Thoughts on Two Nights in the Theatre

Last week I saw an invited dress rehearsal for Nice Work If You Can Get It, a “new” musical now in previews at the Imperial Theatre.  I wasn’t going to write anything about it, because what I saw was a dress rehearsal.  Then I discovered that people who hadn’t seen even the rehearsal were bad-mouthing the play.  Apparently some fool had posted a little video of a number in rehearsal and the grumpy people hadn’t liked what they’d seen.  Whoever decided to post a rehearsal video before the show opened should be fired for stupidity.

Happily, since the first previews, more accurate descriptions of the play have appeared online.  What I have to say about the dress rehearsal was that Nice Work If You Can Get It is…well... s’wonderful, s’marvelous, hilarious, ridiculous. If you stop laughing long enough to think, you can say, “This is a black-&-white1930s movie musical and just as absurd, except it’s live and in color.” Even thinking that much is more than you’d have time for.  There was one point I was laughing so hard that my friend thought I was going to have a fit.  Speaking of fits, the theatre seats are as tightly crammed together as passengers on a Tokyo subway.  We were all so cramped that I couldn’t reach the floor to roll on it laughing. 

The dancers are brilliant doing terrific, exhilarating numbers, the choreography is gorgeous. Settings are funny, practical, imaginative.  The costuming is sublime. Orchestrations and orchestra are perfect.  And it’s all Gershwin, for goodness’ sake.  

The bad news:  It ran a bit long (close to three hours with a 15 minute intermission), but it’ll tighten up as the preview weeks teach the marvelous director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall what’s slowing it down.  I, of course, have my opinions on what must be cut, but I’ll wait to see what the professional does.  What I saw, after all, was still a rehearsal, the company’s first in front of an audience. 

I look forward to seeing the play again in 3-4 weeks, and see what changes have been wrought.  What I’ll never understand about the naysayers is how anyone could be anything other than deliriously happy during three hours of Gershwin.  S’madness.

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Last night Horvendile and I saw Simon Callow in a new piece by Jonathan Bates called Being Shakespeare.  It was a very enjoyable evening in which Simon Callow told tales of Shakespeare’s life structured on Shakespeare’s own Seven Ages of Man. The scene appeared spare and yet it was very well thought out and decorated.  All elements of the design were marvelous, from the lighting by Bruno Poet, the scenic design and use of the space (design and direction by Tom Cairns), music and sound by Ben & Max Ringham were terrific, and then there were the trees.  It was a credit I’d noticed in the program before the play began, “Trees by Green Mile Trees,” which confused me.  But those trees deserve the notice:  some frightening and foreboding, some simple and comforting. 

I enjoyed Callow (although he sometimes swallowed the end of his words, and at others spoke so quickly in obscure accents that I’d no idea what he said, unless I already knew the particular bit of Shakespeare), the pacing was quite good, and there was enough actual Shakespeare to please.  Thing is, I don’t believe I could call Being Shakespeare a play.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a highly theatrical and invigorating hour and three quarters, it has a beginning: birth; and an end:  death.  Yet it was more like a very entertaining lecture than a play.  Jonathan Bates is an erudite fellow, a Shakespeare scholar, and quite interesting – I look forward to reading his prose.  But I’m afraid he’s not a playwright.  Nonetheless, if you’re in the mood for some history mixed with your Shakespeare, Being Shakespeare is playing at the BAM Harvey this and next weekend.

A New York Saturday

Had a fine time yesterday at the New School Arts Festival presentation of “A Checkroom Romance.” It’s a musical with cartooning -- that is Mark Mulcahy’s music with libretto and drawings by Ben Katchor.

The cartoons telling the story were projected onto a screen and carefully timed to the lyrics sung by the wonderful musicians – Mark Mulcahy singing the most characters, the composer’s prerogative; Flora Reed singing the checkroom girl, Lena Basilicia, extremely well along with other characters; keyboards player Ken Maiuri also plays percussion and sings a few characters; and hidden from my view, Dave Trenholm was busy playing the sax, clarinet, and flute, in addition to guitar, so that when playing any of first three, he clearly wasn’t singing. But he did sing on occasion. These people were tight, if not perfect, imaginative, and very funny. As is the off-the-wall story by Katchor.

In this mad story, the main character, Marcus Rule, has a checkroom fetish. He toured the capitals of Europe to visit great checkrooms. He fantasizes about checkrooms. He evicts his young daughter from her bedroom in their New York apartment so it can be converted to a checkroom. Really. The subplots with the checkroom girl and a scam artist addicted to salted peanuts is mad as well, and they come together to create chaos. It’s absurd, it’s a blast. But it’s too funny to be noir.

Now, many a checkroom girl could be found in noir films. They had pouty lips and were part of the story’s mystery – or they were sweet innocents like “Mildred Atkinson” in the great Nicholas Ray film, “In A Lonely Place,” who checked the ubiquitous gentlemen’s hats and explained the story of a bestseller to struggling screenwriter Humphrey Bogart. Lena Basilicia, the checkroom girl in “A Checkroom Romance,” however, is no femme fatale, so I don’t know why this musical was in a so-called “noir” program.

But no matter. I had fun, the rest of the audience had fun, and, in this crazy city that drags the money out of our pockets from the moment we awaken, these two hours of laughing to music were free. Yes, free. In the New School Arts Festival this week, there are movies, readings, and who knows what, all free, listed and described here: www.newschool.edu/events/noir.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, looking for more free fun.