Everything Is Passable

Monday Night - ROLL at Off-Off Broadway's Manhattan Theater Source
Tuesday Night - SUICIDE/JOKE in the Fringe
Wednesday Night - WICKED on Broadway

Guess which one sucked the most?

I am reading a fascinating book right now:

Written thirty years after the fact by a PA on the original production of FOLLIES, it's a sad read because the Broadway depicted in its pages simply doesn't exist anymore. But even sadder because I'm not sure the creative collaboration described exists anymore either.

FOLLIES is Sondheim's show, obviously, but the final production of the show belongs as much to Hal Prince, Michael Bennett, Hal Hastings, and Jim Goldman as it does Sondheim. They are all equally responsible for the final creation. Why? Because they all trusted each other and they all took ownership of the show. No one was working to serve the other - they were all working to serve the show. The show! Egos - yes. But the show trumps all!

Every creative team is going to have its disagreements and its all-out fights - but when the show is the master rather than any one person - when the billing of the show and the credits aren't ahead of the creation of it - when no one's drawing lines in the sand, desperately protecting their territory (against what!?) - that's when greatness happens.

Of course, it also helps when the people involved are geniuses.

So where are all the geniuses these days? Well, I don't think there ever were a lot of geniuses to begin with, but world-shakers like Sondheim understood he needed collaborators, and you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks less of him because he didn't also write the books of his musicals or direct the original productions.

But Sondheim also had people behind him who believed in his talent and were willing to invest in it no matter the box office. Broadway theater and even Off-Broadway theater may just be too expensive to foster the growth of anything truly revolutionary these days. But more to the point, since shows are produced by corporations now instead of passionate individuals or groups of individuals - the product is necessarily a bland, corporate product rather than a piece riddled with passion and guts.

But no one's looking for genius anyway. Most of us would settle for brilliantly flawed. I just want a show where a character steps down stage and sings something half as smart and packed with honesty as:

The sun comes up
I think about you
The coffee cup
I think about you
I want you so
It's like I'm losing my mind

The morning ends
I think about you
I talk to friends
I think about you
And do they know?
It's like I'm losing my mind

All afternoon, doing every little chore
The thought of you stays bright
Sometimes I stand in the middle of the floor
Not going left
Not going right

I dim the lights
And think about you
Spend sleepless nights
To think about you
You said you loved me
Or were you just being kind?
Or am I losing my mind?

We Pride Ourselves on Consensus

I had the pleasure/semi-awkward experience last night of seeing ROLL, by Mac Rogers. It's the only new play I've directed that has had subsequent productions, and while there is a small, petty part of me that hopes these other productions will be awful or at least inferior, it's been much more exciting discovering that they are, in fact, excellent. I can only imagine how fulfilling it must be for Mac.

The first production of ROLL was part of a night of one-acts called STOP DROP & ROLL, produced back before terrorists changed the world. It was an innocent time of downtown, upstairs theater, and we did relatively excellent work in a relatively shitty space for our friends and some of their friends. The limited exposure was frustrating given the quality of the work going on there - and ultimately, I think that is what led to the dissolution of the "three-word-plays" partnership - we were doing too much work for the sole return of self-satisfaction.

ROLL is a tricky piece, mixing reality with flashback controlled by a trio of "mediators" whose characters Mac chose to leave mostly undefined (I say mostly because his script does give intriguing glimpses of personality). However, it's really these mediators who set the tone for any production of the play - so the decisions the director makes regarding these characters, why they're there, their intentions, etc. have a direct effect on every other choice in the show.

This is tricky because the show really belongs to Tim and Tasha, the husband and wife disputing ownership of their dog Josie. But since the mediators really give the audience access to Tim and Tasha, any directorial process of the play must be about "getting the walls right" before you can "furnish the room."

My production of ROLL was impacted by my desire to find common themes in the very different shows presented in the evening and to put at least a small focus on those themes. This probably altered the emphasis of my production to focus on the interactions between the mediator, A, and Tim more than was warranted. I don't feel this emphasis hurt the more important interactions between Tim and Tasha, but I may have been working to create moments at times that weren't necessarily there.

