Last of these posts, I promise. But when in New York, you’ve got to go to the theater at least once. Or in our case, twice.
The 39 Steps. When we heard that there was a stage adaptation of the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock movie and Chez K favorite, we knew we’d see it. How do you recreate the train sequence, or the chase across the moors? The answer is with a game cast of four – four! – and bracing theatrical legerdemain. It’s all directed by Maria Aitken, who for me will forever be John Cleese’s wife in A Fish Called Wanda. The Tony Award-winning stagecraft was what had me laughing, not the broader stuff like shoehorning as many Hitchcock titles into the script as possible. Before we saw the show we watched the movie again. And it still holds up.
Celebrity Encounter #1: After the show, the heavens opened. The deluge had us ducking into a diner near our digs. A few minutes later, we saw Mario Cantone darting to cover under an awning. Or at least I did. Rosemarie saw the back of his head.
[title of show]. This meta-musical about the making of a musical was an Off-Broadway smash and came highly recommended. It features energetic songs and a quarter of terrific performers. (Again with the four actors. A coincidence, honest.) But there’s a difference between an Off-Broadway show about holding fast to your dreams and a Broadway show about achieving them. The new third act, about the compromises needed to open on the Great White Way, feels contrived. But on the whole I enjoyed it, and you’ve got to love any show with its own YouTube channel.
Celebrity Encounter #2: Just before the curtain, Peter Gallagher sat down next to Rosemarie. Who initially didn’t notice. “I had bigger problems,” she said. “I was worried someone was going to step on my sprained foot in the dark.”
Actually, I’m on a spiritual quest, one encapsulated by a question from the hardboiled fiction list Rara Avis: whatever happened to rye?
The answer divined from some of Manhattan’s finer bars confirms what I already knew. Rye is making a comeback. It’s used in any number of cocktails, many of which are named after neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Red Hook, Greenpoint, Bensonhurst, Bushwick, Park Slope. Apparently, this is something of a tradition for New York bartenders, as all rye cocktails are seen as descendants of a drink called the Brooklyn. It contains rye, dry vermouth, Maraschino liqueur, and Amer Picon. That last ingredient is the tough one to get ahold of, but it’s worth the effort. Even if you have to stash it behind the rocker panels.
In other news, we seized the opportunity to see Romance & Cigarettes. The musical written and directed by actor John Turturro was orphaned by its studio, so Turturro is distributing it himself. It’s a truly odd duck of a film featuring a stupendous cast and some singular moments, like Christopher Walken’s take on ‘Delilah.’ The limited initial run has been a success, so who knows? Maybe it will be coming to a theater near you.
And then there’s the real reason for the trip. Xanadu on Broadway. Sure, I have people to visit here, business to transact. But there’s also a stage version of the movie on the Great White Way.
I’ve seen the film countless times. I think of it as the cocaine simulator. You want to know what riding the white horse does? It makes you think that Xanadu is a good idea.
The show’s a hoot, even if you’re not way too familiar with the source material. And it’s allowed me to fulfill another lifelong dream. I have now seen a cast member from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (and Tony Roberts as Warren LaSalle) sing and dance live. I love New York.
It’s important in any entertainment to establish tone early. Which is why it was good to hear, in the opening scene of the new Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein, that the title doctor is on staff at “the Johns, Miriam and Anthony Hopkins School of Medicine.” It lets you know what you’re in for. And it signaled to me that I’d be right at home. Three fleet hours of bawdy jokes, leggy dancers and Jolson impressions is my idea of a good time.
I had my doubts about Mel Brooks tuning up the film, but I shouldn’t have. After all, YF has the strongest spine of any Brooks movie. The play’s book by Brooks and Thomas Meehan hews closely to the original script by Brooks and Gene Wilder, right down to many favorite lines. (“What knockers!” is there, “It could be raining” is not, and “He vas my boyfriend!” is its own number.) Mel had more work to do on The Producers.
The familiarity of the movie is perhaps the biggest challenge to a ridiculously talented cast, but they’re all able to put their own spins on well-established characters. The one actor who by circumstance is forced into an imitation, Christopher Fitzgerald as Marty Feldman as Igor, walks off with the show. Go figure.
Sutton Foster, a Broadway veteran I know as Coco from Flight of the Conchords, joins Shakira on the short list of women who make yodeling sexy. It’s an embarrassment of riches onstage, with Roger Bart as Frederick Frankenstein, Andrea Martin as Frau Blucher (complete with horse whinnies), Will & Grace’s Megan Mullally succeeding Madeline Kahn as Elizabeth, and Shuler Hensley as the Monster. Odd note: Hensley, a Tony winner for Oklahoma!, played Frankenstein’s Monster in Van Helsing, although to my knowledge he doesn’t have a number in that movie. I also have to mention Fred Applegate, doing double duty as Inspector Kemp (the Kenneth Mars role) and the blind hermit. In the latter scene he manages to do a perfect rendition of Gene Hackman’s distinctive chuckle, a tribute I think was intended just for me.
The caliber of the cast is so high that it’s a problem finding enough for them to do. Mullally, the best known performer, has only one song in the first act and then disappears until midway through act two. She did have a second Act One number according to the program, but it had already been cut a week into previews.
The true star of the show is director/choreographer Susan Stroman. Her staging deploys a full battery of techniques to create a palpable mood, and on top of that she fills the stage with dancers.
Brooks’s songs are the show’s weak link. (Name one song from The Producers. Go ahead, I dare you.) They’re more like ditties, excuses for bits of comic business. But they’re socked over with such gusto by the cast and so inventively presented that you don’t mind.
The one truly memorable song in the score is the only one Brooks didn’t write: Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” The movie’s use of the song has nothing on how it plays out here. The number starts out small, then slowly and surely builds into pure joyous delirium. My sides actually ached when it was over.
Young Frankenstein runs at Seattle’s Paramount Theater through September 1, then moves to Broadway. Friends in New York already report that tickets are hard to come by. Insert monster hit joke here.
I’ll be blunt. Actor and comedian Eddie Izzard is a fucking genius. If you haven’t seen his concert special Dress To Kill, queue it up right now to see a performer at his absolute peak. When we heard that Eddie was doing two shows in Seattle to try out new material, we snapped up tickets at once.
The general theme of the set could, I suppose, be described as the evolution of human belief systems. A rubric broad enough to include the following digressions:
- What aliens with acid blood would really be like - The inner monologue of the human appendix - The reasons why cows would make great secret agents - The difficulty faced by Roman soldiers in describing Hannibal’s elephants in Latin
All of it done Eddie’s singular style – rambling, discursive, yet circling back on itself in surprising ways.
That spontaneity led to the show’s high point, namely Eddie being hit in the face by a kamikaze fly that had gotten into the theater. It prompted a ten-minute riff that won’t be repeated anywhere else. Sometimes, you really do just have to be there.
When Eddie blanked on the name of “that dancer who died because her scarf was so long it got caught in the wheels of the car,” Rosemarie shouted out Isadora Duncan first and loudest. And here I thought she was so circumspect.
Seattle’s stint as the new New Haven continues. Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein musical is in tryouts here before opening on Broadway. We’ve got tickets for that, too, and will be seeing it later this week.
