‘COMPANY’: Katrina Lenk. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

COMPANY
Music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by George Furth
Directed by Marianne Elliott
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th Street
(212-239-6200), https://companymusical.com/

By Scott Harrah

The latest Company revival could drive a critic (and purists) crazy with British director Marianne Elliott’s new, often confusing and very European spin on this masterpiece that has never needed tampering. Why?  It is the quintessential New York musical, a show renowned for its simplicity, sophistication and gorgeous score, featuring classics like “Being Alive,” “The Ladies Who Lunch,” “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” “Another Hundred People,” “Getting Married Today” and others.  What’s offered here is a 21^st century perspective to dust off the narrative cobwebs and dated dialogue and make it relevant in 2021, but the score by Stephen Sondheim (who died last month) is so timeless that there was no need for a major overhaul here   More than 50 years have passed since Company first premiered on Broadway but much of the overall premise of the show rings true today.  Manhattan is still a maddening, overcrowded insane world with millions of people, and it’s still so easy to feel alone when you’re single.  This is certainly one of Mr. Sondheim’s greatest works, if not the best.  George Furth’s original book was—dare I say it?—ahead of its time back in 1970 when Company premiered on Broadway.  Many aspects of the show—tiny Manhattan apartments, expectations about getting married, the hustle and bustle of the New York City subway—are still relevant today.  Company is both an all-American musical and a paean to New York City, but Ms. Elliott’s interpretation (a hit in 2018 in London) has diminished many of the charms of the original show.

Director Marianne Elliott’s biggest change to the story is swapping the gender of lead character Bobby. Tony Award winner Katrina Lenk (The Band’s Visit) plays Bobbie, a single Manhattan woman celebrating her 35^th birthday.  Ms. Lenk has a great voice and an effervescent stage presence, but she appears too bland and emotionally distant for audiences to root for her, and this is problematic since the original Bobby was always the least interesting character in Company.

Marianne Elliott did such a superb job with the 2018 Broadway revival of Angels in America and the 2014 British import The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, so it is disappointing that she has added too much European-style excess here, from a scene showing Bobbie in the rain to various characters running through Bobbie’s bedroom during the “Barcelona” number in act two.  The last revival in 2006, starring Raul Julia as Bobby, was also very minimalist and featured gimmicky touches from another British director, John Doyle.  Remember how John Doyle had the actors play instruments onstage in the revival of Company and, in 2005, Sweeney Todd?  One of the changes that truly works is changing a straight couple to a gay couple. The character of Jamie (originally Amy) is played with manic exuberance by Matt Doyle as a gay man about to marry his partner Paul (Etai Benson).  Mr. Doyle truly stops the show with his outstanding rendition of “Getting Married Today.”  He displays all the nervous emotions of wedding-day jitters that both men and women, straight or gay, can relate to, and Mr. Doyle should certainly be a front-runner for a Tony Award in a few months.

Another standout is Tony nominee Jennifer Simard as Sarah, the diet-crazed woman married to recovering alcoholic Harry (Christopher Sieber).  Fans of Patti LuPone will not be disappointed with her take on the glamorous, acid-tongued Joanne, Bobbie’s oldest and dearest friend who loves to talk about her many husbands.  Ms. LuPone is her usual over-the-top self, belting out one of the show’s most famous songs, “The Ladies Who Lunch,” with her famous tough-diva pipes.

Scenic designer Bunny Christie mostly fills the stage with Neon-lit boxes and Mylar balloons in an attempt to make the show more contemporary, but doing so takes away some of the show’s New York accent.  Anyone who has at least studied the 1970 original remembers the set was actually a character in the show. Walter Kerr wrote in his 1970 New York Times review that the set by Boris Aronson “at first looks like the prison setting for ‘The Last Mile’ [but] becomes a breath-taking mobile, an interlocked Tinker-Toy of rippling platforms, sighing elevators, spun-glass spindles for dances to chin themselves on.”  In this revival, the set designs look nothing like New York City and could be Anywhere, USA.

Despite this revival’s many shortcomings, it is worth seeing Company simply for the score resurrected one more time to truly appreciate the late, great Mr. Sondheim and hear all the beautiful songs by the last of the great Broadway songsmiths.

Edited by David NouNou
Published December 12, 2021
Reviewed at December 11, 2021 press performance.