The only thing I really remember from the second production is the mediators themselves. I think the director was really interested in the artifice Mac had created more than the relationship he was exploring. (That being said, it was a really wonderful production.)

I found this third production to be Tasha's play (which is fascinating to me since the director, Jordana Davis, played Tasha in the original production - and even more fascinating (for different reasons) since the woman who played Tasha in this production clearly struggled at times with the English language). Both in the performances and in her staging, Jordana minimized the impact of the mediators and really let Tim and Tasha be front and center. The choices the actors made in portraying Tim and Tasha shifted the driving to Tasha, so Tim really did just "roll."

It was also an interesting balance using the mediators primarily for comic effect (in addition to their more pedestrian duties) while underplaying their roles. Tim and Tasha's more fully realized performances were set-off against this backdrop of utility. It was an effective choice, I think - and made me wonder if I spent too much time in the original production worried about integrating the mediators into the fabric of the play rather than simply leaving them in the periphery.

At any rate, Mac should be very proud. He's created an intricate, challenging, and very rewarding piece of theater. And if I ever direct another of his plays, I promise to deny I ever gave him that compliment so he'll stop arguing with me and do the rewrites I want him to do.

The Fiasco At the Belasco

DRACULA: THE MUSICAL
It's something special when you're given a reason to use the words "ennui" and "flying vampires" in the same sentence. In that regard (pull-quote ahead), DRACULA: THE MUSICAL is something special!

Ham-fistedly directed, ham-handedly acted, and ham-bonedly written, DRACULA is the kind of spectacular, nonsensical mess that would transcend its incompetence into must-see status if it weren't so fucking boring. Special effects should be, well, special, and when an entire show rides on the visual of actors "flying" on cables, best not to overuse that effect. Yet for some reason, Dracula (Tom Hewitt), or rather Stunt Dracula (Who Knows?), floats across the stage for no reason during set changes. Set changes!!

Oh, and the poor actresses who play the paper-thin roles of Lucy and Mina (Kelli O'Hara and Melissa Ericco) - never has there been nudity more unnecessary and sad. And why would this all-male creative team force their two female leads to bare it all? Well, something has to distract the audience from the gasping dearth of anything truly worthwhile.

Frank Wildhorn seems less interested in winning a Tony than fully embodying the word "generic." Every song in the show blends seamlessly into the rest, creating the effect of one long bad song rather than the twenty or so bad songs the audience actually has to bear. And the lyrics, from co-book writers Don Black and Christopher Hampton, border on self-parody. Awkward metaphors have never made anyone seem sinister.

By early in Act II when the still-living cast members are crouching cartoonishly behind a coffin waiting for the now undead Lucy to reenter her crypt, the audience's bewildered stares shift to stifled giggles and finally to full-out belly laughs as Bart Shatto, in the role of Quincey Morris, the walking Texan stereotype masquerading as a character, drawls lines like, "Why I'll tell ya, killin' this vampire is gonna be harder 'n shootin' fish in a barrel."

Des McAnuff, who staged the complicated The Who's Tommy brilliantly, has crammed the small Belasco stage with so many ugly, plastic set-pieces (mostly a random and dull assortment of doors that spring out of the stage floor), that the too-few cast members seem at times either annoyed or in fear for their lives as they dodge the constantly shifting "suggested environments." And while McAnuff's decision to put chorus girls in fake moustaches and beards to play craggly seamen is laughable, his decision to focus on cheap parlor tricks rather than any sense of character development or emotional connection is inexcusable.

Ultimately, Bram Stoker's Dracula is a story of seduction and desecration, a vivid exploration of the titillation and consequences of darkness. Sadly, DRACULA: THE MUSICAL is only the story of some actors flying around in a theater - although there are plenty of tits and darkness.

Here's hoping critics and audiences alike nail this bloodless fiasco for the cynical stunt show it really is, and drive it straight back to the tour from whence it came.