Things I Learned At The Tonys...As noted a couple days ago, I had the enormous pleasure of taking in the
American Theatre Wing's 62nd Annual
Tony Awards hosted by
Whoopi Goldberg on Sunday evening. And may I just state for the record that I thought Whoopi made an excellent host.
I learned so much, not only about all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into this production, but also just how much
more fun actually being there can be. It's not just seeing the nominees and presenters in person, but the chance to see those amazing performances live one more time. It's also the nonstop buzz you feel from the moment you step onto the red carpet right up until you receive your Tony
swag bag upon departure from the Gala.
But there are other things I learned along the way, either from personal experience or overheard from others...
...Tonys weigh more than I thought they would ... Don't bother asking Harry Potter-cum-Broadway star
Daniel Radcliffe for an autograph ... It's perfectly fine to congratulate
S. Epatha Merkerson on her Tony nod (she was beaming as she escorted her mother around), just please
don't even think about approaching her in the ladies' room (and please don't approach me in the men's room, either) ...
John Waters was really
just kidding last year when he suggested he was working on a script called "Last Stall To The Left" about
Senator Larry Craig ... The restrooms
are "the great equalizers" at the Tonys (as I learned from my new friends Daniel and Donna from Lexington, Kentucky)...
...Not only does
Gypsy director
Arthur Laurents know a thing or two about pacing a show, he's pretty fast on his feet for a man of 90 years ...The orchestra is nowhere to be seen during the Tonys, prompting the justifiable wrath of
Patti LuPone during the dress rehearsals when she could not hear the music as she tried singing "Everything's Coming Up Roses" ... Speaking of dress rehearsals, only a few of the presenters were no-shows, including
Alec Baldwin,
Harry Connick, Jr.,
Laurence Fishburne and
Marisa Tomei ... Could be that last star's no-show that prompted
Lily Tomlin to mimic her actual appearance ... The morning rehearsals were just a tad too early for
Stew, who made his feelings known as the
Passing Strange troupe concluded rehearsing "Keys"...
...The ever gracious
David Pittu has written a show he's getting ready to premiere at the Atlantic ... across the Atlantic,
August: Osage County will make its West End debut this fall ... English actor
Mark Rylance lived in my hometown of
Mequon - Thiensville, Wisconsin during his formative years (since we're about the same age, I can't help but wonder if we ever met way back when) ... speaking of formative years,
Keith Carradine is
very proud of his progeny
Martha Plimpton (he served as her Tony Awards escort, appropriate given it was Father's Day)...
...The technical Tonys were skillfully hosted by the witty, dynamic duo of
Julie White and
Michael Cerveris ... even Tony winning stars like White can get excited about the chance to see other stars like Connick ... thanks to Cerveris, I finally learned how to properly pronounce
Les Liaisons Dangereuses ...
Laura Linney was gracious when at least one person told her they thought she was terrific in that play they can't pronounce ... "
Project Runway" winner
Christian Siriano's name was on the lips of countless young fans who were thrilled to meet him, while big stars like
Glenn Close walked right on by unbothered...
...Awards do occasionally get bent, just ask
Catherine Zuber ... As this year's winner for Best Costume Design for a Musical, Zuber was overheard telling someone complimenting her on her apparel choices (or lack thereof) for
Matthew Morrison, "I'm no dummy" ... In person,
In The Heights'
Olga Merediz looks to be about half the age of Abuela Claudia, the role for which she earned her Tony nod for Best Featured Actress in a Musical ... Speaking of
In The Heights, creator and lead actor
Lin-Manuel Miranda looks substantially younger without his trademark ivy style cap, and he was practically floating through the Gala crowd while on Cloud 9 all evening.