‘COMPANY’: (left to right) Christopher Sieber, Jennifer Simard, Katrina Lenk & Patti LuPone. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

‘COMPANY’: (left to right) Claybourne Elder, Manu Narayan, Bobby Conte. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

‘COMPANY’: Katrina Lenk & Claybourne Elder. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

‘COMPANY’: (left to right) Rashidra Scott, Katrina Lenk & Greg Hildreth. Photo: Brinkhoff-Moegenbur.

‘COMPANY’: Matt Doyle. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

‘COMPANY’: Katrina Lenk. Photo: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg.

‘COMPANY’: The cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

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‘THE BAND’S VISIT’: Katrina Lenk & Tony Shalhoub. Photo: Matthew Murphy

THE BAND’S VISIT
Music & lyrics by David Yazbek
Book by Itamar Moses
Based on the screenplay by Eran Kolirin
Directed by David Cromer
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West 47th Street
(212-239-6200), www.TheBandsVisitMusical.com

By David NouNou

Music is a constant source of inspiration that brings people together and is a true healer. If properly done, it can create magic and bring sworn biblical enemies together, if only for a night. So it is with David Yazbek’s The Band’s Visit. Middle Eastern music (Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese) is among the most uplifting and joyous music in the world, and Mr. Yazbek has implemented the use of Middle Eastern instruments to create a score that is original and mesmerizing, a sound that Broadway has seldom heard. My only regret is he didn’t infuse it with a klezmer/Israeli sound that would have blown the roof off the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Based on the 2007 Israeli indie film of the same name, it is set in 1996 when eight Egyptian musicians who comprise the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra have been booked by an Arab cultural center in Petah Tikva Israel, but through a language miscommunication end up in Bet Hatikva. It is a barren wasteland of a town in the Negev Desert. There are no hotels, restaurants or anything; the people there just survive. On this particular day and night, these two factions are brought together through their loneliness and desolation. They share their lives, love of music, food and tales.

This is basically the story of The Band’s Visit; however, it is the haunting score that adds humanity to this gentle story of misplaced people. Songs like “The Beat of Your Heart,” “Omar Sharif” both amusing and intoxicating, “Something Different” and “Answer Me” leave you wanting more, and of course “The Concert” at the end by the musicians and those wonderful sounds and instruments have you floating out of the theatre in delight.

The two people at the center of the story are Dina (Katrina Lenk), owner of a desolate restaurant and Tewfiq (Tony Shalhoub), the band’s orchestra leader. Ms. Lenk, who was in Indecent earlier this year is sensational and touching. Mr. Shalhoub, who was in Arthur Miller’s The Price also earlier this year, adds another brilliant character to his repertoire. Every time you think you have seen all the faces of Mr. Shalhoub, he manages to come up with yet another one, and this one is sheer joy. The scenes between him and Ms. Lenk discussing their lives and shortcomings are sheer perfection.  Everything and everyone in the show circles their orbit.

David Cromer keeps the proceedings moving at a beautifully nuanced pace. One thing I found interesting before the curtain went up was overhearing different people wondering if this show was going to be as uplifting as Come From Away or anything like it. Let me emphatically state they are nothing alike; they are two different shows but both touch on people’s humanity and need to connect to each other. A message that is so desperately needed in these turbulent times.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 17, 2017
Reviewed at November 16, 2017 press performance.

‘THE BAND’S VISIT’: The company. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘THE BAND’S VISIT’: Tony Shalhoub & Katrina Lenk. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘THE BAND’S VISIT’: The company. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘THE BAND’S VISIT’: (left to right) Rachel Prather, Etai Benson & Ari’el Stachel. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘THE BAND’S VISIT’: (left to right) Kristen Sieh, John Cariani, Alok Tewani, Andrew Polk & George Abud. Photo: Matthew Murphy

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‘INDECENT’: The cast. Photo: Carol Rosegg

INDECENT
By Paula Vogel
Directed by Rebecca Taichman
Cort Theatre
138 West 48th Street
212-239-6200, www.IndecentBroadway.com

By Scott Harrah

More than merely a drama about a play that shocked early 20th century audiences, Paula Vogel’s Indecent illuminates a dark period of history when anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant sentiment were rampant in America. No, the year is not 2017 but 1906 to the 1920s through 1940s. There are numerous themes and subtexts in this complex, fascinating and sometimes confusing drama, from the troubled staging of Yiddish writer Sholem Asch’s theatrical potboiler God of Vengeance to the disturbing tide of prejudice toward Jews and their culture evolving from the turn of the 20th century and onward.

