Jersey Boys, National Theater

Jersey Boys at the National Theater

As stated in Wikipedia, Jersey Boys is a documentary-style musical based on the lives of one of the most successful 1960s rock 'n roll groups, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The group sold more than 175 million albums. The musical opened on Broadway on November 6, 2005 at the August Wilson Theatre.

(Washington Post photo by Joan Marcus. From left, Steve Gouveia, Joseph Leo Bwarie, Josh Franklin and Matt Bailey in the touring production.)

As mentioned in the Washington Post review, this show is great entertainment. It was a great show. The audience loved it, and so did I. Most of all, the audience (and I) loved the singing of the old songs; the singers were truly excellent, singing the songs as they were sung by the original singers. The story of the group was also interesting, but the songs were what the audience wanted to hear.

A complete list of the songs in the performance is given in the Wikipedia article. The audience was particularly excited to hear the top hits of the group, beginning with their first huge hit, "Sherry", then "Walk Like a Man" and later, "My Eyes Adored You" and "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You". Many in the audience were moved to tears on hearing the songs sung so well.

The theater was filled to capacity, and when I entered the theater, I noticed that the audience was different from a "normal" Washington, DC, audience. Washington is a white-collar town, and when Washingtonians go out to the theater, men wear white shirts and ties, almost exclusively, and women wear dressy clothes. In this audience, very few men wore ties; I guessed not more than a dozen ties in the entire audience, and a similar number of white shirts. Instead, men wore open-neck colored shirts and sport jackets. I had the very strong feeling that most of the people in the audience were from out of town. Then during the performance, I began to understand the audience.

At one point in the show, one of the cast members said, "We weren't a social movement like the Beatles." He explained that their fans were blue-collar workers: "They were the factory workers, the truck drivers, the pretty girls with circles under their eyes behind the counters at the diner." The audience reflected that fan base -- blue-collar workers, now retired. It was wonderful, just as the show was wonderful. I left the theater feeling uplifted and happy, the way I love to feel, and the way all audience members want to feel after seeing a show. It was entertaining; it was joyful; it was wonderful.

My Fair Lady, Kennedy Center

My Fair Lady, Kennedy Center

Written by Lerner and Loewe, and first produced on Broadway in 1956, My Fair Lady is one of the greatest musicals of all time, and my favorite musical of all time. Direct from its 50th Anniversary London engagement, this production from the National Theatre of Great Britain was so outstanding that one could not imagine the original production being better.

British theater actors Christopher Cazenove as Professor Henry Higgins and Lisa O'Hare as Eliza Doolittle, surely were as wonderful as Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. The other principal actors were also outstanding: Walter Charles as Colonel Hugh Pickering, Alma Cuervo as Mrs. Pearce, Tim Jerome as Alfred P. Doolittle, Sally Ann Howes as Mrs. Higgins, and Justin Bohon as Freddy Eynsford-Hill. I have seen the movie numerous times, and I felt that this cast was as good as the movie cast.

I have seen more than 100 Broadway shows, including many musicals, and this show was the best show I have ever seen. It was absolutely incredible.

As a footnote, it is interesting that George Bernard Shaw wrote this play, Pygmalian, in 1913, and he wrote the part of Elisa for Mrs. Patrick Campbell, with whom he had a romantic correspondence for more than 40 years.

Carnival!

Carnival! at the Kennedy Center, Saturday March 3, 2007

Carnival! the musical first appeared on Broadway in 1961; the musical was based on the 1953 movie, "Lili", starring Leslie Caron. The movie was based on a short story that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1950, called "The Man Who Hated People". The story is about a young woman (mid to late teens) whose parents had died, and she went to find a good friend of her father's who worked in a carnival and who would take care of her. Unfortunately, he too had died just a month before she arrived. Having no place to go, she stayed with the carnival.

She was an innocent girl, who did not understand when the star of the show, the magician -- tried to take advantage of her. To survive, she began to work in the carnival's puppet show. She loved the puppets, and because of her innocent interaction with them, the puppet show became the greatest attraction at the carnival. The puppeteer was a man who had been a dancer, but who had an injury that had cut his career short. He had become very angry and mean -- the "man who hated everyone". So the show was about a conniving man and a very angry, mean man pitted against this innocent girl. This conflict went on and on, and it was very disturbing to me. In the end, like the Beauty and the Beast, through her love and kindness, she was able to tame the mean man and make him nice and loving like her, but by then, I didn't even want that. I just wanted her to be rid of these people, and I wanted to be rid of the show.

The show disturbed me. I did not like it at all. I am accustomed to seeing great shows, so when I see one that is not good, it seems even worse than it probably is in reality. But this one disturbed me. I was not amused by this particular conflict. I am certainly not opposed to elusive, unavailable men, but I don't like mean people, and I don't like older men who take advantage of young girls.

At a more basic level, this story is ancient -- the story of the attraction of "bad boys" to women. The eternal temptation, bad boys have tempted women in Virgil's Dido, Shakespeare's Helena, Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennett, Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett O'Hara, The Beauty and The Beast. Women always seem to fall for bad boys. Bad boys are often not handsome, but they are masculine and elusive and unavailable, the perfect ingredients for sexual attraction. Although bad boys are tamed in stories, in real life they seldom are. In real life, women must decide whether they want a man who stimulates them sexually, or a "good man" who will be a good husband and partner. Seldom will a woman find one who is both. Often nowadays, women choose both a good man for a husband, and a "bad boy" as a lover. The perfect solution to the eternal problem!

