Elling

Elling, at Broadway's Barrymore Theatre
Gratuitous Violins rating: *** out of ****

In the critical shorthand, Elling is a Norwegian version of The Odd Couple with a twist: two mismatched patients at a mental institution try to make a go of it as roommates in an Oslo apartment.

As the title character, Denis O'Hare is small, fastidious, nervous, fearful of venturing outside. Brendan Fraser's Kjell Bjarne is his opposite: big, with a booming voice and a bit of a slob, he's outgoing and desperately wants to meet a woman.

Helping the pair is a social worker, Frank Asli, played by Jeremy Shamos, who checks on them but also gives them the tough love they need. Jennifer Coolidge is hilarious as several characters, including the pregnant upstairs neighbor, Reidun, and Richard Easton is poignant as Alfons Jorgensen, an elderly poet who befriends them.

This was my first time seeing any of these actors onstage and I really enjoyed all of the performances. O'Hare and Fraser were especially great to watch. They created memorable, quirky characters without making them too cutesy or over the top.

We're never quite sure what the problems are with Elling and Kjell Bjarne. Elling seems to have had a very strong attachment to his late mother and Kjell Bjarne seems to have been "different" all his life. (From my front-row seat in the left orchestra, I saw a little more of Fraser than I'd anticipated in a scene where the two exchange underpants. But not in a bad way!)

No matter their history, the people they encounter accept them for who they are. Elling is not only about finding your way in the world, it's also about making a family - maybe not the one you were born into but one that's just as caring and loving nonetheless.

Scott Pask's scenic design is sparse - the apartment has a couple of beds, a table and chairs, an armoire. There are some nice touches, like the tiny Norwegian flags on a tiny Christmas tree. It's snappily directed by Doug Hughes. I don't know where costume designer Catherine Zuber got Kjell's hat but I love it!

Elling started out as a novel by Ingvar Ambjornsen, then became a movie and received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and finally, was adapted for the stage by British writer Simon Bent.

This isn't a deep play but it's sweet and it tells the story of its two main characters with humor and affection. I was so sorry to learn today that it's closing on Sunday, only a week after opening night. I wish Elling had found a bigger audience.

For me, the joy came from watching Elling and Kjell Bjarne slowly gain confidence as they interact with the outside world. At first, I was afraid I was laughing at them but really, I was rooting for them to succeed.

The Scottsboro Boys

The Scottsboro Boys, at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre
Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

It's been more than 30 years but I can still remember the first time I saw a Kander and Ebb musical, the movie version of Cabaret.

There were parts of the story, set in Berlin as the Nazis are rising to power, that made me uncomfortable. But it also made me realize that a musical could explore a serious subject while still be entertaining in the best sense of the word. Cabaret was thoughtful, tuneful and powerful.

Watching The Scottsboro Boys, the final work from songwriters John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, I felt the same way. The story of nine black teenagers falsely accused of rape in Alabama in 1931 is profound, moving and immensely entertaining musical theatre.

The Scottsboro Boys is told as a minstrel show, a format in which, traditionally, white performers in blackface would mimic African-Americans. Here, minstrelsy is turned on its head: black performers imitate white characters. And it's used not to ridicule black people but to illuminate the era's racism, which it does with chilling effectiveness.

John Cullum, celebrating the 50th anniversary of his Broadway debut, is the only white cast member. Looking like Southern gentry in his white suit and top hat, he's the interlocutor, urging the nine to sing and dance.

The ensemble numbers, like "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey," that opens the show, were rousing and the choreography by Susan Stroman, who also directed, was thrilling.

But knowing what they represented, it made me uneasy to applaud. These were people being forced to "put on a show." And I think that was the point. The minstrel show, as hard as it was to watch sometimes, demonstrated how black men were viewed - as buffoonish objects of entertainment for white audiences.

Still, there's an important distinction in The Scottsboro Boys between how the nine are depicted when they're "performing" and how we see them when they're alone, in jail. (Beowulf Borritt's very simple set uses planks and silver-painted chairs to form cells, a courthouse and a train.)

Book writer David Thompson makes them far from stereotypes as their case winds its way through the legal system. He treats them as individuals and their stories with dignity and compassion. We learn about their lives, their hopes and fears, in a way that I found compelling.

The Scottsboro Boys focuses on Hayward Patterson, played by a spellbinding Joshua Henry. He's a proud, defiant man who won't be cowed into pleading guilty to something he didn't do. When he sang the gorgeous ballad "Go Back Home," it took my breath away.

But to me, the most heartbreaking was the youngest, Eugene Williams, portrayed with astonishing self-assurance by 12-year-old Jeremy Gumbs. His tap dance to the song "Electric Chair" was searing and nightmarish.

As Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon play the white characters - sheriff, guards, lawyers, the attorney general - with outrageous, hilarious exaggeration. Likewise, Christian Dante White and James T. Lane are terrific in dual roles as two of the nine - and as their female accusers.

McClendon has a memorable turn as Samuel Leibowitz, the Jewish lawyer from New York who was a tireless advocate for the Scottsboro Boys. He's wonderful in "That's Not the Way We Do Things," which cleverly points out the sometimes patronizing attitudes of Northern white liberals. (Speaking as a Northern white liberal myself, it made me chuckle.)

And just as the musical shines a light on racism, it also exposes the era's anti-Semitism. In "Financial Advice," there's a derisive reference to Jewish money paying for the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. Hard to hear, yes, but historically accurate and reflective of how Jews were viewed by white Southerners.

What The Scottsboro Boys did so well was remind me that the struggle for civil rights in this country occurred from the bottom up, sparked by ordinary black men and women who had simply had enough.

These were poor people, arrested while riding the rails to look for work in the middle of the Depression. Some of them couldn't read or write. But as the musical reveals, they left a legacy - one that stunned me and left me incredibly moved.

The Scottsboro Boys is a thoughtful, tuneful and powerful American story.

Brief Encounter

Brief Encounter,
Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54 on Broadway

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

I can't think of a more whimsical, romantic, magical theatre experience than Brief Encounter. It's like watching a 1930s movie come alive onstage - visually heightened and with all the boring parts left out.

The play, a production of Britain's Kneehigh Theatre, has been adapted with tremendous imagination by Emma Rice from the David Lean film, which was based on Noel Coward's Still Life.

Alec and Laura meet in a railway station cafe. He's a doctor who comes to her aid when she gets a cinder in her eye. Even though they're married with children, they are instantly drawn to each other. They're proper and reserved but there's no denying the spark between them.

As Alec, Tristan Sturrock is absolutely dashing. He's the opposite of Laura's detached husband, played by Joseph Alessi, who doubles as the stationmaster. Hannah Yelland's Laura is beautiful and so expressive. You can see in her face how conflicted she feels.

Watching their relationship develop reminded me of how incredibly sexy those old movies could be without the lovers getting completely undressed and jumping into bed.

After they've been out on a lake - in a rowboat onstage - Laura takes off her blouse to let it dry. Alec helps her put it back on and buttons it for her in a way that's completely chaste yet the underlying emotion made me feel positively tingly.

But this isn't merely a staid retelling. Brief Encounter is truly unique and captivating.

You get into the mood even as you walk into the theatre. Uniformed ushers, dressed like old-fashioned hotel bellhops, walk up and down the aisle. A quartet of singers and musicians are performing.

And I love the way Noel Coward's songs, which I'd never appreciated before, are performed by the supporting characters, who are pursuing their own love affairs. Alessi's stationmaster lusts after Annette McLaughlin's Myrtle, who runs the restaurant; Dorothy Atkinson's Beryl, the waitress, flirts with Gabriel Ebert's Stanley, who sells chocolate bars.

The projection design by Gemma Carrington and Jon Driscoll allows actors to step into and out of the movie in a way that seemed magical. Simon Baker's sound design makes the wind howl and the ground rumble and the waves crash. Neil Murray's design and costumes made me feel like I was looking at a big toy train station come alive.

But the special effects never felt gimmicky or threatened to overwhelm the love story at the heart of the play. A great show transports the audience and that's what Brief Encounter did so beautifully for me.

And if after 90 minutes you don't want it to end, you can join the cast for a rollicking concert at the back of the theatre. At the performance I attended, they played "We Are Family," "Time After Time" and "Don't Stop Believin'."

I could not help but go out into the cool night air smiling.

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.

Amtrak's questionable Wi-Fi filter

I was on Amtrak's high-speed Acela Express this afternoon, returning home from a wonderful weekend in New York City.

AT&T's 3G wireless can be a little spotty on the train so I took advantage of the free Wi-Fi to check my Twitter feed.

I clicked on a link to a critic's notebook by Charles McNulty, who writes about theatre for the Los Angeles Times. He reviewed Gatz and Angels in America, both off-Broadway.

This is the message I got:

"The page you tried to visit cannot be accessed because it contains content belonging to the category of: Adult. AmtrakConnect blocks access to selected sites that are known to utilize high bandwith or that may contain content that could be considered questionable by some of our passengers."

I was pretty shocked. What "adult" content could there possibly be in a theatre review from the very mainstream Los Angeles Times?

When I got home, I read the reviews and I could not find anything objectionable, not one word or photograph that could be considered "questionable" by anyone. Certainly nothing that would have gotten the page tagged as "adult."

The only thing I can think of is, the Angels in America review mentions AIDS. Maybe that was the trigger for Amtrak's filter? If so, that would be very sad. Or maybe it was McNulty's use of the phrase "hot-blooded" in the Gatz review?

