Gossip Central

Alicia Keyes’ Hell’s Kitchen and Sufjans Stevens’ Illinoise: Coming of Age on Broadway

Tales of young people reaching their first rung of wisdom is a potent motif. On Broadway, two musicals, vastly different, feature that story in song and dance. At the Shubert Theatre, Hell’s Kitchen, not quite the coming-of-age of its creator, Alicia Keyes, but close enough, takes place in Manhattan Plaza, housing for artists in Hell’s Kitchen, the ‘hood. What starts out as teen rebellion: girl crush on perhaps an inappropriate hunk with mom exerting all her force to keep her home, healthy, and in school, finds her in the building’s “Ellington Room,” for solace and a place to hide, taking piano lessons from an elder. Her unreliable but good-hearted jazzman dad comes ‘round at will. These are the bare bones of this origin tale, book by Kristoffer Diaz, which could also be seen as a play on the joke, “If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.”

Mother is white, in the person of Shoshana Bean, and Ali is Maleah Joi Moon. Their powerhouse voices are more than matched by Brandon Victor Dixon’s dad named Davis, and those of the supporting players, a bevy of childhood friends (Rema Webb, Nyseli Vega, Vanessa Ferguson, Jackie Leon), musician/ construction worker, Knuck (Chris Lee), and Miss Liza Jane (Kecia Lewis), the mysterious being in the Ellington Room--in my mind like Mary Lou Williams—an incomparable piano playing ancestor. Because Alicia Keyes’ music is so well known, audiences have a hard time repressing the need to belt her signature songs: “Girl on Fire,” “No One,” “Empire State of Mind.”

With singers wearing the wings of butterflies, Illinoise, is a stunning story of healing at the St. James Theatre. Vocalists and musicians occupy the stage’s upper level, celestial, as dancers performing Justin Peck’s choreography take center stage. Passionate followers of Sufjan Stevens revel in the gorgeous music in an idyllic set as the dancers play out themes of death, loss, and grieving.

Michael Stuhlbarg in Patriots: Bye Bye Boris

If you were weaned on Russian literature: Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov, you know exactly what nourishes the Russian soul—beyond vodka and borscht. Patriots, Peter Morgan’s play about the rise of Vladimir Putin at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, explores that pull through an oligarch’s power, and what happens when he loses it by his own hubris. A math prodigy, Boris Berezovsky (Michael Stuhlbarg) rises and maintains his wealth wheeling and dealing and situating those he manipulates in prominence. One such individual is Vladimir Putin (Will Keen), a nobody placed strategically until he becomes “president.” Eventually, fate finds Berezovsky exiled in London. While he is not poisoned to death as others in exile are, he simply cannot live outside his homeland.

Stuhlbarg displays Berezovsky’s ample appetites in a robust performance. Act II begins with him fishing in the Caribbean. Banquets look like bacchanals—native dance, available women. Restraint is shown by his colleagues Roman Abramovich (Luke Thallon) who does what he must to stay in power’s favor; ditto for Professor Perelman (Ron Guttman) with whom Berezovsky spars in matters of math and politics. Morgan’s book is smart, philosophical as these historic figures are given voice. Yeah, it must have been good to be outrageously rich in Russia’s 1990’s.

Eddie Redmayne in Cabaret: How Kinky is It?

The musical Cabaret was always a window into the years leading up to the atrocities of World War II based on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories. Landmark productions starring Joel Grey and Alan Cumming as Emcee at the fictional Kit Kat Club allowed us to glimpse a decadence we could never imagine. Can you ever top the images of cross-dressing, cross-gender, and utter flagrant sex that John Kander’s music and Fred Ebb’s lyrics brought to provocative life? The new must-see production at the August Wilson Theater, redone in the round so that it could give audiences not only the vision but the experience, is simply above and beyond.

And how do you celebrate that? This opening weekend literally had audiences leaving their troubles at the door, as Eddie Redmayne, the latest Emcee welcomes everyone in whatever your language, to do just that. Angular, his kinkily-clad body a vessel of dis-jointed movement, “Wilkommen” he sings and introduces the ladies and gentlemen dancers who thrust their pelvises your way. Soon the key figures, an American writer called Clifford Bradshaw (Ato Blankson-Wood), an actress named Sally Bowles (a marvelous Gayle Rankin) after Isherwood’s friend, the writer Jane Bowles, and others join the party. Most poignant is landlady Fraulein Schneider, a fabulous Bebe Neuwirth and her beau Herr Schultz (Steven Skybell), a Jew. When he brings her fresh fruit, it is not only an Edenic gift and sexy, but in that real time of deprivation, it brought life-affirming hope.

Speaking to the actors as the Kit Kat Club became a huge multi-leveled party space with flowing Moet & Chandon, lobster rolls, and tasty sliders, we learned just how much the long legacy of the play informed this new production. Sporting a Kit Kat logo “eye” pin, a gift from director Rebecca Frecknall, Neuwirth said in this subtle performance she was mindful that the role was created for Lotte Lenya.

Bernadette Peters’ Joke: Posh Meets Borscht Belt as Guild Hall Returns to the Rainbow Room

Guild Hall Academy of the Arts President, the painter Eric Fischl got to hone his comedy chops at this year’s spring gala, fashioning a speech on a string of cliches—thanks to A. I. That set the night off in good spirits, against The Rainbow Room’s customary spectacular panoramic views of the city now fogged in, but as Board Chair Marty Cohen observed, “When it comes to Guild Hall, there’s no such thing as bad weather.”

Sure enough, we were expecting no shows but most showed: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sunny Hosten, Fern Mallis, April Gornik, Ross Bleckner, Rufus Wainwright, and the robust theater crowd to celebrate Daryl Roth. That included her son Jordan Roth, head of Jujamcyn, clad in an elegant ensemble accessorized with his grandmother Sylvia’s matching clutch. He opened his speech with, “My mother loves gay people.” That broke the ice, as a proud, even gleeful son spoke of Roth’s collection of 13 Tony Awards and counting.

She had just signed Julianne Margulies and Peter Gallagher to a show adapted from Delia Ephron’s Left on Tenth she’s hoping to stage in the fall, with Susan Stroman—also present-- directing. As I congratulated her, Roth pulled me aside to say, she has yet to find a theater. Ah, the perils of producing!

Her pal Bernadette Peters took the stage and before singing two numbers from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods told a joke about a frog who, upon getting a kiss from an elder gentleman, promised to turn into a gorgeous blond who would make love to him every night for the rest of his life. The man took the frog home and went to bed, explaining that at this point in life he preferred to have a talking frog.

The jokes did not end there. Howard Marks, who with his wife Nancy were also honored, with a Special Award for Leadership and Philanthropy told one about a boy who got a part in a school play. His mother asked, what part? The Jewish husband. Her reply: Couldn’t you get a speaking role?