My year of living theatrically - 2009

My year of living theatrically, 2009 edition, has come to a close. I saw 39 shows this year - 24 plays and 15 musicals - most of them on Broadway. (I realize that I missed out on a lot of great theatre off-Broadway and a lot closer to home, so I'll have to work on that in the future.)

I'll get to my picks for the year's best in another post but first, here's a rundown of some noteworthy events:

Crossed more Broadway theatres off my list.

That means out of 40, there are only 9 that I have yet to visit: the Ambassador, American Airlines, August Wilson, Cort, Golden, Henry Miller's, Longacre, Lunt-Fontanne and the Majestic. Not bad considering I only started in April 2007! First-time visits this year included Circle in the Square: So round! The Gershwin: Such sightlines! The Helen Hayes: So tiny!

Bought my first two tickets from TKTS.

Usually I buy my tickets in advance but this year there were two occasions when I didn't, so I ended up at TKTS in Times Square. The play-only line isn't bad but I don't know if I'd want to stand in the much longer plays and musicals line. In many cases, you can get discounts online that are just as good and you'll have your tickets before you leave home.

(Plus, it's kind of sad to listen to people standing in line who have no idea what they want to see or what anything is about, save for the shows that they won't find at TKTS anyway.)

In my case, I took a chance on Neil LaBute's play reasons to be pretty and ended up really enjoying it, especially the performances from Steven Pasquale and Thomas Sadoski as two blue-collar friends. And I finally saw The 39 Steps on Broadway. It's still as funny and clever as it was in Boston in 2007.

Saw my first two August Wilson plays.

I took in Lincoln Center Theater's production of Joe Turner's Come and Gone on Broadway (missed the Obamas by a week!) and Fences at Boston's Huntington Theatre Company. They were a great introduction to Wilson's absorbing characters and compelling storytelling. Now, I want to see the other eight plays in the late Tony and Pulitzer winner's cycle chronicling African-American life in the 20th century.

Played a small role in making theatre history.

In October, I attended a staged reading of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later by students in the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA program. The play was presented on the same night in 150 venues across the country and around the world on the 10th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard, a college student who was murdered in an antigay hate crime. The performances were memorable and the experience made the words "theatre community" seem so real.

My claim to theatergoing fame.

In February, I saw Fiddler on the Roof at the Providence Performing Arts Center with Chaim Topol as Tevye. I also saw Topol as Tevye in Tel Aviv in 1998, in a Hebrew production, which was my first time seeing Fiddler on the Roof in any form. (At that point, I'd never even seen the movie.) So now I can say that I've seen an actor play the same role on stage in two different languages in two different countries, on different continents and in different centuries!

Got a little more Wicked.

Ever since I saw the musical in January 2007 in Providence, I've wanted to see it on Broadway. I finally accomplished that goal for one reason - Tony-winner Rondi Reed was playing Madame Morrible and I loved her in August: Osage County. Well, she was terrific. Seeing Reed play a completely different character - with a completely different accent - only increased my admiration for her.

Right back where I started from.

Since the Sunday night performance of Fela! that I was going to see got canceled, (another first) that meant Wicked turned out to be my final show of 2009. How fitting that my third year of theatergoing ended the same way my first year began.

Andre Holland would make my list

This week, BroadwaySpace released its list of "30 under 30: Broadway's hottest young stars." There are some great names, talented actors whose performances I've really enjoyed.

Then there are others who may be perfectly fine but I'm not sure they belong on a list of "Broadway's most remarkable and noteworthy performers under the age of 30." Hey, I realize these things are subjective.

More importantly, as a couple of my fellow bloggers have pointed out, the list is sorely lacking in African-American faces. Broadway & Me rightly questioned the omission of the very talented Daniel Breaker (Passing Strange, Shrek) and Jon Michael Hill (Superior Donuts.)

Those names would definitely be on my list, but I'd like to add one of my own: Andre Holland. I saw him on Broadway last spring in Joe Turner's Come and Gone. He was wonderful as Jeremy Furlow, a young roominghouse boarder newly arrived in Pittsburgh from the South.

I'm not sure how old Holland is, but he's definitely an actor to watch. While he may not be as noteworthy as some of the people on the BroadwaySpace list, his performance definitely sent me to my Playbill at intermission to find out his name.

And Holland is currently getting some great reviews off-Broadway, at the Public Theater, in The Brother/Sister Plays. Here's what Variety critic David Rooney says about his performance:

"The cast is dazzling, the majority of them creating indelible characterizations in multiple roles. Holland's metamorphoses are especially remarkable, from a plucky kid to a slippery adult and then an awkward teen, just beginning to understand how to use his sexual mojo."

