2004 was not a banner year for theatre-going. Some of the best things I saw were either done for children or done by children. To wit:
Junie B. Jones
The new musical by Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich bubbled with melody, energy and feeling. Mary Faber was marvelous as the diary-keeping moppet. It also featured some drag by Michael McCoy as a cafeteria lady that out-Hairsprayed Hairspray (seen the year before)
Cam Jansen
A new musical by two coun't-'em-two Kleban Award winners, didn't have 100% good numbers, but it bopped along with no small amount of panache. I loved how a New York cop accepts the fact that a 10-year-old girl is solving the mystery of a museum robbery.
Godspell
Not my production of Godspell, which was a bit of a mess, but one the co-director and I viewed for research's sake, done by the teens at Amas. The show had some wonderful ideas and gave me some confidence that the material shines no matter how you do it. The musical direction was wonderful, and the cast was full of bright young performers.
Caroline Or Change
There's no getting around the fact that this was a very weird show, starting with singing laundry machines and on to the life-altering importance of a misplaced twenty dolalr bill. Tony Kushner once barked at me "musical comedy is an inherantly conservative art form intended to lull the bougeoisie into complacency." So, one has to wonder what he's doing writing one. It doesn't offer the emotional pay-offs we expect from musicals. But Jeanine Tesori's music often provides wit, and it does keep you wondering what'll happen next.
Wicked
Winnie Holtzman's book kept me wondering what would happen to Galinda, Elphaba and that little dog, Dodo. The performances by Chenoweth, Menzel and Butz were certainly appealing, and the quieter songs (I'm Not That Girl, For Good) have merit. One only wishes the songwriter had retained the sense of what makes a song really work that he had in his youth, when he created Godspell.
The Normal Heart
I'd not seen this play its first time around, and, to be sure, I expected self-righteous speeches, dramatic deaths and catty comedy. The show fulfilled these expectations, but did it with such pace and passions, I could not help but be moved. Larry Kramer's play is more personal than most: it conveys what it's like to shout in the wind, helplessly, and watch countless friends and lovers perish because they didn't hear you.
The Big Voice: God or Merman?
An auto-biographical two-hander actually played by the men who lived it. The bad news first: the songwriting half of the team can't act, articulate, is awkard on stage and his songs often sit there, not contributing to the storytelling. But when Jim Brochu and his book take over, it's amusing and vibrant and a cut above the cliche. About ten times better than that other musical in town featuring a happily-together middle-aged gay couple.
The Crucible
It was a treat to see Miller's metaphorical handling of some of the issues I'm writing about. When it's good, which isn't all the time, it's very good indeed.
Taxi Cabaret
Peter Mills is something of a wunderkind, a prodigious songwriter many years younger than me. He should sue his cast for non-support. This was a depressingly bad production, but, if you concentrated, you could hear dazzling music and lyrics - the sort of thing Charley Kringus and Franklin Shepherd did in Frankly Frank. Oh, wait, they're fictional. Mills is the real deal, and the Caveman song may be the funniest number written in the past decade.
Pardon My English
Encores! always surprises me. Whenever I expect something will be wonderful (The World's Sexiest Man in The Pajama Game, No Strings, House of Flowers) it isn't, and, whenever my expectations are low, I'm knocked out. In a good way! Brian D'Arcy James starred in this loony and dopey Gershwin comedy, and every corny joke in the book landed like nothing you'll see in an Austin Powers movie. It's the old hit-me-on-the-head-I'm-a-different-person plot: one clonk, the hero is a bootlegger (of soft drinks!); another clonk, he's a dashing international spy, a la James Bond. The score's love songs include Isn't It a Pity and one in which a man considers himself lucky because he's heard from every guy in town what a good lover his new girlfriend is. Does that make any sense?
