Saying goodbye to 2010

Another year of blogging draws to a close. My posts on Gratuitous Violins declined rather dramatically beginning in April. I didn't get to the theatre much for the first six months of 2010 so I felt like I had less to say.

Plus I spent more time on Twitter, where I really enjoy being part of a running conversation with theatre fans from all over. Blogging can be kind of solitary. And besides, sometimes all you really need is 140 characters.

Despite a slow start, I did see some terrific plays and musicals this year. I was thinking how many of them had strong endings. And endings, like beginnings, are tough to get just right.

Since this is my final post of the year, I'll mention some of them. (I've been vague enough that I don't think there are any plot spoilers):

• The last couple minutes of Lend Me A Tenor, where the cast re-created the entire hilarious plot at warp speed.

• A tender moment between Albin and Georges in La Cage aux Folles, made all the more poignant because it was something they didn't do in the original production.

• The last line in A Free Man of Color and the final moments of The Scottsboro Boys were so compelling for what they said about the tortuous history of race in America.
  

• A perfect image of Laura Linney's photographer character in Time Stands Still.
  

• A sweet family portrait at the end of Elling that made me smile.
  

• When David Hyde Pierce's character in La Bete, the principled playwright Elomire, exits the stage.
  

• The very fun concert after the curtain call for Brief Encounter. Don't stop believin'!
  
  

Overall, 2010 was a good year. I saw lots of friends during my three trips to New York and met new ones. I visited Washington, D.C., one of my favorite cities, for the first time in a long time and reconnected with people I hadn't seen in years.

I made it to a couple more wonderful New York City museums for the first time: the Whitney and the Jewish Museum. And I learned an important lesson: you can't always judge a sandwich by its picture in a magazine.

To everyone who read my blog, left a comment, followed me on Twitter, friended me on Facebook, sent me an e-mail, joined me for lunch, brunch, dinner or a show during the past year, thank-you for the gift of your time and your friendship.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy and adventure-filled 2011!

My favorite theatre of 2010

Listing my favorite shows of the year is tough because even if I don't totally love a play or musical there's always something I want to mention, like a strong performance or a moment that really moved me.

But out of the 27 plays and musicals I saw in 2010, these stood out:

Brief Encounter - Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54

Brief Encounter was the most captivating theatre I saw all year. It was whimsical, magical, romantic.

Britain's Kneehigh Theatre Company adapted the 1945 film Brief Encounter, based on a Noel Coward play about a married man and woman who begin an affair after a chance meeting in a train station.

Hannah Yelland and Tristan Sturrock were enchanting as the couple, reminding me how sexy those old movies could be without the actors taking off all their clothes and jumping into bed.

I felt like I was watching an old black-and-white movie onstage - visually heightened by some imaginative effects and with all the boring parts left out. And those effects, along with Coward's music used throughout, enhanced the story. They never threatened to overwhelm it.

Brief Encounter runs through Jan. 2.

The Scottsboro Boys, Lyceum Theatre

Stunning would have to be the word I'd use to describe this final musical from John Kander and the late Fred Ebb. It was the most compelling theatre I saw all year and I thought the score was haunting.

The story of nine black teenagers falsely accused of rape in 1930s Alabama is told through a minstrel show, illuminating the era's racism in a way I found chillingly effective. Here, the white characters were lampooned while the African-Americans were treated with respect.

The Scottsboro Boys was musical theatre that made me think. With a superb ensemble led by Joshua Henry, I thought it was profoundly moving and immensely entertaining in the best sense of the word. It deserved a longer run on Broadway.

La Cage aux Folles, Longacre Theatre

My favorite new score of the year - well new to me anyway - was La Cage aux Folles. Hearing Jerry Herman's gorgeous songs for the first time - stirring, heartfelt, playful and utterly romantic - was unforgettable.

Based on the French film, it's about two men, partners in a nightclub and in life, who have raised a son. They now face a dilemma with his impending marriage to the daughter of a right-wing politician.

