Violetta reviewing a Broadway musical? Or even going to a Broadway musical, for that matter! Well, even the worst snobs have their good moments, fortunately.
I needed to find a show that would entertain my mother, something not too taxing, not too pop, not too silly, not too verbose and with music she could relate to. So the Gershwins were the obvious choice. George Gershwin was probably one of the most successful contemporary crossover composers. Korngold came later, and was never as famous. Michel Legrand crossed over for good and can not be considered a classical composer, neither can Brubeck. Ah, yes, Leonard Bernstein! But, although he did a wonderful job of explaining what all musical genres have in common, he only dipped his big toe into the pop genre, with West Side Story, if I’m not mistaken.
Well, you will say, so why didn’t you go see Porgy and Bess? Simply because that particular “opera” bores me, and there was this other choice: Nice Work If You Can Get It, a play combining a rather silly story with all the great Gershwin tunes that I have been humming since the 1930s.
The afternoon started, as usual when I go to a matinée with my pal Hedy, with lunch at Marseille, a place we love for the simple but delicious food in normal portions and the warm and efficient service – they know you are going to a show. My mother, who lives in Paris and has the Parisian flair for criticizing food, had nothing but praise for the meal.
We walked over to the theatre and found our excellent seats, which leads me to yet another digression: getting seats in New York, either for Broadway or Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall, is not half as difficult as it is in, say, Paris. It’s expensive all right! But if you want to go and can afford it, you can usually find tickets. Another thing – Broadway theatres are usually small and any seat is good.
Unfortunately, the musical was, at most, mildly entertaining. The story is totally uninteresting and only serves as a backdrop for the singing and dancing, which is pretty good, by high school performance standards. The sets completely lack imagination and creativity, and could have been salvaged and refurbished from an old 1950s musical. The costumes are banal. The choreography is old-fashioned and, let’s face it, Matthew Broderick and Erin Dilly are neither Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, nor Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. Their dancing completely lacks grace, although their singing is quite pleasant. They just don’t have le physique du rôle (Broderick is much chubbier than I remember from his movies) and seemed as bored by the plot as the audience. Nevertheless, two actors saved the afternoon. Judy Kaye and Michael McGrath infused their performances with infectious humor, splendid body language and perfect singing, rising miles above the general level and positively stealing the show. Still, I thought that the whole experience was rather a waste of time and was slightly worried by the fact that I had already, at the request of my son and daughter-in-law, secured tickets for another musical, just across the street from this one, “Once”…. again, I thought, how unfortunate!
Thursday, August 9th, 2012 – evening Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre – Broadway Once – Enda Walsh-Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová Steve Kazee Cristin Milioti And a wonderful cast
This time, it was an evening performance and we skipped the pre-show meal. Actually, we had had a great lunch at the Modern, another of my favorite New York restaurants. There aren’t that many. On the low end, restaurants in New York are greasy, noisy, cheap, gastronomically disastrous joints. On the so-called high end, they are ugly, pretentious, phony, expensive, gastronomically disastrous deceptions. The Modern, in the expensive and elegant category, is an exception. The service is friendly and unpretentious, the food is exquisite and the setting is hard to tear your eyes away from. So, after a late and satisfying lunch, we could head straight to the theatre.
There was a huge line. I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just let people in, until we finally made our way inside and the reason became obvious. Instead of the normal hall and curtain waiting to be raised, the stage was open and the cast was already there, singing and dancing and inviting the audience to join in. The set, which never changed, was that of an Irish pub and so was the music. I loved it. It was lively, rocking, harmonious music expertly played. The performers seemed to gather there every night, just for the pleasure of getting together and singing and playing. I was just worried to see how they were going to manage to get the invading public off the stage to start the actual play – I even wondered whether there was going to be any play at all!
Slowly but surely, though, people started to go back to their seats and the character called Da (David Patrick Kelly) grasped his mandolin and accompanied himself in a beautiful and moving song. That set the atmosphere for the entire play, which has nothing to do with a musical as I expect them to be. I always thought that Broadway musicals were to opera as Ray Conniff and Mantovani were to symphonic music. I thought they all consisted of a plot and actors and singers on stage and musicians in the pit.
Not Once! I was completely in awe as I realized that the actors were themselves the singers, the dancers and the musicians. I had never seen a good violinist sing and dance and stomp while playing flawlessly. Same with the guitarists and mandoline and banjo players, the percussionists and the pianist.
They managed to do all that while delivering the excellent lines with complete ease and grace. The story is not particularly fascinating but is heartwarming and funny. What a difference with the stiff and amateurish Gershwin I had seen the week before!
This time, one cannot single out a performer. The leads are great, but so is everyone else. The set overflows with brilliant ideas, from the mirror behind the bar that allows you to see the face of actors who have their backs turned to you, to the ballet of props that appear and disappear thanks to the actors themselves who, to top it all, are also the stagehands! And the fantastic reverse subtitles, the Engish- spoken lines projected in Czech!
What can I say? Run, don’t walk, to see Once! You will want to go again, I promise. I can’t wait for another opportunity.