Ms. Kubelik, Shut Up and Deal

Review: Promises, Promises
Broadway Theatre, New York 
July 24, 2010


Promises, Promises was born from the past and the present. Even its source material, Billy Wilder's 1960 film The Apartment, conveyed the drone-like existence of corporate America. By the time the musical opened in 1968, the culture had shifted. People were shedding their inhibitions; the tribe down the street at Hair was shedding even more. What a drag to be a suit. But the show became a strange hybrid of the trusted and true--bookwriter Neil Simon--and the new sounds of Burt Bacharach. Within a somewhat conventional boy-meets-girl comedy lurked a pulsing, driving New York.

Over forty years later, the revival of Promises, Promises sinks into this rhythm like an old pair of shoes. The sleek orchestra voices and varied meters are reminiscent of days gone by. Mad Men has educated us: it was a simpler time with undercurrents of sexism and conniving. The premise begins with C.C. "Chuck" Baxter, never noticed at work until a co-worker with a hot date borrows his nearby apartment. Word spreads among Chuck's superiors, and soon enough, he finds himself a Junior Executive who rents his place to the boss, Mr. Sheldrake. 

Sounds cynical, but the revival carries all the sheen of a Doris Day-Rock Hudson flick. The show still works, and the audience eats it up, though as more of a sixties nostalgia-fest. Don't forget their memories of sitcom stars. Thankfully, Sean Hayes makes an appealing Chuck Baxter. He's more Puck-like than virile, closer to the film's Jack Lemmon than Jerry Orbach in the original production. Hayes clowns his way along, milking laughs whenever Baxter's not pining over the cafeteria worker Fran Kubelik. 

Which leads to the Chenoweth conundrum. It's nice to see Kristin Chenoweth stretch herself, and a thrill to hear her sing anything. But as many have written, she's an odd choice for Fran Kubelik, who lets Sheldrake seduce her and toss her back at his whim. Too old, too well-adjusted, too vocally trained. Again, rawness has eluded this revival. Such things are ephemeral, of course. (As is sound design that isn't over-processed. At least there was a full orchestra with three trumpets.) Neil Simon jokes now often land with a mild chuckle of familiarity. 

But he sure knew how to craft bit parts. Take the scene-stealing lush who helps Baxter drown his sorrows on New Year's Eve. Katie Finneran, who won a Tony for this brief role, digs into it with gusto and every character voice in the book. While Chenoweth is left to her ballads, Hayes and Finneran play drunkenly off each other with Shakespearean grace. "Forget the past and think about the present," she and Baxter sing. A tall order for Promises, Promises, which can't seem to shirk the past at all. 

¡Buzz Lightyear al rescate!

Review: Toy Story 3

Books and TV shows depend upon the series. The bottomless pit of plots and whodunit this time have a history in serialized Dickens novels, radio shows, and Keystone-cop nickelodeons. When the summer movie season rolls around, though, we bemoan the dearth of originality. The barrage of numerals after titles can make a ticket buyer feel he's trapped in some sort of time warp: a radio station stuck in the nineties.

The trilogy has become the most stable form of movie sequel-dom, if you're in the superhero or science fiction business. Properties like the original Star Wars films, Indiana Jones, and more recently The Lord of the Rings have fused in our cultural psyche into one entity. The Ewok battle may not be a cinematic high-point, but that third installment rounds out the series efficiently. After The Empire Strikes Back, all moviegoers and filmmakers surely could hope was that the third didn't sabotage the rest. Remember the dwindling cultural opinion of The Matrix.

All of this build-up is my way of giving Pixar credit where it's due. Toy Story 3, presumably the final chapter in the Woody-Buzz Lightyear saga, doesn't try to aim for infinity and beyond. The film is content to remind us how much we'd missed those gosh-darn-lovable toys. The first film hit theaters in 1995, when I was still in single digits. In the time since, we've been at war, waited in line for iEverything, started blogs, forgotten about Tim Allen... and gone to college.

Though Andy (the kid who owns these toys, now a college student) is moving on, the movie remains deliberately old-fashioned. Sure, there's the 3-D version, for those who want to shell out next week's lunch money. But Pixar's great innovation even at the dawn of computer-animated movies was its storytelling. No matter the voice casting, no other animation studio has churned out a film as great as Toy Story yet, with the possible exception of the first Shrek.

Toy Story 3 works well as part of a package. If I hadn't grown up with these characters, I might have wanted more of a character arc. Wall-E and Up may best it for the audacity of their imagined worlds, sure, but Toy Story 3 is a delightful piece of familiarity. And who would have imagined such an emotional ending to the saga fifteen years ago? Like Andy, we've grown up since the first film, and all it heralded for movies. Sit back and watch as Pixar passes on its patented brand of wonder to a new generation.

