Tag: Stephen Schwartz

Review | Shakespeare’s As You Like It | Directed by John Doyle | Bay Street Theater, Sag Harbor, Long Island

On August 13, 2017

In Musical Theater, Off-Broadway Theater

… without enchantment …

As You Like It is a wonderful play so that, even with this disappointing production, it’s not a wasted evening. The language is so powerful and some of the scenes so funny that they surpass the flat interpretations they receive here, and in particular two actors — André de Shields and Leenya Rideout – are satisfyingly perfect!

But all in all, this is an As You Like It without enchantment.

The play rests on a contrast between life at court with its envies, intrigues, and self-protection and, as Shakespeare envisioned it, life in the magical Forest of Arden, free and close to nature. In these ways it’s like Midsummer Night’s Dream.

We spend just enough time at court to learn that the younger son, Frederick has usurped the right of his older brother, Duke Senior, to the duchy and sent him into exile. While Frederick tolerated having Duke Senior’s daughter, Rosalind, around for a while, the play begins as he sends her into exile, too, shortly after she and Orlando briefly meet and fall in love at first sight. The Forest of Arden (think Eden) quickly fills up as Rosalind flees there along with her beloved cousin Celia who is Frederick’s child, and with them Touchstone the court fool. And — as Shakespeare’s wonderful chance would have it – Orlando, sent away by his mean, jealous older brother, heads there too.

It should be easy for Rosalind and Orlando to discover one another in Arden and enjoy their love, right? Wrong. Because Rosalind disguises herself as a young man, and takes on the name “Ganymede,” so that when Orlando, love-sick over that very Rosalind, meets up with her, he believes she is the young man she appears to be. And she doesn’t disabuse him. She’s also in love but — coy? testing? seeking experience? ambivalent? — sticks to her disguise as Ganymede. She doesn’t let him off the hook, though. Instead, Rosalind says she will allow Orlando to woo “Ganymede” as if she were Rosalind, and the young man agrees to play the game — to act at wooing the person he believes is a young man. With this game, Rosalind/Ganymede claims she can cure Orlando of being in love, while she gets to be wooed by the man she loves.

At any rate, the situation in which Rosalind/Ganymede and Orlando play the courtship game with a her as a him and he doesn’t know it opens up the play to hilarity, suspense, and gorgeous love poetry.

Their impassioned if eccentric romance is only one of the wonders in Arden, Shakespeare’s characters being among the greatest wonders of all. As so often, the fool has some of deepest insight. Touchstone, played by the actor, dancer, and man of theater André de Shields, lets us sense the truths that lie behind his sprightly mask, dancing away with a jester’s wariness when his hits come too close to home. He speaks his lines with strength and clarity and lets us hear all the poetry. He fairly dances his way through the part and is fascinating to watch as his movements express his character and emotions. His costume is a witty combination of argyle and knickers in keeping with the more or less modern (1950’s ?) costuming of the play by Ann Hould Ward. De Shields is the most powerful presence on stage.

Among the denizens of Arden is another of Shakespeare’s great characters, Jacques, the melancholy courtier. The award winning actress Ellen Burstyn plays the role, and while it’s impressive to see her move herself to tears by the end of the tragic monolog on the ages of man (“All the world’s a stage,/And all the men and women merely players…” ), her thin voice , here and elsewhere, is at odds with the depth of the character and resonance of the language.

A special feature of this production is that the very well-known composer and writer for musical theater, Stephen Schwartz has written music for it. The nearest to enchantment in this production’s mundane Forest of Arden is when Phoebe, the shepherdess, circles the stage with her solo violin, playing insinuatingly lovely Schwartz music, all the more because Phoebe is played by the enchanting actress Leenya Rideout.

The easy listening jazz grooves well with the theme of freedom in the forest, and when the ensemble comes together to sing it radiates a sense of joy. It’s pleasant to listen to Bob Stillman, who plays Duke Frederick and Duke Sr., performing cocktail bar music at the spinet on stage. The idea of setting Shakespeare’s songs and song-like passages to music is a wished for and welcome idea. At most times, though, when there is singing, solo or ensemble, the words can’t be heard well or fully understood, and when it comes to Shakespeare, you don’t have to be a “purist” to want to hear all of the words.

Beyond those I’ve mentioned, others of the performers are able and others need more experience. As for “chemistry” between these famous lovers, Rosalind and Orlando, you won’t find it here.

The set design is somewhat experimental. The backdrop looks like a wall of red bricks, as if we’re in a theater without a set – not a forest for sure, but perhaps an interesting element for teasing the relationship between illusion and reality which is a theme of the play. The main design features, however, are many globular lights above the stage that, at certain points, change color, but the overall effect is not enchanting but, unfortunately, barren.

As You Like It plays at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, Long Island, through September 3, 2017. For more information and tickets, click here.

Review | Working, A Musical | From the Book by Studs Terkel | Adapted by Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso | Contributions by Gordo Greenberg | Prospect Theater Company | 59E59 Theaters

By Yvonne Korshak

On December 14, 2012

In Musical Theater, Off-Broadway Theater

… singing about work …

People talked about working in Studs Terkel’s oral history book of 1974, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do — in Working, the musical, they sing about it.

It’s a great idea — as composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz — of Godspell and Wicked — thought when he first brought Working to the stage not long after the publication of Terkel’s book. Revised and performed through the years, in its current version it’s an engaging and at times moving series of fine musical numbers (though I wish there were no rhymes, see below), beautifully performed by a cast of six who, all in all, take the parts of twenty-six characters and sing in the ensemble.