Playbill story.

Little Women, the Broadway Musical

As the review in the Washington Post said, Little Women is the "most powerful girly book this country's ever produced." It is hard to find a woman who has not read the book, and it is equally hard to find a man who has. The book has been in print continuously since 1868, and never falls from the Top 10 list of all-time bestsellers. There have been two major film versions of the book, starring Katharine Hepburn in 1933 and June Allyson in 1949, and another version in 1994, starring Winona Ryder. And last season saw the opening of the very successful Broadway musical, starring Maureen McGovern.

As I expected, The Kennedy Center was filled with women and teenage girls who had read the book, or little girls who were taken to see the show by their mothers who had read the book. As for me, although I had never read the book, I found the show enjoyable to an extent. I was not put off by the very female perspective of the story, and I enjoy musicals very much. However, certain technical aspects of the production were less than optimal. The biggest problem was that the orchestra completely overwhelmed the voices of the singers. For a theater like the Kennedy Center, that should not have happened. The words were almost impossible to hear. Maureen McGovern was great, and some of her words were understandable. However, the actor who played Jo did not have a strong voice, and she was completely overwhelmed by the orchestra. It was very unfortunate. All in all, however, the women had a wonderful time at the theater, remembering the story and reliving the time that they read the book for the first time.

Mame

On Saturday evening, June 10, I went to the Kennedy Center
to see the show, Mame, and it was really wonderful. It is odd that I have seen hundreds of Broadway shows, but never before had I seen Mame. It is such a happy show, and the music is really wonderful. I love going to the Kennedy Center, and on a Summer evening, it is even better than usual. They open up all the doors in the Great Hall and let everyone go out on the terrace overlooking the Potomac River. It is really beautiful. Everyone is happy and enjoying themselves. And then to see a really upbeat, happy show is really great. I love seeing musicals, and I love seeing happy shows. I am not one who usually likes to go to a Broadway show to see drama. Tennessee Williams is not a happy experience for me. I like musicals, and Mame is one of the all-time greats. The non-musical "Auntie Mame" was first performed on Broadway in 1958, starring Rosalind Russell, and the musical Mame was first performed in 1966, starring Angela Lansbury (see History of Auntie Mame).

It is odd that the women who have played Mame have not been strong singers, and Christine Baranski, who stars in this version, is not a strong singer. She was fine in the performance; she fit the role of the doting aunt. But I would have enjoyed it more if she had been a stronger singer. And like so many shows, if the show had stopped at intermission, it would have been better. It is odd that so many shows are great before intermission, but weak in the second act, and this show was no exception. Still, it was a wonderful show that left everyone singing and skipping out of the theater.

Wicked

Wicked Kennedy Center

The link to the Washington Post review is on the site, and it is well worth reading.

As always, I judge shows and movies by the way they make me feel. If I pay money to be entertained, I like to feel good afterward, and this show did not let me down. I thought the show was very good -- not exceptional, but very good. It is a musical, of course, and it is really for children, but it was very good. Of course, the staging at the Kennedy Center is always overwhelming. The sets are incredible, and they add a lot to the feeling of the performance. This show was about a little girl who was different from the other little girls, so she was scorned and told she was a witch. The show is all about her trials and tribulations as she grew up different from the other little girls. Not pretty like them. But with a very loving heart, who wanted to help animals and people who needed help. The show was a contrast between her and the pretty girl who had all the friends and the wonderful boyfriend, just because she was pretty. But the ugly girl befriended the pretty girl, despite the mean things the pretty girl did, and in the end, the handsome boyfriend went with the ugly girl with the wonderful heart, rather than the pretty girl who was selfish. So it ended well. The place was filled with children, especially little girls, and they loved it. The music was good, but not memorable. Stephanie Block, who plays Elphaba, the "witch", had a wonderful voice; she was incredible. All in all, a very good performance of a children's story.

Hairspray

Last night, I went to the Kennedy Center to see "Hairspray". The show was a movie in 1988, but was produced on Broadway in 2002. If you Google John Waters, you will get about 60,000 hits, you can get a professional description of "Hairspray". It is particularly interesting to see the movie stars who were in the original movie. I will give you my strictly amateur version. John Waters grew up in Baltimore, and like most writers, he wrote about his own observations in life. In this show, he created caricatures of people he saw in real life in Baltimore in the 1950s. Television stations in many East Coast cities during the late 50s and early 60s had afternoon shows for teenagers in which teens danced to popular rock music, and this show was about the teen dance show in Baltimore, or more precisely, about the integration of the show by both unattractive teens and Blacks. Waters wrote characters who were caricatures of people. The lead in the show was a "chunky" girl who wanted to be a dancer on the show, but was not "beautiful" enough to be on TV. Her mother was an obese woman, and her dad was was a very thin man who owned a souvenier stand. Her best friend was a pretty dull girl, whose mother was even less brilliant. The pretty girl on the TV show was the daughter of the show's producer, and a spoiled brat. The tension of the show was in the struggle of the plump girl to get on the show. An added struggle was also introduced when she was sent to detention at school and there, learned new dance steps from Black kids who were also in detention. In the end, all worked out happily. The music of the show was good, upbeat, but not memorable. An added bonus in the show last night was that the normal lead in the show was not able to perform and was replaced by her understudy, who was brilliant -- Katrina Rose Dideriksen. When she came out for her bow at the end of the show, she got a standing ovation, and she cried at that. It was quite touching. A very good show. Here is the link:
http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showEvent&event=TFTSH#details