The Great American Songbook: Over the Rainbow

Written by: Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg

First performed by: Judy Garland, 1939

It's too well-known to even write about. Countless volumes have been written about The Wizard of Oz, about Judy Garland. Multiple "Songs of the Century" lists top off with "Over the Rainbow" (the "Somewhere" is optional).

Aunt Em tells Dorothy to find "a place where you won't get yourself into any trouble." The neglected girl leans into a bale of hay, yearning for a place beyond the rain. But though "Over the Rainbow" seems like a lark, completely organic to the film and to Judy Garland's voice, the reality was that the song created its own trouble. Studio executives at MGM wanted to scrap the ballad altogether. In 1939, pictures were rarely longer than one hour, forty-five minutes (the major exception being Gone with the Wind). The song, over which the songwriters agonized, was cut from several previews. Who wanted to listen to a teenager singing in a barnyard? their wisdom went. Arlen and Harburg fought for its inclusion, and eventually Louis B. Mayer decided the film would survive with "Over the Rainbow."

Could Oz have survived without it? Apocryphal stories credit the image of a rainbow, introduced by lyricist Harburg, with the sepia-toned look of the Kansas sequences. I saw an outdoor screening of the film last week where audience members applauded at the first splash of color. Without this traditional "I want" song, and without the two-tone opening, would the land of Oz still mesmerize?

When I was a five-year-old, Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch of the West terrified me. Now that I'm twenty-three, the adult ambitions of Oz become more clear. Take, for instance, the satire of the Wizard bestowing brains, hearts, and courage. Every other song in the score appeals to the jolly, singsong, tra la la jingles we expect of children's musicals (though with undoubtedly great wit). "Over the Rainbow," though skyward-bound, is as down-to-earth. It's a sincere character song, outwardly hopeful but inwardly reaching, a little desperate. "Why oh why can't I?" are the final words.

Listen to how the song starts right in on the chorus. Arlen and Harburg composed a verse but never intended it for The Wizard of Oz. Hear how the orchestra seems to open up on the second "Somewhere," and how Garland's voice sounds older than her sixteen years. Some dreams are too good to be true, which she learns through the Wicked Witch and the sham Wizard. Going home makes perfect sense story-wise, but isn't it a bit deflating to see the sepia-tone again? To know that the storm destroyed their crops, and Mrs. Gulch still has it out for Toto? Like the film, "Over the Rainbow" is really about the need for escapism--not just escapism itself.

Holding Out for a Superhero

Review: Iron Man 2

The ending of the first chapter used a smart segue to the impending sequel: Tony Stark confesses he's Iron Man at a press conference; fade to black. As is the way with Part Twos, when we fade back in, everything's pumped up a few notches. Crowds have increased; explosions have tripled. Villains and sidekicks who command high salaries have sprouted like weeds. Imagine the catering bills.

But while some sequels add superfluous subtitles, grow bored with their leads, or ship their characters off to Abu Dhabi, Iron Man 2 has the good sense to understand its strongest ingredient: Robert Downey, Jr. The film series (a third Iron Man is in the works) charts Downey's real-life near-biblical fall from Hollywood grace and re-establishment as a newly risen hero to the masses. While the actor keeps his high profile in check these days, Iron Man 2 presents Tony Stark as an uncomfortable hero, thwarted by his own self-destructive tendencies. Villains are inside us, too.

Nevertheless, externalized baddies are requisite to the comic book genre. Mickey Rourke swings electrified nunchucks like they've been in his arsenal for years. He's a comeback king like Downey, praised for his recent work in The Wrestler. But while Downey maintains a persona of a healed man, a team player, Rourke still plays out in left field, master of the inappropriate award-show outburst. It's fun to see their real-life personalities reversed in the film. Rourke's diabolical Russian engineer is cool and collected, not one for smalltalk, while Tony Stark throws million-dollar temper tantrums.

Iron Man and its sequel obey the classical rules of comic-book films, with a touch of witty repartee a la Nick and Nora Charles. Don't expect too much out-of-the-box from these ventures. Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, and Samuel L. Jackson have been hired as the archetypal damsel in distress, sexpot, and one-eyed badass. Much of the sequel feels like filler story, dangling new threads that will wow (pow! zam!) us in future installments. After the poor taste of Transformers II last summer, though, this franchise earns cred for letting its oddball actors hog the spotlight. They're the real heroes.

The 2010 Tony Awards: Don't Rain on Memphis!