Here's a good Q&A with Holland by Patrick Lee, from Just Shows to Go You. Holland, who grew up in a small town in Alabama and studied at Florida State and NYU, talks about how he got started as an actor.

"August Wilson is what attracted to me to the theatre in the first place. I read Fences in high school and I couldn’t put it down – it was the first time I had read characters in a play who sounded like people I knew."

I hope he's back on Broadway soon - maybe in next spring's Fences revival with Denzel Washington. Wouldn't that be great!

But more importantly, I hope there are opportunities for Holland other talented young African-American actors to do good work in all kinds of roles - and be recognized for it.

It's curtains for four shows

Today marks the final performance for two Broadway plays I loved, Joe Turner's Come and Gone and reasons to be pretty; along with a third I enjoyed very much, Exit the King.

I took a pass on the fourth show that's closing, Guys and Dolls. I really want to see this musical on stage someday but with lackluster reviews and a cast that didn't excite me well, I guess I'll have to wait for the next revival. According to Playbill, the producers are planning a national tour for 2010-2011, so maybe I'll catch up with it then.

Of course, like most Broadway plays these days, Joe Turner, produced by Lincoln Center Theater, and Exit the King were limited runs. Reasons to be pretty, a transfer from off-Broadway's MCC Theater with some cast changes, was open-ended.

Lincoln Center's Bernard Gersten told The New York Times that a presidential visit and a Tony for cast member Roger Robinson for Best Featured Actor in a Play weren't enough to justify an extension. “We ran the risk of extending and playing to half-empty houses."

It's too bad Exit the King couldn't have extended on the heels of Geoffrey Rush winning a Tony for Best Actor in a Play. As a dying monarch who isn't ready to leave life's stage he gives an amazing performance that's part comedy, part tragedy. Maybe Rush simply had other commitments that precluded it.

But I feel especially bad that August Wilson's Joe Turner and Neil LaBute's reasons to be pretty failed to find bigger audiences. Even though they're very different they were two of the most enjoyable experiences I've had on Broadway this season and I thought both casts were wonderful.

Joe Turner is a compelling story about the lives of African-Americans at the beginning of the 2oth century that had me enthralled for close to three hours. Reasons to be pretty's story of four working-class twentysomethings had me laughing hysterically and cheering for its hero.

I'm not sure what, if anything, could have been done to draw more people to these plays.

I was looking at ibdb.com, and it seem as if the only August Wilson play to run for more than a year on Broadway was Fences, from 1987 to 1988. Most closed far short of a year. And while LaBute has a long list of off-Broadway credits, this was the first of his plays to make it to Broadway.

I know all the arguments - Broadway depends on tourists, who want to see musicals or stars they recognize from movies or tv. But that doesn't mean it's not sad all the same.

Joe Turner's Come and Gone

Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

I planned to take in the Broadway revival of Joe Turner's Come and Gone even before the president and first lady decided to drop by the Belasco Theatre for a date night. (Sadly, they beat me there by a week!)

I'd never seen a play by August Wilson and I figured that was a serious gap in my theatergoing experience. So I was excited when this production was announced.

And according to his widow, Constanza Romero, Joe Turner, the second in Wilson's Century Cycle chronicling the African-American experience, was the playwright's favorite of all his works. It was first produced on Broadway in 1988, with a cast that included L. Scott Caldwell (Rose, from Lost), Angela Bassett (in her first and only Broadway appearance. Come back!) and Delroy Lindo.

Still, by the time last Saturday night rolled around, I was feeling a bit of trepidation. I knew Joe Turner was nearly three hours long and it was my second show of the day - my fourth since Thursday. A little bit of theatre fatigue was setting in.

Well, I needn't have worried. I was totally swept up by this production from beginning to end. There is nothing like great storytelling and compelling characters to give a slightly weary theatergoer her second wind.

Joe Turner takes place in 1911 in a Pittsburgh boardinghouse operated by Seth and Bertha Holly, played with immense warmth by Ernie Hudson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson. They're a long-married couple who know each other's habits all too well.

Scenic designer Michael Yeargan has created a sparse but homey kitchen with a massive oak table in the center and a small, plant-filled garden lining the edge of the stage. The smokestacks of Pittsburgh's steel mills form a backdrop.

The Hollys' boardinghouse is a stopping point in the Great Migration of black people from the South to the North in the decades after the Civil War. They were seeking a better life, trying to find their place in a new world that was not very welcoming, in which prejudice and discrimination persisted.

Seth Holly, who grew up in the North, the son of a free black man, is one of the characters we get to know the best and Hudson, who I knew from the 1984 movie Ghost Busters, gives one of my favorite performances. Another character describes him as a "windbag" and he can be a bit disdainful of the attitudes of some of those new arrivals. But he's a good man and it's so sad to see how racism stands in the way of his ambitions.