I saw Chris Hoch, Kelsey Grammer's understudy, as nightclub owner Georges and he was wonderful. He had great chemistry with the equally wonderful Tony-winner Douglas Hodge as the drag performer Albin. I was moved to tears watching them.

With warmth and wit, this musical goes to true meaning of family values: the love we show each other, the sacrifices we make.

La Cage aux Folles is an open-ended run.

La Bete, Music Box Theatre

I was nervous going into La Bete. I was afraid the play, written in rhyme and taking place in 17th-century France, would be musty and hard to comprehend. Well, this was the most pleasant surprise of the year for me. I was enthralled.

Mark Rylance as Valere, a bufoonish street performer, and David Hyde Pierce as Elomire, a principled playwright, were terrific, which I figured they would be. What surprised me is how much I truly enjoyed David Hirson's play. It was hilarious, thoughtful and entirely accessible.

As Valere and Elomire competed for the patronage of Joanna Lumley's princess, La Bete raised questions about artistic integrity and the debasement of popular culture that struck a chord. While I was laughing so hard, it gave me so much to think about.

La Bete runs through Jan. 9.

Mistakes Were Made, Barrow Street Theatre

As a would-be Broadway producer, Michael Shannon is giving a virtuoso performance in Mistakes Were Made. I've never seen anything quite like it.

Craig Wright's frenzied satire comes to New York from Chicago's A Red Orchid Theatre. In 95 minutes, it takes us through a day in the life of Felix Artifex, a producer who's desperately trying to mount a play on Broadway about the French Revolution.

Shannon's Felix is on the phone almost nonstop. He must talk to nearly a dozen different people, including a movie star he's wooing, the playwright, a potential investor and several people associated with the movement of sheep through a Middle Eastern country.

What's remarkable is how adeptly Shannon handles all of this. Every caller gets a different approach, a different tone of voice. I swear he had me believing there was someone else on the other end of the phone every time.

Mistakes Were Made runs through Feb. 27.

Fela!, Eugene O'Neill Theatre

Thanks to an amazing performance from Kevin Mambo, this musical turned out to be one of the most exhilarating experiences I had all year.

Mambo was incredible as the late Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. He was mesmerizing, making Fela a terrific storyteller and showman and truly evoking the charismatic part of his personality. Ok, maybe it doesn't tell his entire story but I did get some insight into his life and influences, what made him such a revered figure.

I loved the way Fela! meshed politics, history and personal narrative with the pulsating sound of Afrobeat. It was original and unique. The music and dancing was pretty much nonstop for 2 1/2 hours and I was into it the whole time.

Fela! runs through Jan. 2.

A Bronx Tale, Providence Performing Arts Center

Even though Chazz Palminteri has been performing the autobiographical A Bronx Tale for 20 years, and the events belong to his childhood, he makes them seem as fresh as if they had just happened yesterday.

Palminteri paints a vivid portrait of growing up in New York City in the 1960s. He portrays 18 people in this solo show, including an assortment of mobsters, his bus driver father and two versions of himself - an impressionable 9-year-old and a streetwise 17-year-old.

It's a masterful performance, the way he depicts these characters and their various idiosyncrasies with a change in his tone of voice, an expression, the way he moves around onstage. He makes them all distinct and memorable.

The Glass Menagerie, Gamm Theatre

I'm so glad I had a chance to see this classic play onstage for the first time.

I knew the shorthand for The Glass Menagerie: domineering mother, artistic son, unstable daughter, gentleman caller. But watching Tennessee Williams' play about a troubled family made me realize how little I really knew about it.

Diana Buirski brought out Laura's frailty; Marc Dante Mancini made me understand how trapped Tom felt; and Wendy Overly as their mother, Amanda, truly was a fading Southern beauty living in the past.

Williams crafted his characters with such care that I felt for what each one was going thorough in this intimate, absorbing production.

It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, at Trinity Rep

I wasn't sure what It's a Wonderful Life would be without Jimmy Stewart and the rest of the cast from the movie. Well onstage, it's pretty wonderful, too.

Joe Landry's adaptation is presented as a Christmas Eve 1949 radio broadcast. There's a minimal set and cast - five actors play multiple roles - but the story retains its charm and pull.

