FLIPPING OUT FOR ‘HEDWIG’: Neil Patrick Harris gives the performance of his career. Photo: Joan Marcus

A LOVABLE LOW LIFE IN HIGH HEELS: Neil Patrick Harris in ‘Hedwig & the Angry Inch.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

By Scott Harrah

Phenomenons are rare on Broadway, but here is one with two once-in-a-decade things in its favor: It is a beautiful production of a cult-rock opera with a fanatical following of both the Off-Broadway and indie film incarnations, and stars TV and stage icon Neil Patrick Harris at the pinnacle of his career, giving an electrifying performance that has the whole city (and soon, the entire nation) abuzz with gender-bending glee. No, this is not another Book of Mormon since it will be difficult for any star to fill Mr. Harris’s killer pumps when he leaves the run, but it has arrived with Mormon’s unprecedented spirit and irreverence. The revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch for the mainstream theater is far more complex and ground-breaking than anything critics can shower with mere adulation in the April crush of back-to-back shows opening to meet the Tony-nomination deadline. Hedwig is a show-biz anomaly, something reviewers cannot easily categorize, making it all the more revolutionary.

One could not find a more fitting actor to sell Hedwig to the masses than Neil Patrick Harris, the openly gay star of TV’s “How I Met My Mother,” “Doogie Howser, M.D.” and beloved Tony Awards host. He has the powerful voice necessary to sing the complicated rock ballads and the triple-threat skills and comic timing and charm to mesmerize audiences with the many jokes and stage antics.  Granted, Mr. Harris doesn’t have the haunting, David Bowie-style vocal delivery that John Cameron Mitchell did when the show played Off Broadway at the Jane Street Theatre in 1998. Yet it does not matter, for this is one hell of a glamour makeover.  With his toned biceps and all-American look, tottering across the Belasco stage, through many costume changes, in runway-model stiletto heels and gold platform boots, sporting numerous wigs, denim cutoffs and  glittery thrift-store hooker dresses, Neil Patrick Harris sheds any traces of his goody-goody “Doogie” persona at last and morphs into a self-proclaimed “internationally ignored song stylist” and a lovable freak. He’s Ziggy Stardust, Farrah Fawcett and an amalgam of a younger Madonna or Kylie, Gaga, young Marlene Dietrich and every diva worth lip-synching to, all at once.  In fact, in his first entrance, he is lowered onto the stage in a bejeweled jumpsuit in a rocket-style landing, very similar to the opening of recent Kylie Minogue and Lady Gaga concerts.  It’s the sort of razzle-dazzle, high-tech spectacle that was not possible Off Broadway, but is magical here. However, the glitzy androgyny ends with Arianne Phillips’ fabulous costumes and Mike Potter’s make-up and wig designs because this is not a drag show or a pop diva’s concert.  In order for Hedwig to gel with audiences, male charisma, copious amounts of testosterone and stage presence are needed.

While Book of Mormon had traditional foundations of musical-theater storytelling (songs that propel the plot) in its score, Hedwig is still a bit too avant-garde for its own good, so the uninitiated might make little sense of “The Origin of Love” (about how humans were once one sex). Just savor Mr. Harris’s heartfelt vocals and Stephen Trask’s emotionally charged lyrics and his music played by The Angry Inch band (Justin Craig, Matt Duncan, Tim Mislock and Peter Yanowitz). “Angry Inch” is the one number that actually explains Hedwig’s confusing backstory. When Mr. Harris sings the most infectious song of the night, “Wig in a Box,” a ditty about self transformation, complete with a contraption that drops down from the ceiling to the stage to project the sing-along lyrics, everyone in the audience joins in the fun, offering the type of interactive Broadway experience people paying top dollar for tickets crave. Visual projections by Benjamin Pearcy and Julian Crouch’s set, complete with what looks like an old AMC Gremlin and a grid of wig mannequins, add to the excitement.

Timing is always part of success, and Hedwig opens at a time of great change in America, when both the people and the federal government have finally recognized equality for people regardless of sexuality. Gay men and lesbians can legally marry in many states, and LGBT activists now focus on enlightening the ignorant (straights and especially gays) about why transgender people are human, too. Just 16 years ago, when John Cameron Mitchell first mounted the show, talk of transgender people and sex changes was still in the realm of camp and the unexplained, relegated to sordid tabloid stories.  It is part of the reason why Stephen Trask’s glam-rock score and Mr. Mitchell’s book, about a “girly” boy in Soviet-controlled East Berlin, who had a botched male-to-female gender-reassignment surgery, originally worked so well. What was “punk” in the late 1990s, however, has a curious poignancy and relevance today that will win over new, younger audiences.