I simply don't know.

Now, I realize that Internet filters are imperfect. Maybe this was just a glitch. Or maybe I'm missing something here. I've sent an e-mail to Amtrak and I'll post an update when I get a reply.

Update: I got reply from Amtrak apologizing and explaining that there was a glitch in the automatic content filter. Typically, they have no issues with links on the Los Angeles Times. I still don't know what, if anything, specifically triggered the "adult content" block. It would have been interesting to find out.

Providence - a theatre capital?

I'm shaking my head in disbelief at the results of this survey conducted by Travel + Leisure magazine. The magazine's readers ranked 35 U.S. cities on their culture, shopping, restaurants, nightlife.

According to visitors, Providence was rated second, just behind New York, in the theatre/performance art category. Chicago, San Francisco and Minneapolis-St. Paul rounded out the top five. Residents ranked Providence third, behind New York and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Chicago and Houston were fourth and fifth.

Ahead of Chicago? Ahead of Boston? Really? (To be fair, those cities do outrank Providence in the overall culture category.)

Sure, we have some fine local theatre companies, like Providence's Tony-winning Trinity Rep and the Gamm Theatre next door, in Pawtucket. And there's the Providence Performing Arts Center that brings in touring productions of Broadway shows.

But seriously, here's this week's theatre section from Time Out Chicago. And here are the theatre listings from The Boston Globe.

I'm sorry, but you can't compare Providence's offerings to either of those much larger cities. (I have nothing against high school, college or amateur theatricals but we're talking pro or semipro here.)

There's hardly enough theatre in Providence to fill one weekend a month. I wish there were more!

Mauritius

Mauritius at the Gamm Theatre
Gratuitous Violins rating: *** out of ****

In Mauritius, playwright Theresa Rebeck puts a contemporary spin on a timeless literary theme - the search for a legendary object of great significance and value.

Half-sisters Jackie and Mary, whose mother has just died, are fighting over a family heirloom: an album that holds a pair of rare 18th-century postage stamps from the island of Mauritius, a former British colony in the Indian Ocean. Flaws in the stamps make them even more valuable.

Amanda Ruggiero's Jackie, their mother's caregiver, says the stamps were left to her. Casey Seymour Kim's Mary, who left home as a teenager years ago and never returned, maintains that because the stamps were part of her paternal grandfather's collection, they are part of her inheritance.

Left with a pile of bills, Jackie is desperate to sell the stamps and make a fresh start. Mary, facing Jackie's accusations of abandonment, is defensive and rather uptight. Where Jackie is diffident, Mary is brassy - almost to the point of being grating.

Jackie feels she's owed the stamps as payment for everything she's put up with. To Mary, who knows their history and spent hours poring over them as a child, they're a link to her beloved grandfather.

But they're not the only ones who covet the stamps.

There's Jim O'Brien's Phil, owner of a rundown stamp store who can't be bothered to examine Jackie's album - it's not "Antiques Roadshow," he tells her dismissively; his thuggish friend Dennis, played by Steve Kidd, does look and hatches a plan to sell the stamps to Richard Donelly, a businessman whose hardened exterior melts when he sees them.

What I loved about Mauritius is that it's terrifically suspenseful. There were plot twists that took me by surprise. I was riveted, wondering what would happen next. And it was fascinating to watch Ruggiero's Jackie transform from an insecure young woman, unsure of what she has, to a tough negotiator.

Still, as much as I enjoyed the play, there were a few things about Mauritius that bothered me.

When someone comes into Phil's store with a weathered album, wouldn't he at least look at it? And once Jackie realizes the value of what she has, why doesn't she put the album in a safe-deposit box instead of carrying it around everywhere, clutched tightly to her chest? I chalked it up to her innocence - and grief.

More importantly, I felt like Rebeck was teasing the audience a bit with what she reveals and doesn't reveal about the characters' histories. In the end, that frustrated me more than anything.

We never learn what forced Mary to leave home and why she stayed away, although Rebeck hints a few times that she's going to tell us. Dennis has a tantalizing line alluding to how Mary's grandfather might have come into possession of the stamps but it never goes anywhere. Likewise, something happened long ago between Phil and Sterling that remains unexplained.

But maybe the back stories don't really matter. Perhaps the stamps - sought after for different reasons - are the most important characters.

Reviewing the play in the New Yorker during its 2007 Broadway run, John Lahr called Mauritius as "Mamet for girls." And it does remind me of Mamet - the profanity, the rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue, people in desperate situations, the deal-making and everyone trying to get the upper hand.

I thought of another comparison: The Maltese Falcon. What Sam Spade says in the movie about the statue you could also say about the two square-shaped slips of paper at the heart of Mauritius. They are "the stuff that dreams are made of."