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!

A Free Man of Color

A Free Man of Color, at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre
Gratuitous Violins rating: **1/2 out of ****

At the end of Act I, A Free Man of Color struck me as sprawling, bawdy and a bit confusing. Too many characters, too much going on in too many places.

But in Act II, John Guare's play came together in way that made sense of everything I'd seen before. It was a compelling - even brilliant - finish. And the very last line will stay with me for a long time.

Jeffrey Wright is dazzling as Jacques Cornet, a playwright and a free man of color living in New Orleans.

Born to a slave mother, he purchased his freedom and became the heir of his wealthy white father. Cornet dresses like a dandy, seduces other men's wives at will and generally lives life to the fullest in a freewheeling city where race seemingly doesn't matter.

But between 1801 and 1806, the period in which A Free Man of Color takes place, New Orleans is in transition. Founded in 1718 by the French, the city was ceded to Spain in 1763, reverted back to France in 1801 and was sold to the United States in 1803 in the Louisiana Purchase.

Guare uses a broad canvas and historical figures such as Napoleon, Thomas Jefferson and Touissant Loverture to tell the story. He moves from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., France, Spain, the newly independent nation of Haiti and the vast unknown territory west of the Mississippi.

It's a lot to keep track of and I'll admit I sometimes felt a little lost in the sheer amount of history and number of characters and locations. (There are more than 30 people in the cast.) And while I wasn't offended by the bawdy humor, I just didn't find it all that funny a lot of the time.

But I have to give director George C. Wolfe credit for the play holding together as well as it does. It was always interesting to watch and I was never bored.

Mos (formerly Mos Def) was excellent as Cornet's slave, Murmur, and as Toussaint Louverture, leader of the slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Louverture makes an emotional plea to the United States, as one young democracy to another, to help his newly independent nation of Haiti.

As Meriwether Lewis, the secretary to John McMartin's President Thomas Jefferson, I found Paul Dano's youthful eagerness and desire for adventure so appealing. He's chafing to get out of Washington and explore the new territory that the United States has acquired.

And it was pretty exciting to see Joseph Marcell tackle a dramatic role as the dignified Dr. Toubib, Cornet's physician who acts as a narrator. Of course I know him as Geoffrey, the proper British butler on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

The sets by David Rockwell and costumes from Ann Hould-Ward were lavish. And some of the imagery was stunning, including a boatload of slaves being deported from Haiti, Mardi Gras revelers and the vast whiteness that represented the unexplored parts of the North American continent.

The play is a character study and a snapshot of New Orleans at a particular time in history. But I think most importantly, Guare is making a powerful statement about how our lofty ideals as a nation sometimes conflict with our actions.

Ironically, Cornet fears the return of the French, with their code noir that severely restricts the lives of black people, and feels a sense of relief with the arrival of the United States. After all, doesn't the Declaration of Independence say that all men are created equal?

As it turns out, Cornet will have much to fear from the Americans. (Jefferson helpfully informs him that "all men are created equal" isn't in the Constitution.)

What happens shows how tenuous life for a black man could be, even for a supposedly free man of color. And Wright is especially powerful as Cornet's fortune changes.

I wouldn't recommend A Free Man of Color to every theatergoer. But if you're interested in the time period or the history of New Orleans or the history of race in America, or if you just want to see an ambitious new American play, I think this is one you'll be talking about afterward.

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.