Contemplating life down below along the Appalachian Trail, April 2018

                                       ICON Magazine THEATER MAY 2018

Catch-22. Curio Theatre Company presents the stage adaptation of Joseph Heller’s satirical WWII novel. Published in 1961, Heller’s (somewhat) overrated novel caused The New Yorker to remark: “[The novel] doesn’t even seem to be written, instead, it gives the impression of having been shouted onto paper.” Heller, who worked in military intelligence, never saw battle unlike Kurt Vonnegut, whose book Slaughterhouse Five remains the quintessential WWII classic. We can still look forward to seeing how Director  Claire Moyer spins Haller’s tale. 4740 Baltimore Ave. (215-921-8243) Until May 19, 2018.

Fun Home. The Arden showcases playwright Lisa Kron’s musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel memoir about the not- so- funny story of Bechdel’s closeted gay father who committed suicide in 1980 a few months before Alison came out as a lesbian. Fun Home was awarded a 2015 Tony for Best Musical; a supreme tribute to Bechdel’s writing which has always been noted for its wry humor and erudition. Bechdel’s comics used to be relegated to the back pages of gay newspapers but now she’s right up there with Ellen.  Until June 24, 2018

Tell Me On A Sunday. A beautiful young woman (Julia Udine) moves to Manhattan from the UK in search of romance and fame. She finds love in the city that never sleeps but the love she finds never lasts for long. Although she learns to sing the blues away (the music is by Andrew Lloyd Webber) that doesn’t keep more bad love experiences from heading her way. After multiple romantic shipwrecks her heart hardens and cynicism causes her to pick up a whip and become a Manhattan Dominatrix, but even this fails to satisfy her. Udine is captivating as The Girl and a good cabaret singer as well—it’s easy to envision Tell Me as the perfect cabaret dinner experience—although a few of Udine’s notes seemed overly strident and brassy (but that’s Broadway for you).  At the post show reception Julia told me that she’s enjoying staying with her parents in South Jersey during the run of the show at The Walnut. “They cook me a lot of spaghetti and meatballs,” she said. After Tell Me, she’s due to take the lead in a big Leonard Bernstein tribute in Saratoga, New York.  Producing Artistic Director Bernard Havard told me that the Walnut is planning an exciting expansion and to stay tuned. Till June 10, 2018.
  

Magdalene. Colleen Hughes of Tribe of Fools delivered a stellar performance as Mary Magdalene in a monologue that spans the centuries. This clever script created by Rachel Gluck, Brenna Geffers and Colleen Hughes was a review of the (often secondary) role of women from the time of Christ to the countercultural 1960s. Hughes, trained in New York’s Stella Adler Studio of Acting, is a natural born story teller. Her empathetic delivery was enough to make this reviewer forget the work’s theological sinkholes. It was fun to hear Magdalene talk about her time with the apostles while the group chugged wine and danced together in Jerusalem. This fast moving, compelling and intense performance at the Adrienne Theater was unfortunately not very well attended but Hughes, undaunted, performed as if she was on stage before hundreds at the Kimmel.          

Fly Eagles Fly This comedy about frenzied football fans will be a 2018 Fringe offering. Wise psychologists write that sports fans should not see their teams as extensions of themselves. As a writer for the Miami Times once wrote,” [Football] Players are only in the city because they got a job there, based on how well they can do a thing, and the zeros in a franchise's bank account.” At the Louis Bluver Theater at the Drake.  September 7-22, 2018

The Maids. February’s dismal weather caused me to miss Jean Genet’s classic tale of two sisters staged by the Ira Brind School of Theater Arts at the University of the Arts. The two night engagement came and went too quickly.  A larger city theater should think about staging a Genet play in 2019.

  ICON MAGAZINE: There are many ICONS on the vast cultural iconostasis, but this ICON is no more. 

                                         ICON MAGAZINE
                                          1992   -   2018
                                                 RIP

Les Miserables

When I headed to the Academy of Music to see the Victor Hugo-inspired Les Miserables I had high hopes that I’d walk out onto Broad Street three hours later with a smile on my face despite the fact that age has taught me that the French Revolution was anything but good.

   That “great” revolution, after all, caused 30 years of bloody warfare throughout Europe. And while it may be fun every summer to walk in stilts or impersonate a French baguette or even don drag to become a high wigged (and very blonde) Marie Antoinette and throw butterscotch Tastykakes to the thousands gathered around Eastern State Penitentiary, when all is said and done you’re still playing a child’s game far  removed from life.

   A “real” revolution, of course, would have all those July 14^th revelers running and screaming for their lives. But time heals all historic wounds so that even the worst violence in history when played out on the contemporary stage becomes as pain free as a cruise to the Caribbean. 

   Consider Christopher Hibbert’s history, “The French Revolution,” published in 2012.

Do you want to see the heart of an aristocrat?” asked one assassin, opening up a corpse tearing out the heart, squeezing some blood into a glass, drinking part, and offering the rest to those who would drink with him. ‘Drink this, if you want to save your father’s life,’ commanded another, handing a pot of ‘aristocrats’ blood’ to the daughter of a former Governor of the Invalides. She put it to her lips so that her father could be spared. Women were said to have drawn up benches to watch the murders in comfort and to have cheered and clapped as at a cock fight.

   While nobody drank blood from corpses on the Academy stage, there were two people sitting beside me holding little flasks of bourbon. Vivez la vie pleinement, as they say. When it came to gunshots and people dying, the show’s music anesthized the illeffects and eventually got me thinking that literally any tragic event in history when reconfigured as a musical, could become a kick ass stand up and applaud extravaganza.  

    Including, of course, a futuristic epic about Jim Jones and Jonestwon in which Peoples Temple devotees line up and dance like The Rockettes while awaiting their turn at the Kool Aid stand.  If nothing is above satire, as I think Swift once quipped, then what could pssoibly be ‘above’ a Broadway musical ? 

    Hugo published Les Miserables in 1832 and the book

 was derided by critics. But what do critics know when

 it comes to commercial success? The 2012 Hollywood musical

 starring Ann Hathaway was satirized as Les Insufferables

 and Les Painful. Gawker also panned the film for its “phony

 happy ending,” while film critic Anthony Lane destroyed

 the movie, saying: “I screamed a scream as time went by.”  

  The Academy’s Cameron Mackintosh production had breathtaking stage sets that appeared to be matted 3 dimensional cinemascope veils in multiple colors. The battle scenes rivaled Yul Brynner riding in his chariot in The Ten Commandments. Fantastic visuals, yes, but as for understanding a word of the musical, that’s another story.  The actor-singers might as well have been a Tower of Babel cacophony, human voices saying something, but what? Les Miz, with its onstage cast of dozens (and dozens) was a cornucopia of song masquerading as dialogue. Sadly, this Les Miz was yet another case of a Broadway musical obfuscating language.

  But then there was another irksome surprise. A ten year old soldier boy raises his middle finger during a ferocious, ugly battle in a defiant ‘screw you’ gesture and shouts something bombastic as his adult male compatriots fall over dead.  To my astonishment, the audience howled at the boy’s manly verve although I could only see it as a contrived ‘Stephen Spielberg’ moment. 

   Happily, Les Miz was saved by the brilliant second act which had a smaller number of characters onstage. Finally—and thank God--every uttered word sung or otherwise, flooded the Academy with absolute clarity.  

Thom Nickels