11:03  The season was kinder to plays and musical revivals than to new musicals. Only one Best Musical nominee had an original score. Here's hoping that next year provides a stronger candidate pool. Could the 2011 winner be Catch Me if You Can? Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown? Or Spiderman? Tune in then for more live blog!


10:58  Bernadette Peters presents Best Musical, as usual, to Memphis. And they perform again because they won? It's like American Idol at Radio City. What if some other show had won? Did all the casts get into costume just in case?


10:50  Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane are the best presenters of the night, and Catherine Zeta-Jones is adorable in her shock (I don't know why she's surprised) winning Best Actress for a Musical for A Little Night Music, and trying to drag Michael Douglas on stage, "who's a movie star, and I get to sleep with him every night." Douglas Hodge wasn't at all surprised that he won Best Actor for a Musical riding on the La Cage train.


10:42  Okay, Sean Hayes as Spiderman mumbling through "Parade"... was probably better than Spiderman: The Musical will ever be. La Cage aux Folles may be the luckiest musical ever: it won Best Musical back in 1984, Best Revival in 2005, and now Best Revival of a Musical once again. Only ten seconds for a speech so that Billie Joe Armstrong can come out and be a complete weirdo introducing American Idiot. Note to future Tony-aspiring lighting designers: strobe lights. Seizure-inducing strobe lights. (Joelle terms this number "bro overload," or for short, "bro-verload.")

10:30  This just in: Glee star Lea Michele wins Best Performance by a Barbra Streisand Impersonator for her "Don't Rain on My Parade."

10:21  Fences wins Best Revival of a Play, Red wins Best Play, and the white people get twice as much time to talk. Just saying. (Also, vibrator count: five.)


10:15  Dear Oscars: Please watch the Tonys for lessons on the In Memoriam montage. The camera did not pan all over the place, the clapping was quieted, and Sarah McLaughin did not sing "I Will Remember You."


10:10  Another win for Fela!, this time for Best Choreography. Potential mutiny against Memphis? How odd that, during the list of nominees, both Come Fly Away and Promises, Promises performed their choreography... and then neither won.


9:51  Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's terrifying facelift introduce Fela!, which will not win Best Musical because it won't tour outside New York.


9:44  Sean Hayes in a curly red wig: "Did you hear? Annie's coming back to Broadway. So I dressed up like Bernadette Peters. She's the BP that isn't ruining the planet." Then Viola Davis and Denzel Washington take Best Actress and Best Actor in a Play for their work in Fences. Does their director, Kenny Leon, look angry because he's on the verge of tears?


9:39  "To a nunnery, go!" Play montages of Shakespeare and August Wilson are much better set to a rap beat.


9:30  Idina Menzel makes three cast members of Glee so far. Shame that Christiane Noll only gets to sing the second half of "Back to Before," from the closed Ragtime, but Finian's Rainbow (also shuttered) isn't performing at all.


9:25  Catherine Zeta-Jones' tips for singing on the Tonys: 1) Swivel your head wildly. 2) Take pauses in the middle of each sentence. 3) Look stunning. Seriously, though, her "Send in the Clowns" was the high point of her performance on stage. Tonight was just odd. But she still might win...


9:17  Kristin Chenoweth pretends to read a thank-you speech. Sean Hayes: "You didn't win anything." Kristin: "That's unusual for me." I definitely called Levi Kraus (and his hair) for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, Million Dollar Quartet. 


9:07  Mark Sanchez introduces Memphis, and I asked, "who is he?" Sports 1, Josh 0. "Listen to the Beat" seems suspiciously similar to "You Can't Stop the Beat" from Hairspray, also using catchy period music to tell a story about racial relations. Chad Kimball and Montego Glover's voices both sounded very tired. Both Beyonce, who knows how to sing, and Melanie Griffith, who... well..., barely clapped.

9:03  The Frasier-Niles reunion leads us into the most exciting category tonight: Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Angela? Barbara Cook? The winner is much-younger Katie Finneran for Promises, Promises... even though they chose an entirely different winner to print on the screen. "I want to thank the superstar Kristin Chenoweth, who loaned me her eyelashes tonight."


8:56  "Coming up next: Angela Lansbury, David Hyde Pierce, and Paula Abdul." One of these things is not like the other. Lansbury, of course, is one of two actors who have won five Tony Awards, and now she's the honorary chairman of something illustrious.


8:51  The Best Play presentations: How many times can we say "vibrator" tonight? (Up to four.) For inventing the device, Michael Cerveris says, "You're welcome, darling." Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne talk about how Red explores the integrity of art and creativity, but what does Eddie care? He's got a Tony in his pocket.


