NYCweboy

And For The Rest Of You, Swags

It's usually a risk to see a Broadway show late into its run. For one thing, it's tired; the performers have been doing 8 shows a week, over and over, and there's bound to be a certain... lack of freshness.  The buzz around even the most amazing show is bound to have slipped as well. And frequently, the show's original stars - the real "marquee names" who probably justified the multimillion enterprise - have long gone.

In short, there's a reason I'm not dying to see Hairspray again, now that Harvey Fierstein is two shows away.

I saw Grand Hotel well into its run, when Karen Akers had been replaced by someone who looked and sounded like an uncanny carbon copy, and it had this kind of sluggishness.  Everything moved... but just a little slowly. Then again, as Forbidden Broadway nicknamed it, the "Grim Hotel" was never really tat much of an "up" show.

By rights, Curtains should suffer just so; it's not exactly up - though it's certainly not a down show, by any means. It's been close to a year, the awards it won in 2007 are largely fodder for poster text, and it is probably soon to close. Yet it was a delight; all of its main stars are still there, still tearing into it with zest, taking it out with a bang, not a whimper. Fred Ebb should be proud.

Ebb, of course, was the lyrics writing half of the legendary team of Kander and Ebb. Along with John Kander, they've created some of post Golden Age Broadway's greatest hits, and helped to define the modern musical.  Curtains, the show that was coming together at the time Ebb died, was carried into its final stages with the assistance of Rupert Holmes; but it stands as a final testament to Kander and Ebb's lifetime of collaboration - a celebration of the theater they loved, and a wicked parody done by truly knowing minds. It's not perfect, but for what it is, it's terrific.

Crrritic!

My first post is up over at Newcritics. Check it out.  And check out Tom on John Adams. And this really interesting Lance Mannion post on Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys.

I may cross post eventually; but for now I'd like the two to have separate lives (and to get you to visit newcritics, which is a great place).

More up here shortly...

Okay... But It Probably Speaks More to My Feelings About Joan Collins as Alexis

I am truly blushing at the latest link from James Wolcott:

Inspired by the Siren's Joan Crawford birthday wishes, NYCweboy unveils his shrine to Cukor's The Women, where Crawford and Shearer had their memorable slag match over some dope named Steve.

I can't say The Women (based on the Clare Booth Luce play that she apparently batted out in a blink) is one of my film faves. The clackity-clack of the gossip and wisecracks I find wearing, and Rosalind Russell's peacock hen performance is an endurance test that I can never quite pass. Though it's still worth its weight in platinum compared to the recent stage edition starring Cynthia Nixon as Mary the betrayed wife (Shearer) and a shrilly miscast Jennifer Tilly as Crystal (the Joan Crawford role). Crystal, as her name indicates, should be a cutting, bright schemer with ratlike cunning, not a breathy honey pot of a bimbo.

Reading NYCweboy's terrific take on the Crawford-Shearer showdown scene makes one realize that what he admires in Crawford ("the unapologetic nature of her work--tough, uncompromising, sexual") speaks to his support of Hillary Clinton.

I actually saw the Cynthia Nixon version on Broadway - and, like Shearer, I'm not sure Nixon was right for Mary Haines; she's smarter than that, and it showed. And I can see Wolcott's point about Jennifer Tilly, though I found her kind of inspired - she handled the famous "bubble bath" sequence with Mary's daughter with some aplomb, I thought (Crawford, in what I think may be her only work with Virginia Weidler - MGM's precocious  "little rich girl" of 1939 in The Women and The Philadelphia Story - was hard as nails). And Tilly's no bimbo, which I thought came through in her work, but maybe not. See? I could go on and on... and thanks to the Self Styled Siren herself for her kind, and illuminating comments (and may I recommend her in depth follow up on Joan's work in A Woman's Face, which I've seen once, but long ago).

The Wondrous Silences

Last week marked the renewal of the Weboy's High Culture License.  A trip to the theater, the symphony, and the movies - the former 2, at least, likely to elicit "oohs and aahs" from co-workers for their general imprimatur of "classy" - made me feel less like the world I'm in is a cultural wasteland.

The play was William Inge's Come Back Little Sheba, centered around th lead performance of S. Epatha Merkerson, a/k/a everybody's favorite senior police officer on Law and Order (I hadn't been counting, but she's been in that part for 16 years). Merkerson's casting in the role was interesting because the casting was basically colorblind, and added a layer of interracial relations to the proceedings.