Fred Sullivan Jr. was so endearing as George Bailey, a man who's always put the needs of his friends, family and community over his own.

It's a Wonderful Life is a moving portrait of small-town American life. Maybe it's because I was sitting so close - in the front row, in a small theatre, but I was struck by how much the story resonated and how emotional it was to watch. In the end, there were tears in my eyes.

It's a Wonderful Life runs through Jan. 2.

Lowering the curtain on 2010

All the reviews have been written and the curtain has dropped on my year of living theatrically, 2010 edition.

Unfortunately, it was not a record-setting year. I saw fewer shows than I did in 2009, since I wasn't able to get to New York in the spring and I didn't make it to Boston at all. But it's quality not quantity, right? And I still saw a lot of memorable theatre.

Before I get to the highlights in an upcoming post, a few odds and ends:

I checked two more Broadway theatres off my list: the Longacre and the Cort. There are only six left that I've yet to step inside: Ambassador, American Airlines, August Wilson, Golden, Majestic and Sondheim. The Longacre reopened in 2008 after a two-year, $12-million renovation by the Shuberts, and it's beautiful. The Cort, well, I hope it's next on the list for a facelift. And speaking of the Sondheim, when are they going to dot the i? Has anyone else noticed that it's still missing?

Among the seat-selection lessons I learned this year: just because the front row in a particular theatre is fine for one play, that doesn't mean it'll be fine for another play. I sat in the front row at the Friedman for The Royal Family and it was perfect. But I was a little too close for The Pitmen Painters. The stage seemed to be higher and deeper. I never realized the dimensions could change that dramatically!

Another question: Does the director ever sit in the audience to make sure everyone can see from every vantage point? A row of speakers blocked my view of the actors' feet in Xanadu. Not good in a musical with roller-skating dancers. A chair blocked my view for a couple of scenes in The Pitmen Painters and a piece of the set that popped up from the stage did the same during Act II of A Free Man of Color at the Beaumont. (To be fair, I had changed my seat at intermission, moving down to an empty spot in the front row. There's no leg room in the Beaumont, even in the orchestra.)

As always, I had many wonderful stage-door experiences. Among them: Saycon Sengbloh of Fela! graciously took me onstage at the O'Neill.

I tracked down Tony winner Douglas Hodge in a bar after La Cage aux Folles and he was great, taking a few minutes to talk to me and sign my Playbill. I consider that one of my more intrepid stage-door adventures.

I met Michael Shannon from Mistakes Were Made at the Barrow Street Theatre. He was so nice, asking me where I was from, how I travel to New York and what other shows I was seeing. He asked me my name so he could personally inscribe my program. (I think I startled him because "Esther" is his character's secretary in the play). And he even drew a little smiley face for me!

Another first: I met a playwright! David Hirson was at the stage door at La Bete, a work I really loved and I got to tell him so. I also had the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with David Hyde Pierce. I told him how much I enjoyed him in Curtains and he showed me that he was wearing the show jacket from the musical - which I thought was sweet in a theatre geek kind of way.

By far the rudest audience behavior I witnessed this year was at Trust, at the Second Stage Theatre off-Broadway.

I was in the third row and at the beginning of Act II, a woman sitting on the aisle snapped a couple of pictures of Zach Braff. It was so brazen, as well as rude and dangerous to the actors. It's a small theatre, too, 327 seats. So it's not like no one would notice.

I'm pretty sure that if she'd waited until after the play, he would have posed for a picture with her.

World AIDS Day 2010

I know it sounds strange to say that I enjoy being asked for money but I look forward to those pitches for donations to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS when I'm at a show.

Since it's World AIDS Day 2010, here's a pitch from me.

At the end of 2009, there were 33 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, about 1 million of them in the United States. An estimated 56,300 Americans become infected every year.

This year's United Nations report offers some encouraging statistics: worldwide, the number of people newly infected with HIV is declining and AIDS-related deaths are decreasing.

But much work remains, including caring for people who are living with the disease.

