Theatrical comings and goings

I'm so sad that [title of show] will play its last performance on Oct. 12. Another one closes before I see it. I know a lot of people questioned whether it was too insidery to appeal to the Broadway tourist crowd. But from the clips I've watched, this little musical that could was a sweet story about chasing your dream, and it sounded like so much fun.

The Lyceum Theatre, where it's been playing, has 922 seats. I wonder if it would have had more of a chance for a longer run in a smaller theatre, like Circle in the Square, which only has 650 seats? Since it was only playing to 30 percent capacity, probably not.

Sigh. Why don't shows stay open until I have a chance to get to New York City? Is that too much to ask? Would it help if I had a couple million dollars to invest?

I watched an old episode of Theater Talk today with Patrick Stewart and Rupert Goold talking about last spring's production of Macbeth. A clip from the play confirmed how I felt about it: visually stunning but hard to figure out what was going on.

Listening to Goold, the play's director, and Stewart, who got a Tony nomination for the title role, actually made the play sound more interesting and accessible than watching it on stage. Maybe you have to be British and start reading Shakespeare in kindergarten to truly understand it?

More casting has been announced for the Manhattan Theatre Club's production of the comedy Accent on Youth, which begins previews on April 7. This is one I swear I will not miss. David Hyde Pierce, a Gratuitous Violins favorite, will portray a playwright who's about to abandon his latest script when his secretary offers him new inspiration.

He'll be joined by Charles Kimbrough - a Tony nominee for the original production of Company and an Emmy nominee for Murphy Brown - as the butler. I used to watch Murphy Brown all the time, but I have to admit, I don't remember Kimbrough from the show. Apparently he played stuffy anchorman Jim Dial. Maybe it's time for a little review?

Finally, thanks to The Homesteader for pointing me to this story from the Denver Post. The musical Little House on the Prairie, currently playing to packed audiences at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, will come to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts late next year, with Melissa Gilbert reprising her role as Caroline "Ma" Ingalls. The musical will stop in Denver from Dec. 22, 2009 to Jan. 3, 2010.

The producers had announced earlier that Little House would embark on a 40-city tour in the fall of 2009, but this is the first location I've read about. I'm a little surprised that Gilbert is touring, but good for her! She wasn't what I enjoyed most about the production, but it was nice to see her on stage.

Macbeth

The Gratuitous Violins rating: **1/2 out of ****

Every review of Macbeth that I read mentioned the gory nature of the current Broadway production, starring Patrick Stewart as the Scottish general who kills his way to the throne. There will be blood, I was promised. New York Times critic Ben Brantley even compared its depictions of horror to a Wes Craven movie.

As regular readers of Gratuitous Violins know, I tend to be more than a tad on the squeamish side, so I approached the play with some trepidation. But it was a chance to see a great British thespian tackle Shakespeare, and director Rupert Goold's interpretation was supposed to be innovative. I figured I could always close my eyes or take off my glasses if it got to be too much.

Well, last week, at the Lyceum Theatre, I saw Macbeth, and I didn't feel the least bit squeamish. I didn't have to put my head between my knees to ward off fainting, and I only took off my glasses briefly. Don't get me wrong, what I saw was plenty, but given the buildup, I was expecting much more blood and guts. It was actually kind of disappointing.

I guess that's largely how I felt about Macbeth. While there were some things I liked, and it was pretty interesting to look at most of the time, for me this production of the Scottish play, the 45th on Broadway, doesn't quite live up to the hype.

My preparation for seeing Macbeth consisted of skimming a brief synopsis and a vague recollection of having read it in high school. I have to admit that a lot of the dialogue just went right by me. It's difficult to appreciate the characters and their motivations when you can't really understand what they're saying. And the actors' shouting their lines at times didn't help.

Still, even if I couldn't always understand what was going on, there was always plenty to look at thanks to Anthony Ward's production design. This version of Macbeth takes place in a dingy, institutional looking basement that becomes, in turn, a hospital, a kitchen, a train station, a banquet room and a battlefield. The setting is clearly Russia under Stalin, and Lorna Heavey's video projections bring the point home with newsreel footage of the Soviet army on parade.