Andre Holland made me smile with his sweet portrayal of Jeremy Furlow, one of those young ex-Southerners, an aspiring musician who fancies himself a ladies man. Roger Robinson gives a memorable, Tony-winning performance as Bynum Walker, an elderly rootworker who helps give the play a supernatural element.

And Chad L. Coleman is powerful as the mysterious and taciturn Herald Loomis, who has spent four years searching for his wife. His arrival at the boardinghouse one day with his shy young daughter, Zonia, played by Amari Rose Leigh, sets tumultuous events in motion.

One of the things I found so enthralling about Joe Turner's Come and Gone is the way Wilson packs so much of the African-American experience into the play. But he does it in a way that seems organic and natural, never forced. Bit by bit we learn more about his characters and their varied stories - where they come from, what their dreams are, the obstacles in their way.

There are also moments of great laughter and joy - like the West African juba dance in the first act and the way a neighbor boy, Reuben Scott, played by a very cute Michael Cummings, skips offstage after kissing Zonia.

Bartlett Sher, who helmed this Lincoln Center Theater production, has gotten quite a bit of attention, some of it negative, for being the first white director of an August Wilson play on Broadway.

I don't have the cultural background or theatre expertise to judge whether Sher's race made a difference. All I can say is, I was moved by the performances in Joe Turner's Come and Gone and I thought the story was riveting.

As I usually do, I went to the stage door afterward to get my Playbill signed. And I made sure to tell every cast member that this was my first time seeing an August Wilson play and I thought it was wonderful.

I was especially hoping to get Roger Robinson's signature because I knew he was favored to win the Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play. The show ended at about 11 and he didn't emerge until nearly midnight. I'd almost given up hope but I was told he'd had visitors backstage and he was often the last one out.

Finally, he came and I told him how much I enjoyed myself, that this was my first August Wilson play. He said, "Well, I hope it won't be your last."

No, Mr. Robinson, it certainly won't be my last.

Back from New York

Back from my whirlwind, exhausting but exhilarating four days in New York City. Great shows, great friends, great sightseeing - the Triple Crown of vacations.

Okay, the reviews will come soon but first a few observations:

Big congratulations to Steve Loucks, better known by his nom de blog, Steve on Broadway, for being quoted in The Wall Street Journal's weekend edition for a story on theatre etiquette (or lack thereof). I'm so proud and so thrilled when a dear friend and fellow blogger is recognized. As usual, SOB was eloquent and right on the mark with his observation. Well done!

Speaking of etiquette, there were two disturbing things to report at Exit the King.

First, I heard some patrons who were sitting in the last row of the orchestra complaining at intermission that they could hear people talking behind them during the show. Please, remember that while you may be standing outside the auditorium, the people inside can hear you! Take your conversation outside to the lobby or downstairs to the lounge.

Also, at the beginning of the show, an usher kept walking up and down the aisle in the orchestra, stopping at a row near the front. One couple got up and left, so I thought that was the end of it but it went on for about 10 more minutes. At one point, he seemed to pass a note to someone. Finally, he threw his hands up in a gesture of exasperation and walked out.

If it was an emergency, I totally understand. But in that case, perhaps they should have stopped the play?

I've been to Studio 54 three times now, but Waiting for Godot was the first play I've seen there, the first Saturday matinee and the first time I'd heard the rumbling of the subway trains under my feet. It was quite noticeable throughout the show and at first, I thought it was a sound effect.

And Roundabout, you really should discount the last two seats on the far right and far left of every row in the orchestra. The sightlines weren't too bad for Godot, but c'mon. It's not fair.

It was so exciting to see Neil Patrick Harris going in the stage door after Godot. People were asking for his autograph and pictures. He said he would oblige when he came out. And I'm happy to report that he's a man of his word. Even though he probably had a million Tony-hosting related things to do, NPH very graciously signed autographs and posed for pictures. Very cute and very classy.

Also, I had a nice chat with Ernie Hudson, from Joe Turner's Come and Gone (and Ghost Busters!) about how exciting it was to have President and Mrs. Obama at the Belasco Theatre the previous week. It's too bad security concerns prevented the cast from meeting the first couple. Wouldn't it be great if someone connected with the Lincoln Center Theater who has some pull could wrangle an invitation to the White House?

While I was waiting for the final cast member to come out and sign my Playbill (soon-to-be Tony winner Roger Robinson!) I noticed a little handmade sign taped to the wrought-iron gate leading to the Belasco stage door christening it "The President Obama Entrance."