Whenever I go to the theatre at this time of year I always make sure that I have a little extra cash to drop in the bucket if the cast is collecting for Broadway Cares. (Touring productions of Broadway shows often collect donations, too.)

The organization will award about $10 million in grants in 2010 to groups in nearly every state and around the world. Broadway Cares supports health clinics, food service and meal delivery, housing and emergency assistance. Most likely an organization near you receives help.

Broadway Cares also supports other organizations that provide services to performing artists, including the Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative, the Al Hirschfeld Free Clinic and resources for actors and dancers.

While they're serious about the organization's good work, the requests for donations at the curtain call are often done with a sense of humor. In 2008, I watched Daniel Radcliffe auction off a sweaty polo shirt he wore during Equus.

This fall, David Hyde Pierce was ready with a few witty one-liners after La Bete. (He should host the Tony Awards!) And it was sweet to see 12-year-old Jeremy Gumbs, the youngest cast member of The Scottsboro Boys, smile broadly at the curtain call after playing a very serious role so well. He was so incredible in the musical that it was almost startling to realize yeah, he's a kid.

But I have to give the prize to the cast of Lombardi. Bill Dawes, who plays Green Bay Packer Paul Hornung, had us laughing hysterically. And Dan Lauria was pretty funny, too, staying in character as the legendary Packers coach.

I got an autographed Playbill for $20 (a color one!) and I saw quite a few people walking out of the theatre with $100 signed window cards. But any amount helps.

I'm happy to support an organization that helps so many people and it's my way of saying thank-you to the people whose work I've enjoyed all year long. That includes everyone who works onstage and backstage and without whom, the show would not go on.

Broadway Cares also has an online store with lots of great ideas for gifts for Christmas, Chanukah or any time of year.

La Bete

La Bete, at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway
Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

I was a little wary going into the revival of La Bete, knowing the work, which first appeared on Broadway in 1991, was written in rhyming couplets and set in 17th-century France. I was afraid it might be hard to follow or seem a little musty.

Well, I'm happy to report that I was enthralled for the entire 1 hour and 45 minutes. The performances were wonderful and I loved David Hirson's play, which is funny, thought-provoking and entirely accessible.

Without being preachy, La Bete raises questions about artistic integrity, the debasement of culture, even the fickle nature of arts funding, that resonate today. And it does so while maintaining a terrific sense of humor.

A highbrow theatre troupe, under the patronage of a princess, is forced to accept a lowbrow street performer into the company. It's a situation Hirson uses to explore just how far we're willing to go in order to be entertained.

The rhyming dialogue, witty and clever, was delivered so naturally that I got into the rhythm of it immediately. And a couple of times I even guessed the word that was coming next - which was kind of fun.

Under a lesser creative team, I can see where this might not work as well. But director Matthew Warchus has a trio of superb comedic actors - Mark Rylance, David Hyde Pierce and making her Broadway debut, Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous.

Rylance is brilliant as the buffoonish, outrageous Valere. He delivers a 20-minute monologue in which, among other things, he's insulting, vulgar, childlike, apologetic and full of himself without seeming to realize it. What an amazing clown - and I mean that in the highest sense.

Hyde Pierce, as the principled - and perhaps a bit stubborn - playwright Elomire, is repulsed by Valere. His facial expressions, his body language, the props he uses all convey increasing disbelief and exasperation, while hardly getting a word in edgewise.

Lumley, wonderfully regal, enters in a shower of golden confetti. She's infatuated with Valere, her newest discovery, and demands that he join the troupe or they will lose her patronage. As for Elomire, his work has become tiresome and doesn't amuse her so much anymore.

With gorgeous period costumes and a massive book-lined study of a set, both designed by Mark Thompson, you can tell that this is a very comfortable company of actors, happily settled on a grand estate. They've got a lot to lose.

Stephen Ouimette, from Slings and Arrows, provides a voice of reason as Bejart, Elomire's assistant. He reminds him of what it was like before, when they were sleeping in haylofts, traveling from town to town. "Life is compromise! We learn to live with that which we despise."