Here's toasting all the nominees and winners. I'd like to thank them for a truly spectacular year on Broadway. It's one that I'll never forget.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Related Stories:Tony Awards: Win Place Show (June 16, 2008)
Tony Time (June 15, 2008)
Strange: Passing In The Heights For Best Musical? (June 13, 2008)
SOB's 2008 Tony Picks - Who Will Win (June 10, 2008)
SOB's 2008 Tony Picks - Part III (June 6, 2008)
SOB's 2008 Tony Picks - Part II (June 5, 2008)
SOB's 2008 Tony Picks - Part I (June 4, 2008)
And The Tony Nominees Go To... (May 12, 2008)
Labels: August Osage County, Catherine Zuber, Daniel Radcliffe, David Pittu, John Waters, Laura Linney, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mark Rylance, Martha Plimpton, Patti LuPone, S. Epatha Merkerson, Stew, Tony Awards
Did Critics Deem Little Sheba Worthy Of Come Back?Last evening, the very first revival of
William Inge's 1950s play
Come Back, Little Sheba -- opened at the
Manhattan Theatre Club's
Biltmore Theatre on Broadway. Directed by
Michael Pressman, the revival stars
S. Epatha Merkerson,
Kevin Anderson and
Zoe Kazan.
In a confounding display of deeply felt assessments that were scattered all across the board, critics' reviews ranged from high praise to major pans. You almost wonder if everyone saw the same show.
Raving that Merkerson offers a performance "that stops the heart,"
The New York Times'
Ben Brantley lauds: "Ms. Merkerson allows a kind of intimate access traditionally afforded by cinematic close-ups, when the camera finds shades of meaning in impassive faces. She rarely signals what Lola’s feeling; she just seems to feel, and we get it, instantly and acutely. Such emotional sincerity is the hallmark of this revival from the Manhattan Theater Club, directed with gentle compassion by Michael Pressman and featuring first-rate performances from Kevin Anderson and Zoe Kazan....But the performances here are so convincingly present tense that you come to accept scene-shaping contrivances -- those too conveniently timed entrances, exits and phone calls -- as if life were really that structured....Like Ms. Merkerson’s anchoring performance, this production resounds precisely because it keeps its voice down."
Hailing this as "one of the finest American plays of the 20th century, a masterpiece of theatrical realism,"
The Wall Street Journal's
Terry Teachout praises: "
Come Back, Little Sheba is close to flawless. I'd never seen it on stage prior to this revival, and I had no idea what a wallop it packed....Ms. Merkerson is a stage actress of the first rank. She brings Lola's melancholy and yearning to life with such soft-spoken understatement that you feel as though you'd wandered through the back door of her house and sat down at her kitchen table for a chat. Ms. Kazan, who is making her Broadway debut after a pair of buzzworthy performances Off Broadway in
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and
Things We Want, is no less impressive..."
Finding it "gently stirring,"
The New York Sun's
Eric Grode delivers a mixed review: "It doesn't help that Mr. Pressman lets the Freudian cross-currents among Lola, Doc, and their college-age boarder, Marie (Zoe Kazan, the granddaughter of frequent Inge collaborator
Elia Kazan), unfold at a stately, almost lethargic pace early on. But as the collision course between Doc and his sweet, sad Lola draws near, precipitated by the flighty Marie and her two suitors, the director and his largely fine cast tighten the reins and do justice to Inge's strains of Midwestern melancholia."
Calling the production "old-fashioned but still-engaging,"
Joe Dziemianowicz of New York's
Daily News falls into the same camp as Grode: "Inge's story pours on melodramatic moments, as when Doc pulls a liquor bottle from the kitchen cupboard, considers it and puts it away -- for now. The symbolism is not subtle -- Lola's beloved missing dog mirrors her long-gone happiness. But despite such creaks, the story's shattering climactic confrontation still brings gasps.
Anderson's nuanced work shows Doc's desires, disgust and deep sorrow. Merkerson ("
Law & Order") is a poignant Lola."