8:45  Sean Hayes in a dance belt. Yep, a normal night on Broadway. For Best Direction of a Play, Antonio Banderas gives Michael Grandage (Red) a Tony, which he clings to and refuses to look away from. Look at the camera, Michael... the trophy's not made of chocolate. Then Banderas announces La Cage aux Folles in a Spanish accent. Terry Johnson, a bit perplexed, gives a short 'n' sweet speech for Best Direction of a Musical.

8:34  The theater audience goes wild for a Republican! Oh, wait--it's Kelsey Grammar in La Cage aux Folles, doing very un-Republican things like running a drag club. Douglas Hodge, singing "The Best of Times," gets seduced by Will Smith and picks up a twenty from Mr. Schuester.


8:33  Eddie Redmayne wins Best Featured Actor in a Play for Red. To think, he was only cast because of his last name!


8:27  Million Dollar Quartet performed, and all I could watch was Levi Kreis' hair. His coiffure is probably why he'll win a Tony tonight: it worked for John Gallagher, Jr. in Spring Awakening. Now to a  commercial for bladder control products. For all those blue-hairs out there on the bus to watch American Idiot.


8:18  Best Featured Actress in a Play goes to Scarlett Johansson for her Broadway debut in A View from the Bridge. Jan Maxwell might push her off a bridge later, but her speech is classy (way to advertise Iron Man 2 from the stage, Scarlett). Vibrator Count: 2.


8:15  Is Sean Hayes the next NPH? "The Tony Award... or as Angela Lansbury calls it, a whippersnapper!" Way to be up for your sixth Tony, Ms. Lansbury. Greedy, greedy.


8:10  The rest of the opening medley: "I Say a Little Prayer" leads into Frank Sinatra, Motown, Afro-beat, drag queens, and punk rock. Yes sir, a typical year on the Great Multicultural Way.


8:00  2009-2010 was the season of non-traditional music on Broadway. How appropriate that Sean Hayes begins the broadcast with the Grieg piano concerto. Nice fingerwork, covering up some of the early microphone issues (please don't repeat last year!).


7:46  The official winners rules: "Be as heartfelt as you can, just do it in a minute and thirty seconds."


7:44  The rundown of the other awards: Red starts the plays sweep with Best Scenic Design and Best Sound Design. Christine Jones, who won Best Scenic Design for a Musical, thanked her husband, the love of her life and father of her children, then director Michael Mayer, "the love of my other life and father of my other children."

Robert Kaplowitz, winning Best Sound Design of a Musical for Fela!, said the Tony is "the best piece of bling ever."


7:31  Neil Austin beats... Neil Austin for Best Lighting Design of a Play in Red. Best Lighting Design of a Musical goes to American Idiot. And what music greets the Green Day winners? "If Ever I Would Leave You" from Camelot: an amusingly incongruous choice.


7:28  The Royal Family wins Best Costume Design of a Play, shocking the Memphis crew, who thought they just might conquer every category. This is the first (and surely not the last) time tonight the title In the Next Room, or the vibrator play will be spoken. Fela! takes Best Costume Design for a Musical, reassuring us that the Tony voters at least watched shows that weren't Memphis.


7:26  We're just powering through these early awards. Best Book goes to Memphis, as well. I think we can safely call Memphis as the Best Musical winner already. Good speech, though: "I never thought I'd be here tonight... The New York Times never thought I'd be here tonight." He's proud to be a theater animal.


7:24  Oh, Best Score. Two original scores: Memphis (which practically won by default) and The Addams Family, the burnt toast of critics across New York. And Enron, a play with some songs about finance and stock prices, not to mention velociraptors. And Fences, which apparently is a wonderful play revival with eleven minutes of incidental music.


7:22  First award of the pre-show: Best Orchestrations. Memphis just won, perhaps beginning the Memphis sweep of the night, a.k.a. the Only Decent Show with an Original Score This Year sweep. Is it cruel that the orchestra played the winners on with the overture to Candide, one of the best written for Broadway, and frequently played by symphony orchestras?


7:05  The Tonys have begun! At least, the Creative Arts Awards, which you can't see on CBS tonight. This is the pre-show hour where they bestow awards upon the unsung heroes of Broadway: the set designers, the orchestrators, the ticket scalpers, Catherine Zeta-Jones' chauffeurs.

Once the red carpet razzmatazz ends (who's covering these things? film students at P.S. 132?), the live blog will commence. Keep refreshing; new posts appear at the top. From Green Day to Stephen Sondheim, get ready for a melange of musical theater styles, old and new, borrowed and blue.