Though I thought I knew the substance of the play - I think of it as part of the "neo realist" part of the fifties, where theater and TV especially tried to do dramas that captured the very everyday nature of some conflicts and problems - but really, I didn't.  Merkerson plays Lola Delaney, a housewife married to a midwestern chiropractor, who, she reveals fairly early on, is a recovered alcoholic. Due to the state of their finances, they have needed to take in a boarder, a young woman named Marie, who is involved with a man back home, but is having a fling with the handsome sorts star who models for her art class.  Doc, the recovering alcoholic, has taken a shine to Marie, and disapproves of her liaison. And it all falls apart, when Lola arranges a dinner for Marie and her soon to be fiance, and Doc disappears on a drunken binge, only to return in a nearly murderous, alcoholic rage.

One can see how the play was a revelation for its time - alcoholism was still not widely discussed at the time, and the role of Alcoholic's Anonymous even less so, and Inge works in a lot of AA material, including a general sense of hopefulness about recovery that's welcome. But he does it all with something of heavy hand, and though the actors tried heroically, the dated impressions of drunken binges and out of character behavior didn't entirely work - though it makes a nice counterpoint to the sweet, sad, poetic drunks of O'Neill and say, Tennessee Wlliams.

What did work was Merkerson, whose abilities and talents are rarely on display in L&O. In this play, she found the heart of Lola's character, the world of a codependant woman trying, as best she knows, to deal with a bewildering problem she can't really fix. It would be easy to make this a tale of being beaten down and hopeless, and Merkerson really refuses to wallow: this Lola is a woman who plays the hand she's dealt, as best she knows how. And it's all the more heartbreaking because her choices are so circumscribed. There's a moment in the second act where, surrounded by reminders of Doc's alcoholic rage, she literally finds herself unable to carry on, to even move. It's a stunning, revelatory moment, and Merkerson makes it entirely true.

The thing is, what worked in this production best were moments like that, in the silences. What was left unsaid, what went unexplored... these are the things that made this Come Back Little Sheba so affecting as drama.  I suspect that wasn't always the case.  I suspect that, back then, even the modest admissions shown here - of day-to-day coping with alcoholism and its aftermath, of knowing that young single "nice girls" could be sexually active before marriage, of the emotional problems that underpin marriage... must have seemed, in themselves, like a revelation. That's not the case now - our world has moved, we know more, we talk more about these things (though, arguably, we could stand to do more of it).  It's the play that feels dated, slightly archaic, something of a throwback.  that it has the power - as it did for me - to continue to move an audience, and catch us short, was a tribute to sensitive, thoughtful direction and talented, impressive actors. I'm glad I caught it; I'm sorry, since it closed this weekend, that you can't.  But if someone has the brains to film it and bring it to TV or cable, try and catch it. Merkerson, and her costars, are wondrous. Especially in the silences.

The Olbermess

For weeks, my friend J in Baltimore asked me to write something positive about Keith Olbermann and his show on MSNBC.  This was several months ago, and because I like J's suggestions, I tried, for quite a while to think of how to write it. When I had cable, I would, on occasion, turn to Olbermann. Though many in the blogosphere and in the real world laud Olbermann as  the liberal backstop to an increasingly conservative screed on TV, I was less unabashed; I found him snarky, a little off-putting, one of those "glad he's on our side, though I'm not sure that's helpful," type opinion. I give Olbermann credit for understanding the blowhard nature of his competitor, Bill O'Reilly, and knowing enough to tweak O'Reilly in ways that he can't help but respond to; it's amusing, I'd agree, as is his "worst person in the world" stuff that make conservatives howl.  But if you ask me does any of it lift our national conversation... well, no.  It's fun, perhaps, to see people who've been given free reign get the what-for from a thoughtful opponent... but it doesn't really prove that we're any better than they are.

Ultimately, though, J felt, as I did, that Olbermann was more problem than positive, and then he asked me to say that too. In that context, and in the spirit of my post this morning, I offer this link to Olbermann's screed from last night; which, naturally has become the clarion call for the Obama supporters.  As Olbermann mentions me (in a broad brush swipe at all Clinton supporters), I feel compelled to say that if I agreed with any of Olbermann's high dudgeon, I too would share his passion for the topic: it would be inconceivable for me to support Clinton if I thought what he said was both true and truly outrageous. I find it neither.  Indeed, mostly his outrage seems calculated, and more for the cameras than for the merits. As I said this morning, I think we're challenged by a conversation we don't have words for, and it strikes me that Olbermann is groping - often unsuccessfully - for the words that would better explain his point, and instead lurches around, pulling any and every thing he can lay his hands on (what this has to do with that Nightline sports clip is beyond me) to make a point that's really not worth the nine minutes and sustained yelling he throws at it. As I also said, a few days ago, I think Olbermann may have simply, like many of us, slipped over the edge in letting the passions of the day take hold over a more measured, thoughtful take on the divisions and differences between the campaigns.