Let's hope The Shubert Organization, which owns the Belasco, makes it permanent with a plaque commemorating the visit of the nation's first African-American president. What a wonderful counterpoint to the entrance on the other side of the main doors, which black theatergoers were once forced to use to get to their seats in the segregated balcony.

Obamas do dinner and a Broadway show

Now isn't this sweet:

“I am taking my wife to New York City,” the president said in the statement, “because I promised her during the campaign that I would take her to a Broadway show after it was all finished.”

President and Mrs. Obama are in New York City tonight, where they dined at a restaurant called Blue Hill in Greenwich Village, then traveled to Times Square to take in the 8 p.m. performance of Joe Turner's Come and Gone at Broadway's Belasco Theatre.

How cool is it that of all things, Michelle Obama wanted her husband to promise to take her to a Broadway show after the campaign?! Pretty darn cool, if you ask me.

Of course, there are some naysayers:

"While the Obamas’ visit to New York was considered private, there was some very public criticism of the trip. The Republican National Committee suggested that that the outing was inappropriate and that Mr. Obama was out of touch, especially given the looming bankruptcy of General Motors.

The committee issued a press release on Saturday afternoon that read, “Putting on a show: Obamas wing it into the city for an evening out, while another iconic American company prepares for bankruptcy.”

Oh puh-leeze!

I think the president and first lady are doing more for the economy by traveling to New York City for dinner and a show than they would hunkering down in the White House. They're supporting tourism and the arts, both of which employ a lot of people. And they're drawing attention to the work of August Wilson - a great American playwright.

Besides, what is he supposed to do tonight to prevent General Motors from declaring bankruptcy - require that every American go to their nearest GM dealer Monday morning and buy a new car?

I know we're in a recession but I don't expect the president to walk around in a hair shirt. Isn't his example better than Vice President Joe Biden telling us all to be very afraid?

I'm just sorry that I have lousy timing. I'll be at Joe Turner next Saturday night - missing the first couple by exactly one week. Still, it'll be my first August Wilson play and I'm pretty excited about it - even without the president in the house.

Bartlett Sher and August Wilson

An article this week by Patrick Healy in The New York Times discusses the controversy over the selection of a director for August Wilson's play Joe Turner's Come and Gone. This is the first time a play of Wilson's has been produced on Broadway with a white director, Tony-winner Bartlett Sher.

Wilson, who died in 2005, always insisted that African-Americans direct major productions of his works. He felt black directors could best interpret his plays, which deal with African-American life in the 20th century. And he wanted to provide them with opportunities that were sorely lacking on Broadway. His widow, Constanza Romero, gave the go-ahead for Sher to direct this Lincoln Center revival.

I haven't seen the play, so I can't comment on whether or not Sher was a good choice. (Broadway & Me weighs in with, as usual, a terrific and perceptive review.) But I can see both sides of the issue.

It seems to me that you're going to be pretty limiting if you start assigning shows to directors based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.

A good director should be able to direct a play that might be the furthest thing from his or her own personal experience. That should include African-Americans directing plays with white casts. And Asian-American and Latino directors, too. Who knows, perhaps their interpretation will bring something new and vital to the table.

Look at a few recent examples: Annie Dorsen directed Passing Strange on Broadway, the story of a young African-American man; and Kate Whoriskey is directing Ruined off-Broadway, about the lives of women in the African nation of Congo. Both are white. Thomas Kail, who as far as I know isn't Latino, directed In the Heights, about a Latino neighborhood in New York City.

Still, I understand what Wilson was trying to achieve - a body of work that would be performed and presented by African-Americans, both onstage and backstage.

In the examples I just mentioned it would have been nice to include some of the African-American directors who have helmed shows on Broadway with largely white casts but I don't know if there are any, at least not recently.

That, it seems to me, is the heart of the matter - the lack of black directors - not only on Broadway, which is, after all, a pretty small place, but off-Broadway and in regional theatres all across the country. (And while we're at it, what about stagehands and choreographers and costume and set and lighting and sound designers?)

It would be great if Lincoln Center, now that it's broken the color barrier with Joe Turner's Come and Gone, would do its part. Andre Bishop, the artistic director, seems to understand. In the Times article, he says, “This experience has started a conversation about opportunities for black directors, and I’m taking it very seriously.”

I hope he does take it seriously because honestly, I think as theatergoers, we'd all benefit from a diversity of voices and experiences - both onstage and behind the scenes.

Some of the comments on the Times' site have been critical of Wilson's widow for allowing Sher to direct the play. But Romero is his sole executor and I have to believe that she and Wilson discussed what would happen after his death. Romero alludes to this in a 2007 Seattle Times article:

"I lived long enough with August to feel I knew what he wanted done with his work. ... Before he died we touched base on a few things. He understood I had to make decisions that would benefit his body of work, his legacy."