ever did.

But above all else, this is an unbelievably beautiful score, the most beautiful heard on Broadway since Spring Awakening, five years earlier. The songs contain most of the show’s emotional content, since all the unspoken attraction, affection and yearning between the show’s main characters is expressed almost entirely through the songs they write together.

Written by the film’s lead actors, who in fact had a very similar relationship in real life, these songs constituted the finest original score for a musical film in the entire length and breadth of the decade. Indeed, despite the film’s relative obscurity and lack of fanfare, the film’s most memorable song, “Falling Slowly”, managed to win a well-deserved Oscar for Best Song. And while this score will perhaps always sound best when sung by its original singer-songwriters, Broadway leads Steve Kazee and Christin Milioti did an impressive job of bringing them to life onstage.

The film would eventually receive the vindication it deserved when its stage adaptation became a Broadway smash hit and the Tony winner for 2012. Given the increasing trends toward raucous comedy and splashy razzle-dazzle productions on Broadway, it seems odd, even bizarre, that the show to cause one of the biggest sensations in years was an intimate, bittersweet, atmospheric story of two ordinary people in what may or may not be love, but I don’t think anybody is complaining.

Probably the classiest Jukebox Musical of the current century (so much that many will no doubt be enraged that I called it one), this show might be the first since the original production of Pal Joey to get raves and pans not only at the same time, but within the same reviews.

It’s a bio-musical based on the lives of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, featuring Michael Cerveris (as Weill) and Donna Murphy (as Lenya) performing a selection of Weill’s songs, one that does not overindulge in the obvious and includes several seldom-heard gems. Cerveris provides his usual molten-silver vocal quality and gives a fine, incisive acting performance that manages to capture Kurt Weill’s reported real-life personality quite accurately.

Donna Murphy brings all her experience and talent to the monumental challenge of playing one of theater’s greatest and most unique leading ladies, and does an uncanny impression of Lenya’s style while doing a more than superb job on every song she was given. The show also featured direction by the legendary Harold Prince, who gave it an authentically Brechtian performing style that perfectly fits the material.

Unfortunately, all this is rather spoiled by the show’s utterly inept libretto, which plays like a trite Hollywood composer bio from the Forties, and does not remotely match the style of the direction. The dialogue is irritatingly cutesy (e.g. ‘You are loonybirds!’), and the songs, fine as they are in themselves, are as awkwardly dropped into the script as in the most inept jukebox musicals you’ve ever seen—rarely do they have anything to do with the dramatic situation beyond their title. For example, the blatantly sleazy “Wouldn’t You Like to be on Broadway?” from Street Scene is utterly out of place in the scene where Weill and Lenya decide to move to America, and the rapturous love song “That’s Him” from One Touch of Venus makes no sense when Weill sings it about his wife’s latest lover.

That said, there’s a reason the critical consensus on this show basically boiled down to “This is terrible, but you can’t afford to miss it”. However dire the space between the musical numbers may have been, and however incongruous the songs were with their dramatic function, the show still featured mind-blowing performances of brilliant songs (many of which you were unlikely to hear anywhere else) from two of Broadway’s most gifted performers under the coaching of the greatest Musical Theater director of our lifetimes. Yes, the book is an embarrassment, but there is no book I can think of bad enough to make this not worth seeing…I’d willingly sit through the books of Dracula or Lestat if the musical portions were this good. And the cast album, which mostly minimalizes the show’s problems anyway, should be required listening for every Broadway fan.