"Fatally imbalanced," is how Bloomberg's
John Simon describes the show: "
Come Back, Little Sheba' owes not a little to
Tennessee Williams and comes across as a moderately effective Williams knock-off, by now rather dated. A period piece needs impeccable writing and flawless production to make the death-defying leap across the decades. What we have instead in this Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Biltmore Theatre is a measure of likableness and pathos yet nothing truly compelling. Even the business with the little dog Sheba, vanished long ago but regularly and pathetically beckoned by Lola from the front porch, is a rather heavy-handed symbol for trying to recapture the past."
Criticizing that
Little Sheba "registers as one of the writer's most heavy-handed, painfully obvious works,"
Frank Scheck offers thumbs down in the
Hollywood Reporter: "Not only is the playwright's brand of naturalism out of style, but even more so is his bludgeoning use of symbolism. From the titular runaway pooch that represents Lola's faded youth and beauty to the phallic javelin that Marie's boyfriend constantly describes wielding,
Sheba is not exactly subtle in its implications. With the constant references to Doc's former drinking, it's not hard to figure out that by play's end he'll have fallen off the wagon.... Merkerson...underplays with a sad dignity that doesn't quite convey Lola's ridiculousness."
Deeming it as a "creakingly dated play,"
New York Post's
Clive Barnes offers one and a half stars: "Michael Pressman's pedestrian staging is as adequate as the play deserves, and a miscast Merkerson makes an adorable Lola - sincere, compassionate and, well . . . miscast. The best performance comes from Anderson as the dark, sexually twisted, wild and crazy Doc, who runs the dubious gamut of the role like a champion hurdler. He, at least, manages to glitter dangerously amid the play's thick thickets of mediocrity."
As you may have seen from my own
SOB Review, I (unfortunately) have to say I agree with the last three reviews. Will MTC revoke
my subscription? Hope not!
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Come Back, Little Sheba (The SOB Review) (January 25, 2008)
Little Sheba Comes Back To Broadway Opening Night (January 24, 2008)
Little Sheba To Come Back To Broadway (August 16, 2007)
Labels: Broadway, Come Back Little Sheba, Critics' Capsule, Kevin Anderson, Play, Revival, S. Epatha Merkerson, William Inge, Zoe Kazan
Come Back Little Sheba (The SOB Review) - Biltmore Theatre, New York, NY*1/2 (out of ****)Everybody loves a good comeback. Unfortunately, the revival of
William Inge's melodramatic
Come Back, Little Sheba is not one of them.
Ostensibly about hopes and dreams that have long since gone, just like the titular dog, this revival
feels like a tired old one at that. In essence, we've seen it all before.
Certainly, Inge broke fertile new ground when he wrote this play about alcoholism and an unwed couple's unplanned pregnancy back at the dawn of the 1950s. But there's nothing new here. Time has a way of diminishing the shock value, and this particular production possesses absolutely none.
Well, that is unless you count director
Michael Pressman's well-intentioned, but nonsensical color blind casting. Despite keeping
Little Sheba set in the early 50s, a full decade before the landmark
Civil Rights Act of 1964, he pairs the fine African American actress
S. Epatha Merkerson as a very forlorn Lola with a crackling waspy
Kevin Anderson as her recovering alcoholic husband Doc. They're an unhappily married couple.... of
25 years. And they're sitting on a powder keg.
While it certainly would have been a much better world back then if no one had thought twice about multi-cultural families back 58 years ago, that's unfortunately just not the way it was. In a week when we celebrated
Martin Luther King Jr., yet ironically saw how even all these advanced years later America's first "
black president" could
inject race into a political campaign, their pairing only serves to distract.
Personally, I became more fixated on what I imagined Lola and Doc's backstory to be as I found myself conjuring up how difficult their experience with bigots might have been when they first would have met, way back in America's roaring 20s. My imagined script was far more compelling and interesting than the stilted déjà vu dialogue delivered by the angry drunk of a husband lording over his long-suffering yet completely helpless, hopeless wife. In listening to their banter, I couldn't help but think of all the times since Inge wrote this play that I've heard a similar refrain many times over and many times better.