John Cameron Mitchell has made tweaks to this version for Broadway, from lewd Catholic jokes about a phantom bishop at the Belasco to a zinger about the stage tasting like Kathy Griffin to an imaginary one-night-only performance of Hurt Locker: The Musical.

The subplot about Tommy Gnossis, Hedwig’s lost love who eventually leaves him and becomes a star singing songs Hedwig wrote, remains intact. However, the purpose of the character of the other love interest, Yitzhak (Lena Hall), a former drag-queen backup singer, forced by Hedwig to be a butch male—and her subtext—can be confusing. She seems little more than an excuse to make jokes about playing a gig at the Sizzler near the salad bar and being “the only Jew singing Barbra Streisand songs from Yentl on Kristillnacht” (please, don’t ask). However, the golden-throated Ms. Hall does a spine-chilling replication of Whitney Houston’s octave range in “I Will Always Love You” near the end, and her overall portrayal is dynamic and worthy of a Tony nomination.

Director Michael Mayer somehow binds all the changes and the original narrative from a once-intimate musical (which began as a few songs performed at the alt-rock drag club Squeezebox in the Village long before Jane Street) together, assembling a genuine Broadway blockbuster as the finished product. No need to say anything more other than you may have to max out your credit cards trying to get tickets for this now.

WIG ROCK: Neil Patrick Harris. Photo: Joan Marcus

SPITTING IMAGE: Neil Patrick Harris channels Marlene, Madonna, Kylie, Gaga & more. Photo: Joan Marcus

ROCK & RAUNCH: Neil Patrick Harris, as Hedwig, gets nasty with Justin Craig. Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 24, 2014
Reviewed at press performance April 23, 2014

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PORTRAIT OF THE JAZZ ICON: Audra McDonald in ‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.’ Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva

LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL
By Lanie Robertson
Directed by Lonny Price
Circle in the Square Theatre
235 West 50th Street
(212-239-6200), http://ladydayonbroadway.com/

By Scott Harrah

It is difficult to think of the elegant, golden-voiced, five-time Tony winner Audra McDonald portraying the late tortured jazz singer Billie Holliday. After all, Ms. McDonald is best known for her soaring soprano voice, but interpreting Billie Holiday is tricky territory for any singer/actress because “Lady Day” herself was such a unique vocalist, with a tragic persona that was mythical, bigger than life and almost impossible to mimic.  Billie was a woman in agony, and one could sense and feel her sorrow with every plaintive note she sang, so recreating her soul in a musical dramatization is a tall order indeed.  Fortunately, Ms. McDonald never tries to be a Billie Holiday impersonator, and she displays, with heart-breaking veracity, the many dimensions of the groundbreaking jazz pioneer, from her booze and drug-addled body language and salty anecdotes told in a raspy speaking voice to her reedy song delivery and unique vocal phrasings that influenced not just jazz but music in general.

New Yorkers already know what a versatile musical-theater star Ms. McDonald is, but here she shows us that she’s also a richly complex actress with the ability to dig deep into Holiday’s mystique and make us understand the scale of the woman’s many afflictions, from substance abuse to troubles with the law and the discrimination and cruelty all African-American performers experienced in the pre Civil Rights days. Granted, on the surface Ms. McDonald is perhaps too glamorous for the role, but she captures, in various monologues and songs, every nuance of Billie, from her laconic mannerisms to tales of the personal abuse and oppression she suffered as a woman of color in the America of yesteryear, with very little education, an arsenal of talent and infamous inner demons.  Although Audra McDonald looks very little like Billie, even with the trademark gardenia in her hair, she gives us an illuminating portrait of one of the most important jazz artists ever.

This is the first Broadway mounting of Lanie Robertson’s 1986 Off-Broadway bio-play about Holiday, and it seems an odd vehicle for Ms. McDonald because this really cannot be classified as a play, musical or cabaret show, but is a hybrid of all these genres. Set in a small south Philadelphia bar circa 1959, shortly before the singer’s untimely death from cirrhosis and heart disease at age 44, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill is 90 minutes of Ms. McDonald as Billie reflecting on her life, sharing anecdotes and singing all of the Holiday hits, from “I Wonder Where Love Has Gone” and “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” to “God Bless the Child,” “Strange Fruit” and “T’ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do.”