Riverdaughter, over at her blog The Confluence (which I highly recommend) has the more pointed response to Olbermann's screed.  I can't muster the energy to get into it as she does.  Given that Clinton has also herself made a more complete statement distancing herself from the implications of Ferraro's comments, I wonder if Olbermann is satisfied yet... or if, as I expect, he thinks he caused it.  I mean it is, after all, all about him.

Go Ask Alice

J points me to the passing of Alice Ghostley yesterday, one of the premiere comedic character actresses of her generation.  Ghostley - in case you somehow live under a rock and never watched Bewitched - specialized in a ditsy, dithery woman of a certain age, your dotty Aunt (as she was as Esmerelda on Bewitched, and years later on Designing Women) always getting into one misunderstanding or another, so hilarity can ensue.

These are the moments where I never feel as white and suburban as my best friend - I liked Ghostley's work, but other things, sophisticated things, grab my attention more. Sophisticates like the also just passed Brett Somers (joining her Match Game co-conspirator Charles Nelson Reilly) were what I aspired to be.  Still, he's right to say that Alice deserves a place in the pantheon - no one, really, did it better.  And it's the ensemble that makes the show.  How do you make people laugh? Go ask Alice.

(J gave me that last line.  My thanks, friend)

And Then He Put His Hand In The [Blank]

Well, it appears to be the year we start losing Game Show Panelists.

They don't do game shows like they used to - The Price Is Right was a real category killer in daytime, and Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune changed the nighttime landscape, and everybody thinks celebrity gossip is what sells these days (though I get the sense that the whole gossip industry is due for a shakeup soon; too many outlets, too few real stars).

But when I was a kid was the last gasp of the "celebrity" panel show.  To Tell The Truth, Match Game, Hollywood Squares (and Jim would kill me - I almost forgot Password)... these were the remains of a vibrant industry that started in the fifties, and included What's My Line and I've Got A Secret.  In those olden days, the celebrities were just that - celebrated people with a bit of class.  By the seventies, they were ... well who knew who they were.  Outside of the shows, I'd never heard of Kitty Carlisle, Peggy Cass, Lola Falana, Nipsey Russell, Brett Sommers, Paul Lynde... and many more.  Some were Vegas (Charo!), some were theater vets with time on their hands, but they all seemed to know each other, and came off as classy and witty (scripted banter and some bugle beads can take you a long way.  Just ask Cher).  

Which is to say I will miss Charles Nelson Reilly.

More than Paul Lynde, Charles was undiluted open gayness on TV - witty, well dressed, someone who implied "keep up" with everything he said (with a wink) on Match Game. Gene Rayburn and others gave scathing comments years later about how desperately they had to try to turn a largely dumb game format - match the fill in the blank word with the celebrities - by basically making the whole subtext sex. And there Charles was on the dumbest show, making it seem classy.

So much of who I am - so much I discovered of what gay men my age saw as well - was built on seeing Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde; they brought a gay persona into our homes under cover of humor, and let us know what we could get away with, and how. My gay life was built on wanting to be a New Yorker, on devouring old movies and bios of the old stars, and trying to learn to be as witty as Charles and Paul (which I later figured out, was also about trying to emulate Noel Coward and Cole Porter).  It's easy to dismiss all of this as "what it takes to be queeny", but it wasn't that simple.  You work with what you had, and you learned more along the way. I'm not the queen I once was, but I think my wit has only gotten sharper.  Practice, practice, practice.

Charles Nelson Reilly was, in actuality, a talented actor, teacher and director, who earned a Tony nomination directing Julie Harris in The Gin Game (with Charles Durning; he also directed Harris in the original production of The Belle of Amherst). He lived with his lover until he died, and never pretended not to be who he was, even to the detriment, to some degree, of his career. He may not represent the "gay pride" that sells magazines these days, but I couldn't have survived without his example.  May he rest in peace.

Cause I Was A Bit 2 (Arts And) Leisurely

This may seema little late, but what the heck - it's stuck with me.

Around the time I graduated college, The New York Times went through something of a sea change - partly it was the changing of the guard at the top of the paper - Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, Jr. replaced his father as Chairman of the Board in 1992.  But part of it was a realization that the "grey lady" was just... too grey. Too old, too stodgy, out of step with the times (the eighties, really, were about a lot of this - shaking things up for "the new."  I see that now).