And then I realized how ludicrous my exercise was. And what a wasted opportunity Pressman allowed to pass him by. He's squandered an opportunity to explore new territory by instead retracing all too familiar steps.
He assembled a decent enough cast, with a very meek and mild Merkerson headlining with a hunkered down portrayal of the hapless Lola, who just can't seem to come to grips with how she's allowed her life to pass her by -- or the fact that her beloved dog Sheba has run away (thus the title). Anderson comes unhinged as her tormented alcoholic husband.
Zoe Kazan breathes what little fresh air wafts through this production -- her first Broadway outing -- as Lola and Doc's coquettish boarder.
Yet almost in spite of the talent he's amassed, Pressman misses a chance to make his story more relevant for today's audiences. It would have been far more intriguing had Pressman revised the play a bit, shifting its timing to a more recent decade when society was really beginning to grapple with interracial marriages. Rather than completely ignore the matter of race,
Come Back, Little Sheba could have served as a thoughtful contemporary examination of the historic challenges mixed race couples had. Instead, we get all the histrionics one would expect from a depiction of the fifties.
Unfortunately, this
Come Back feels more like a stale and unsatisfying throwback. We're left to merely ponder what could have been.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Little Sheba Comes Back To Broadway Opening Night (January 24, 2008)
Little Sheba To Come Back To Broadway (August 16, 2007)
Labels: Come Back Little Sheba, Kevin Anderson, Michael Pressman, Play, Revival, S. Epatha Merkerson, The SOB Review, William Inge, Zoe Kazan
Little Sheba Comes Back To Broadway Opening NightFifty-eight years is a long, long time for an old Broadway hit to stage a comeback.
But tonight, the first-ever revival of
William Inge's seminal, groundbreaking play on shotgun weddings and alcoholism --
Come Back, Little Sheba -- opens tonight at the
Manhattan Theatre Club's
Biltmore Theatre.
The original Great White Way production in 1950 helped
Sidney Blackmer and
Shirley Booth each earn Tony Awards, with the latter going on to score an Oscar for her work in the 1952
film version.
Helmed by
Michael Pressman, the new incarnation stars "
Law And Order" favorite
S. Epatha Merkerson as Lola and
Kevin Anderson as her husband Doc. One of my personal favorite young stage actresses,
Zoe Kazan, makes her Broadway debut.
Last summer, Merkerson also starred in the Los Angeles production, which received
mixed reviews.
How will this
Come Back fare with the Broadway critics? Find out tomorrow as I provide my regular critics' capsule, along with my very own SOB Review.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Little Sheba To Come Back To Broadway (August 16, 2007)
Labels: Broadway, Come Back Little Sheba, Kevin Anderson, Manhattan Theatre Club, Play, Revival, S. Epatha Merkerson, William Inge, Zoe Kazan
Little Sheba To Come Back To BroadwayIt's been 57 years since
William Inge's seminal
Come Back, Little Sheba was presented on a Broadway stage.
That one and only Rialto production provided both
Sidney Blackmer and
Shirley Booth with Tony Awards for their portrayals of Doc and Lola, respectively. Booth even copped an Academy Award in 1952 when she recreated the role for the big screen.
Now,
Come Back, Little Sheba is set to come back to the Great White Way early next year. With
Michael Pressman at the helm,
S. Epatha Merkerson will star in the
Manhattan Theatre Club production at the
Biltmore Theatre. In June, Pressman and Merkerson teamed up for the play on the Left Coast at
LA's Kirk Douglas Theatre -- the show received
mixed reviews. The rest of the cast has yet to be announced, although
Alan Rosenberg portayed Doc in Los Angeles.
Look for the new Broadway incarnation to open January 24. Time will tell whether this show's worthy of a comeback.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Broadway, Come Back Little Sheba, First Word On New Show, Los Angeles, Manhattan Theatre Club, Play, Revival, S. Epatha Merkerson, William Inge