The show is loosely based on an alleged, real-life account of Billie Holiday playing in a Philadelphia dive bar in 1959 for just seven people. She was high on drugs, swilling liquor and performing a dozen or so of her songs alongside her piano player Jimmy Powers (Shelton Becton), while holding her pet chihuahua Pepi (played here by “Roxie”) for just seven people before finally “staggering” out of the place.

Director Lonny Price gives Ms. McDonald free rein to channel Billie Holiday in all her train-wreck glory, but the performance always feels natural and authentic, and Mr. Robertson’s script always paints the legend in a dignified light and never stoops to the sensationalistic lows of such recent Broadway bio-drama musicals as End of the Rainbow, the tabloid-style show about the end of Judy Garland’s life.

Although this show sheds no new light on Billie Holiday, nonetheless we leave Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill with an appreciation for the jazz icon’s unsettling life and talent, and marvel at the truth, insight, authenticity and marvelous texture of Ms. McDonald’s performance, one of the most challenging and outstanding of her career.

LADY DAY & HER DOG: Ms. McDonald as Billie with chihuahua Pepi (Roxie). Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva

LADY SINGING THE BLUES: Audra McDonald as Billie Holiday, shortly before her death at age 44. Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 20, 2014
Reviewed at press performance on April 19, 2014

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MULTI-TALENTED: Jefferson Mays in ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE & MURDER
Book and lyrics by Robert L. Freedman
Music and lyrics by Steven Lutvak
Based on the novel by Roy Horniman
Directed by Darko Tresnjak
Walter Kerr Theatre
219 West 48th Street
New York, NY
(212-239-6200), www.AGentlemensGuideBroadway.com

By David NouNou

While watching A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, and it starts looking familiar to you, as it will, that’s because it is loosely based on the brilliant 1949 British black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, with Alec Guinness playing the eight D’Ascoyne family members. The authors (Mr. Freedman and Mr. Lutvak) have cleverly retained the British flavor with a delightful Edwardian score befitting the period, and enough English humor and sensibility in the book to make it a most delightful and charming evening.

The D’Ascoyne name has been changed to D’Ysquith and Louis Mazzini, the disowned distant poor relative, is now Monty Navarro (Bryce Pinkham). After his mother’s funeral, young Navarro learns that his mum was a D’Ysquith and disowned by the family and left penniless because she married for love and beneath her station. He also learns that he is ninth in line to the Earldom of Highhurst. What follows is murder most foul and in the most hilarious of manners.

The eight members of the D’Ysquith family are all played by the wonderful Jefferson Mays. Each member has his or her own identity and they each get their comeuppance in due time. Each of their demises is cleverly executed and therein lies the fun. Mr. Mays is an incredible talent, and although each character he portrays only appears for a few minutes, they each have a distinct personality and tone. One should also give credit to the costume designer, Linda Cho, for making his costumes so easy to change, and to the assistant backstage helping him in and out of the costumes in mere seconds.

Besides Mr. Mays, there are three additional memorable and worthy performances. Mr. Pinkham as the mastermind behind the D’Ysquith murders is formidable in both acting and singing. The two ladies pursuing him, Lisa O’Hare as the luscious Sibella, and Lauren Worsham as the enchanting Phoebe D’Ysquith, are both in fine voice and pleasing to eyes and ears.

Now comes the tricky part. Director Darko Tresnjak has imbued the piece with lots of clever and delightful sight gags and they work perfectly. Whether it is the fault of the authors or the director, the two acts are uneven. A lot happens in Act I and not enough in Act II. This had all the makings for a superb musical had it been a 100-minute one act without an intermission and the excess fat in Act II could have been trimmed.

Nonetheless, it is a smart musical and can be enjoyed thoroughly. A Gentlemen’s Guide ranks as one of the highlights of the fall season.

‘A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE & MURDER’: (left to right) Joanna Glushak, Lauren Worsham, Bryce Pinkham, Lisa O’Hare & Jefferson Mays. Photo: Joan Marcus

MURDER & MUSIC: Jefferson Mays (center) & the cast of ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

BIG FUN IN OLD BLIGHTY: Jefferson Mays, Jane Carr & Bryce Pinkham in ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 22, 2013
Reviewed at press performance on November 21, 2013

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