The effect, which you could see especially in Arts & Leisure, was that newer, younger voices emerged and they were supposed to be more "hip" and with it ("hip" - in quotes - covers a lot of what was so wrong with all of this). Im practical terms it meant that a slew of extablished writers, especially longstanding critics - Vincent Canby in film, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in books, among others (Frank Rich, well ensconced, would last through this; but they added a "Sunday critic" to at least give the appearance of sensitivity to charges that Rich exercised outsized influence over the New York theater world).

But these younger voices were not necessarily better; they tended to underline the Times real flaw - a wealthy patrician (i.e. "grey") approach to New York's complex ever-changing scene, especially in the Arts.  Late to notice rap and hip-hop, the Times struggled with how to fit modern changes in pop music with its traditions of enshrining classical and opera (and even there, wrapping classical music and opera in a cocoon of stodginess that resisted newer, experimental work in the field).

J and I bonded, in Baltimore, where I lived after graduating from college, over a front page Sunday Arts article by Bret Easton Ellis.  By that time, Ellis had blown away the intial hoopla created by Less Than Zero with The Rules of Attraction, a limp, dreadfully told saga of college age anomie at a school that looked suspiciously like Bennington (Ellis' alma mater). Ellis wrote an article describing the new "Generation X" - young people, fresh out of college, who were rejecting the values of the "Baby Boom" that had come before them.  I can't begin to describe how stupidly fatuous this article was; it made J and I embarrassed to be in the same cohort, so much so, we collaborated on a brilliant (if I say so myself) long (deadly for getting published) letter to the editor.  Even though nothing happened with it, I loved the process of creating it (and still, discussing things like it with J).

But I digress (regress?). The selection of Ellis smacked of so much misunderstanding - an Upper East Side notion of "get me someone who's up on the youth of today," and in hindsight, I can see the flailing more clearly now than I did then.  Because the Times, still, suffers from this.  And the reason I bring all of this up is that the Times has never recovered.  I realized, reading the Arts section on Friday, that the Times is devolving into incoherence in the Arts - saddled with critics who are, several of them, poor writers, and most with critical outlooks too attuned to the faddish and the flashy and less about good, established critical standards as a base for looking at new material. In short, the Times has gone from a distant, reserved patrician Upper east Side approach to the worst of the Upper West Side - where what's fashionable is accorded undue seriousness, and yet a snobby superiority to anything "common" (e.g. "Middle American") continues to rule the day.

I'll Be There

And now for one of those lighter notes...

As a something of a Theater Queen (mostly amateur - I know the shows, and most big names, but I'm no Sondheim devotee, or some weird Off Off Broadway type), I do keep up on the comings and goings of popular theater gossip.  So in addition to the recent feud between Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel during Wicked, there was the similarly timed drama of Donna Murphy missing performances at Wonderful Town, a revival of a fifties era musical that had helped establish Rosalind Russell as an extremely versatile leading lady of stage and screen.

Wicked rolls on, but Wonderful Town closed after Brooke Shields(!) replaced Murphy.  But Murphy is now back on Broadway, and today's New York Times featured her mea culpa for the lost performances: seems she'd been struggling with a hemorrhaged vocal cord, and was seesawing back and forth between feeling vocally up to it, and being advised by doctors to skip at various times. 

Murphy's illness was highly frustrating to theater devotees, especially those who had christened her the biggest thing in like ever after her performance in Sondheim's rather dismal Passion.  Murphy is the real thing - a solid actress and a powerful singer with great stage presence.  I had the lucky break of actually seeing her in Wonderful Town (I think it was one of the birthday things Mom and I did), and she was marvelous.  But after seeing her, I could rather understand her missing shows.  Rail thin and glowing Murphy was sensational in a role that is a big starring part, carrying an otherwise slender story on sheer personality.  Such a role was tailor made for Russell's strengths, mainly as a comedienne.  Murphy's got those skills, but the role didn't showcase her voice as well as it might have (the songs are soap bubbles - I can only recall "Ohio"), and the personality effort looked draining, with conga numbers and elaborate fantasy sequences.

So I'm torn - I'm not unsympathetic to Murphy's story, and it's telling, as the writer notes, that the people who hired her for Wonderful Town are either working with her now (in The Kurt Weill bio musical LoveMusik) or looking to work with her in the near future (in another revival of Sondheim's also dismal Follies). But professional is professional and missed shows are not something to be proud of. Over time, Murphy may well erase much of the bad will, but I suspect some of the "diva" aspect that came out during Wonderful Town are not isolated or not part of a full picture.  Still, leading ladies are entitled to their diva qualities when they deliver the goods.  Here's hoping Murphy continues to deliver... the alternative, after all, is worse.