This is the proverbial Brechtian epic, immediately grabbing one’s attention and posing questions about art, decency, and the boundaries of morality and faith. It’s exhausting yet riveting to watch from the opening scene, with Yiddish actors onstage speaking as ashes literally fall off their bodies. This is only the beginning of the layers upon layers of symbolism that unfold throughout the 100-minute show.

At first glance, one thinks the story is simply about Mr. Asch’s turgid Yiddish drama, a sensational tale about a brothel owner, his daughter, a prostitute, a lesbian affair and desecration of a Torah. Asch’s play was a hit on the Yiddish theater circuit in Europe, but scandalous indeed when it was translated into English and debuted in New York at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1922. Although the lesbian themes were toned down (and a Sapphic kissing scene cut) for the Broadway transfer to the Apollo Theatre in 1923, the cast and producer were arrested mid-performance for obscenity a few weeks into the run.

Indecent, however, is really less about the puritanical reaction to God of Vengeance in America and more of an homage to the death of Yiddish theater and the tragedy of Jews across the world from the early 1900s up through the Holocaust. In addition, the story shows how America, decades before feminism, could not handle not only homosexuality but anything that depicted women as something beyond wives, daughters or prostitutes.

Despite the heavy subject matter, Indecent is a visually arresting piece of theater. Seven actors portray “the troupe,” from Lemml, the stage manager of Asch’s play (Richard Topol), while others play musicians performing klezmer-style music (with original compositions by Lisa Gutkin and Aaron Halva). The stage features constantly changing projections of Yiddish, Hebrew and English supertitles and scene settings, from Warsaw in 1906 (when Asch first wrote the play) to Berlin, various stages and attics across Europe to New York City. The action jumps around from city to city like a TV miniseries or popular novel (a narrative technique that is always tricky on the stage).

There is a frenetic lyricism to Rebecca Taichman’s direction of the actors, many of whom play multiple roles. It is Ms. Taichman’s manic pacing of the evolving plot, musicians and actors dancing in circles–and the endless projections of the supertitles–that keeps us glued to the action but grows tiresome at times.

Indecent is a show that has quite a backstory itself, with Ms. Taichman basing the chronicle of God of Vengeance (and its obscenity trial over the first lesbian kiss in American theater) as a directing thesis at Yale. She and Paula Vogel worked over a period of seven years to develop the opus, after productions at the Yale Rep, La Jolla Playhouse and an Off-Broadway run at the Vineyard last year.

There are outstanding ensemble performances here, from Richard Topol as Lemml and Max Gordon Moore as Sholem Asch to Katrina Lenk and Adina Verson as the actresses portraying lovers. Musicians Matt Darriau, Lisa Gutkin and Aaron Halva add an eerie, haunting sincerity to the play with their original compositions.

Yes, the show is over-the-top, overly poetic, and perhaps too cerebral and academic for its own good. However, the overall message of Indecent is what makes it so relevant and topical today. Because, much like the political climate leading up to World War II, we also now live in age of xenophobia and prejudice about sexuality, race and religion. It is chilling when one thinks that the censorship, bigotry and fascism that were pervasive in the days of God of Vengeance (and created so much human suffering) could easily be repeated in 21st century America.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 18, 2017
Reviewed at press performance on April 15, 2017

‘INDECENT’: (left to right) Aaron Halva (with accordion), Matt Darriau (with clarinet), Lisa Gutkin (with violin) & company. Photo: Carol Rosegg

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‘INDECENT’: The cast. Photo: Carol Rosegg

‘INDECENT’: The cast. Photo: Carol Rosegg

‘INDECENT’: Max Gordon Moore & Richard Topol. Photo: Carol Rosegg

‘INDECENT’: Max Gordon Moore & Richard Topol. Photo: Carol Rosegg

‘INDECENT’: Katrina Lenk & Adina Verson. Photo: Carol Rosegg

‘INDECENT’: Max Gordon Moore & Adina Verson. Photo: Carol Rosegg

‘INDECENT’: Adina Verson & Katrina Lenk. Photo: Carol Rosegg

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