Some of Goold's choices were interesting. I liked the eerie, rapping witches, played by Polly Frame, Sophie Hunter and Niamh McGrady. I liked the Russian songs and the startling appearance of Banquo's (Martin Turner) ghost. But Christopher Patrick Nolan as a porter who urinates into a sink? C'mon, was that really necessary or was it simply included for shock value? He pees for an awfully long time.

The staging hints at Macbeth's ruthlessness and amorality. We see him calmly making a sandwich, carefully slicing a huge loaf of brown bread, while dispatching two assassins to kill Banquo. And it was very cool to hear Stewart recite the lines I knew, like "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand" as he reaches for an imaginary weapon.

I also liked having a younger Kate Fleetwood play Lady Macbeth. You can easily imagine her as Macbeth's trophy wife, egging him on to seize power and get rid of anyone in his way. Her eventual breakdown, the way she looks physically and emotionally haggard, was very effective. There's a lot of literal and figurative washing of hands to give us the sense of the inner torment that both Macbeths are going through.

But overall, I expected more from Stewart and Fleetwood. As interesting as the video projections were, they don't substitute for acting, for making us believe that Stewart's Macbeth was a Stalin-like figure. I got a sense that these were pretty evil people, that Lady Macbeth was goading her husband on. But I didn't feel the hatred and revulsion that I should have felt. I thought I'd be blown away by the monstrosity of this power-mad couple, and I wasn't. Perhaps it was my 21st-century ears resisting the 17th-century language.

The one actor I felt came closest to engaging me was Michael Feast as the nobleman Macduff. I thought he gave a powerful performance. His reaction when he learns that Macbeth has killed his wife and children was the deepest emotion that I felt all evening. You could see and feel the anguish. At that moment, the antiquated words weren't a barrier at all. For me, there were just too few moments like that.

Broadway times two

When I reviewed the current Broadway revival of South Pacific, I mentioned that if you combine it with August: Osage County, you have a perfect pair of bookends for the Greatest Generation that grew up during the Great Depression, fought and won World War II, and sired the baby boomers.

South Pacific is the idealized, romanticized beginning of the Greatest Generation - full of youthful optimism and self-confidence. August: Osage County is when it all comes crashing to an end, in old age and illness, in a torrent of anger and bitterness. Together, they'd make a very interesting and thought-provoking day at the theatre.

Well, I've been thinking about some other shows that would make great Broadway double features. Here's my list so far:

Thurgood and Hairspray: Ok, this one's practically a no-brainer. They're both about the civil-rights movement. Hairspray takes place in Baltimore, and Thurgood Marshall was from Baltimore. I understand that one is a musical about a fictional character and the other, starring Laurence Fishburne, is a one-man play about a legendary civil-rights lawyer who became the nation's first African-American Supreme Court justice. I'm not trying to make light of Marshall's achievements by comparing the show to Hairspray, and I haven't seen Thurgood yet. But they both recall an important time in American history, one that changed this country in profound ways. They're both about the power of the individual to affect change. And I think, or at least I hope, that they both have the ability to educate and inspire as well as entertain.

Passing Strange and Sunday in the Park with George: I've only seen SITPWG on DVD, with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. But like Passing Strange, it's about the process of creating art and all of the struggle that involves for the artist. In one case, it's a painter working on a canvas, in the other, an aspiring musician trying to compose a song. They both examine all of the people and events that pass through an artist's life and help to inspire his or her work. I also think that Passing Strange bears more than a passing resemblance to The Wizard of Oz, so pairing it with Wicked would work, too.

Wicked and The 39 Steps: Both of these take classic films and reimagine them in very creative, inspired ways. Ok, The 39 Steps is pretty much a word-for-word retelling of the Alfred Hitchcock movie, as opposed to Wicked's expansion of the story and characters we know from The Wizard of Oz. It doesn't take the story any further or expand our understanding of it the way Wicked does. Still, despite the differences, I think these are two interesting examples of taking material from another source and putting it on stage.

The Lion King and Macbeth: Yes, one's from Disney and one's a bloody Shakespearean tragedy about a power-hungry Scottish general that's clearly for an adult audience. But let's examine the plot of The Lion King: a young prince, believing his uncle is responsible for his father's death, tries to avenge the crime. I'm not the first to notice that it bears a strong resemblance to Hamlet. I'll be taking in both The Lion King and the current revival of Macbeth, starring Patrick Stewart, next month, although not, unfortunately, on the same day. But close enough for comparison.