With the words taking the lead, as they should here, and with some excellent music by leading professional composers, we catch the poetry, the accuracy and the deep feelings behind what people said to Terkel: a fireman (L), a felt dyer in a luggage factory (what a hard, messy, grinding job that is) , an interstate trucker, a cleaning lady, a housewife and others — now singing what they like and don’t like, and what meanings they find and don’t find — in their workaday work. All except for Joe, retired, who has that to tell us about. The performers segue in and out of their sung vignettes on the lower part of the handsomely designed stage as a fine foursome of musicians play behind a scrim above.

Work has ground down some of the workers: through Marie-France Arcilla’s singing of the assembly line dyer of felt pads, I felt empathy with her, caught in a messy, exhausting trap. Some workers are weary but Maggie Holmes (R), singing the cleaning lady, let me share her hope that there will be a better life for her daughter — to be addressed by her last name (I wondered how that daughter’s doing, 38 years later). Jay Armstrong Johnson as the mason conveys an inspiring pride: stone lasts, and leaves you “Something To Point To,” the title of the last — uplifting — song in the show.

On the other hand, Joe Cassidy, as the publicists who made more money than most, conveys the emptiness of not having anything to point to after years of work (maybe; it’s ambiguous). Nehal Joshi (below L) gives an hilarious edge to the ex-newsroom assistant who makes plain to the audience what he himself can’t see, that is, why he can’t keep a job: in all his parts he touches the heart with his blend of sadness and wry humor. Saving the best for last (my best but my friends had other favorites): the performance of Donna Lynne Champlin (R) as the gutsy waitress proclaiming of her job, “It’s an Art;” it’s memorable — a first rate musical theater moment. (I looked after seeing the show and sure enough, that was one of the few songs written by Stephen Schwartz himself.)

Two things troubled me about this production, the microphones, and the rhymes.

These six performers are all fine singers and actors: why oh why were they miked??? There’s no need for it — as professionals, they know how to make themselves heard. (And the show is in a rather small theater.) The microphones the performers wear diminish the sense of immediacy that draws one to “live theater:”

I found that the rhymes in the songs, though often clever, undercut the authenticity that Working depends on. The strength of the show lies in our awareness that we’re hearing the very words spoken by real people from different walks of life — and real people don’t (at least not very often!) talk in rhymes. Without that sense of the genuine, this already loosely jointed musical thins out toward a series of show songs.

Though it doesn’t quite gel as the unified musical the creators intend, Working is highly entertaining and satisfying, like an exceptionally varied and unusually thought provoking evening of cabaret.

Working plays in midtown Manhattan at 59E59 theaters through December 30, 2012.

Opera Review | Seance on a Wet Afternoon | Opera with Music and Libretto by Stephen Schwartz | New York City Opera

By Yvonne Korshak

On April 20, 2011

In Musical Theater, Opera

I thought an opera, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, would likely be an exciting stretch for a talented musical theater composer and lyricist like Stephen Schwartz, author of Godspell, Pippin and Wicked, but that’s not how it turns out. The singing and acting, especially that of Lauren Flanigan as the medium and Melody Moore as Rita Clayton, is on a high level and the two children, Bailey Grey as Adriana and Michael Kepler Meo as Arthur, are impressive, but everybody could use a better opera.

The medium, Myra Foster, with the aid of her husband, Bill, kidnaps a young girl, Adriana Clayton, with the idea of ultimately leading the authorities and parents, as if by spiritual intuition, to where she will deposit the still alive girl and garner a big ransom and recognition of her spiritual “gift.” But kidnappings have a way of going awry, the Fosters keep Adriana quiescent with liberal doses of chloroform and eventually Myra suffocates her with a pillow.

That’s not the only dead child in Seance: Myra takes directions from Arthur, her poltergeist son of about 8 years in a white space-travel type of suit whom, we eventually learn, was stillborn “without a face.” Seance is very hard on children. The young couple sitting next to me, with the wife pregnant, had the wits to leave at the end of the first Act and I’m glad they never heard, in Act II, that Arthur was born faceless.

Perhaps on some level anything can be transformed into significant art if some requisites are in play, as when emotions and motivations of the characters are expressed with depth, and the issues have a universal dimension but … Do we really need an opera about the abduction, chloroforming and murder of a child? Many dramas hinge on the effect of a dead child on survivors, but that’s very different from a drama in which the focus is on a child’s abduction and murder. Are there any other operas or plays focused on a fictional child murder in this way? (I suppose Adriana is murdered in the screenplay by Brian Forbes based on the novel by Mark McShane, on both of which the opera Seance on a Wet Afternoon is based.)

The music is hybrid of operatic and show music but the mix tends to weaken each. It’s surprising that, given the significant recognition Schwartz has achieved for his lyrics, the libretto of Seance is notably flat. “Tell me you love me,” Myra says to Bill. “Do you still love me?” And Bill answers: “Yes.” And, “I still love you.” There are also a lot of astonishingly tepid rhymes of the croon/moon variety, often as triplets.

Also — and how easily this could have been avoided — the plot movement is sloppy. A frantic Mrs. Clayton persuades her resisting husband to come with her to ask Myra whether she has any spiritual intuitions about Adriana’s whereabouts, at which point the police Insector, who’s been standing in his “time is of the essence” posture sits down and Mrs. Clayton embarks on a lengthy aria. Once the Inspector has Myra under arrest, instead of taking her off in a squad car, he takes her for a promenade, during which he leaves the stage so she can engage with a batch of paparazzi — and meet up with Arthur.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon plays at the Koch Theater at NYC’s Lincoln Center through May 1.