The strength of this production is that while I was laughing so hard, it gave me so much to think about. In the end, here's what it comes down to for me:

Would it really hurt to give in to the person who controls the purse strings? It's not so terrible to simply give the audience what it wants once in awhile. Don't we all enjoy a bit of light entertainment? As awful as Rylance makes Valere, you can't take your eyes off of him.

And yet ...

In our desire to laugh or be shocked or frightened, isn't there a point at which we go too far? (Think about Network or those Jackass movies.) The impassioned Elomire, offended at being asked to lower his standards, warns, "We're measured by the choices that we make."

I'm so disappointed that La Bete is closing on Jan. 9, a month ahead of schedule. I wish more theatergoers had given it a chance. This is a play that will stay with me for a very long time.

Opening night for La Bete

La Bete the play
opens tonight on Broadway

and it's a big reason
I'm excited about the fall theatre season.

The story takes place in 17th-century France
with a cast headed by British thesp Mark Rylance.

Also, there's Tony winner for Curtains David Hyde Pierce,
an actor I'll admit I love something fierce.

Plus Joanna Lumley from TV's Ab Fab,
sets and costumes that look anything but drab.

The dialogue is written in rhyming verse,
which could be a blessing or a curse.

In 1991, playwright David Hirson didn't fare so well
as Frank Rich thought La Bete was less than swell.

With the play returning to the Great White Way anew,
here's hoping for a better reception for cast and crew.

Matthew Warchus of the hilarious Norman Conquests is directing
and his skill may help keep audiences connecting.

But whatever the critics say, one thing to remember:
I'll be in my seat at the Music Box come this November!

My Broadway wish list: fall 2010

I love this time of year, when every book and movie, TV series and CD, play and musical has the potential to be a hit.

I'll only be able to see a handful of shows in New York City and not nearly enough off Broadway. But you have to start somewhere, so here are the Broadway shows at the top of my wish list:

La Bete:
A comedy in rhyming couplets inspired by Moliere? I'm there. This is my chance to see Mark Rylance, whose Tony-winning turn in Boeing Boeing I missed. And it's been 3 1/2 years since I last saw David Hyde Pierce on Broadway, in his Tony-winning performance in Curtains. Much too long.

The Pitmen Painters:
Maybe it's because I loved How Green Was My Valley, or the fact that I've been in a coal mine, but I'm very interested in Lee Hall's play about a group of British miners in the 1930s who discover their artistic side. Hall, who wrote Billy Elliot, knows the terrain. New Yorker theatre critic John Lahr, who saw it in London, put The Pitmen Painters on his list of the 10 best plays of 2008.

Brief Encounter:
I've never seen the 1945 British movie, directed by David Lean, with a screenplay by Noel Coward. And I'm not a big Coward fan. Still, I like innovative work and this play, from Britain's Kneehigh Theatre, sounds so intriguing for the way it incorporates film footage into the action onstage. I can't even imagine what it'll be like.

The Scottsboro Boys:
The reviews from the pre-Broadway engagement at the Guthrie Theater have been glowing. It's got a score by Kander and Ebb. The cast includes John Cullum and Colman Domingo, both of whom I've enjoyed onstage. And I'm so curious to see how this shameful episode in American history is told through music.

A Free Man of Color:
I've read a little bit about the time in which John Guare's play occurs and it's fascinating. New Orleans in 1801, before the Louisiana Purchase, was a freewheeling place, where racial strictures were much less rigid. Jeffrey Wright plays the title character, whose life will be upended when the city is transferred from French to American sovereignty.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown:
I could not be more excited about a cast - Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti, both of whom I adored in Gypsy, plus Sherie Rene Scott and Brian Stokes Mitchell, whom I've never seen. And the musical is based on a Pedro Almodovar movie that I haven't seen, so it'll all be new to me. Plus, haven't we all been on the verge of a nervous breakdown at one time or another?

Of course there's more I'd love to see. I missed Time Stands Still with Laura Linney, so I'm hoping to catch the return engagement. And I want to see Spider-Man Turn off the Dark, but since previews don't begin until mid-November, I'll wait until they get that flying down pat.