Recent Broadway Nights: 12/21/05
As it turned out, The Woman in White got slightly better reviews than I had expected. Although the response was largely unenthusiastic, there were strong notices in at least three venues, The Post, The Daily News, and The Wall Street Journal. While I don't necessarily disagree with the heavy criticism leveled against The Woman in White, I still managed to have a decent time. That's because I was forced to admire composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's determination to remain true to himself, flying in the face of current critical tastes by refusing to alter his style.
Lloyd Webber is once again making use of the same gothic/romantic/pop-opera sound he's deployed to potent effect several times before. And the score also features the composer's trademark use of repetition. This time around, there are not that many extractable songs. Instead, there are numerous musical scenes, each embroidered around a mixture of repeated themes. This can make fitting lyrics to the music somewhat difficult, but David Zippel copes professionally.
"I Believe My Heart," the most overt take-home tune, is pretty, but the score might have been better received had it not included such a blunt Lloyd Webber anthem. Like Aspects of Love, the music boasts a wider variety of melody than may at first be apparent. One wishes that the composer had used more of the sort of dissonance that occurs at a couple of spots. For the most part, this sounds very much like a typical Lloyd Webber score. But most of the melodies are attractive, and they improve with repeat hearings. As ususal, Lloyd Webber demonstrates that he's a highly theatrical composer. Wilkie Collins' story is a suitable property for his talents, and the score, one of Lloyd Webber's most operatic, has the right sound for the subject matter at hand.
The show's chief shortcoming: It's simply not as thrilling as I am told Collins' source novel is I haven't read it, not as involving or gripping as one would like it to be. The suspense is relatively mild, and when the denouement of the convoluted plot arrives, it may leave one shrugging rather than thrilled.
As for William Dudley's intricate system of projections and revolving screens, they were slightly dizzying from my seat in the fifth row center, but they were also rather enjoyable, even if one would not want to see the technique repeated very often.
The Woman in White has been confidently and smoothly staged by Trevor Nunn, and all of the performances satisfy. Maria Friedman is a world-class singing actress, commanding, intense, and bold. The likable Michael Ball has all the hamminess required for the role of Count Fosco, and even more voice than is necessary. Ball injects a welcome note of levity into the proceedings.
Jill Paice, Adam Brazier, Ron Bohmer, Angela Christian, and Walter Charles do admirable work in heavy-duty but somewhat thankless roles. As for the show, it should please Lloyd Webber fans, even if it's unlikely to make converts of his detractors. Hokey as it often is, it does possess a certain conviction that allows it to work on its own terms.
I have also not read Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, but I am familiar with its characters and plot from Steven Spielberg's 1985 film version. And it may be said that Marsha Norman's book for the new musical version of The Color Purple attempts to cram in so much plot that it sometimes seems to depend on the audience's familiarity with the film. Indeed, the audience greets celebrated moments i.e. Sofia's defiant speech about her husband's brutality, Celie's denunciation of her abusive husband with applause.
The film was accused by some of softening a harsh novel. But the musical too often goes in for a cartoonish treatment of its characters that is at odds with the film's more reverent approach.
The work of talents who don't seem terribly familiar with traditional Broadway material, the Color Purple score is certainly unconventional. But the gospel/blues/soul/jazz music composed by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray is full of fragments. It rarely takes the form of satisfying song, and too often feels generic. And the songwriters haven't found an effective way to musicalize the heroine, Celie, who doesn't get a big solo number until near the end of the evening. The comic church-lady trio of gossips is a crowd-pleaser, but typical, I'm afraid, of the show's tendency to play things on too light a level.
Donald Byrd provides some appropriate choreography for a second-act African sequence that holds up the development of the plot. Director Gary Griffin has staged the proceedings with assurance. Yet the show is never as affecting as it should be. Seemingly surefire moments the separation of Celie and her sister, Nettie; their reunion; Celie's discovery of Nettie's letters go by without strong impact.
LaChanze carries the huge central role with confidence and skill. If the character of Celie never quite adds up, the performance is as good as it can be. Because Celie is somewhat vaguely drawn, the surrounding principals are able to score heavily. That's especially true of Felicia P. Fields' spirited Sofia; Elisabeth Withers-Mendes' seductive Shug Avery; and Brandon Victor Dixon's sympathetic Harpo. Kingsley Leggs is also fine, but his character of Mister's late-evening transformation from villain into good guy is unconvincing.
The audience around me at The Color Purple was clearly having a wonderful time. While I never actively disliked The Color Purple, it never quite got to me, largely because of a score with which I was unable to connect. Perhaps I will like it more when I hear it again on the forthcoming cast recording. But I couldn't help feeling that the musical version of The Color Purple falls short of the potential of its enormously emotional source material.
It's impossible not to like Chita Rivera. She's the ultimate musical-theatre trouper, and the only golden-age dancer still in business on Broadway. And she's an eminently appealing personality, modest but authoritative, commanding a stage the way the finest performers do.
But she does present certain problems in terms of a solo evening. Unlike, say, Lena Horne or Elaine Stritch, Rivera is more fascinating when she's got a role to act than when she's playing herself. Rivera is perhaps too nice a lady to make a riveting subject for a biographical show, at least one that's less than personally revealing. Rivera seems to have had a satisfying, generally success-filled life; a grueling car accident excepted, it's not the sort of thing that makes for high drama.
But if it's something of a disappointment, Chita Rivera: A Dancer's Life will have to be collected by musical theatre aficionados as yet another journey back to the heyday of the Broadway musical. The evening is best enjoyed as a pleasant, if sometimes haphazard, career retrospective. Looking great, in good voice, and still moving with considerable grace, Rivera makes a warm, ingratiating guide.
Terrence McNally's script lacks bite, but then that's partly owing to Rivera's tasteful disinterest in dishing. And Graciela Daniele's staging isn't inspired. An early number, "Dancing on the Kitchen Table," about family life, is less than promising. The other Ahrens and Flaherty song, "A Woman the World Has Never Seen," is more effective. Too many of the numbers from Rivera's shows are heard only as fragments. West Side Story's "America" gets only a glance at the curtain call. And we don't actually get all that much in the way of recreation of the original staging of these numbers.
Still, the evening has its highlights. The years fall away when Rivera launches into a bit of the "Dance at the Gym." On three occasions, she reminds everyone that Velma in Chicago was hers long before it became the property of countless ladies in the revival. She doesn't mention that she later played Roxie Hart. And I never expected to see Rivera recreating before my eyes "Camille, Colette, Fifi" from the forgotten flop Seventh Heaven. But where are the numbers from BajourMerlin and Zenda?
Rivera's stamina and showmanship remain remarkable. And if A Dancer's Life is not the thrilling evening one had hoped for, the joy in performing that Rivera manages to radiate is ultimately infectious.