03/17/04

All of the critics of David Leveaux's new Fiddler on the Roof, who snubbed a superbly acted and fresh-eyed look at a classic, should be pleased as punch by New York City Opera's Sweeney Todd. Instead of a new vision, we get a recreation of Hal Prince's (admittedly stunning) original 1979 staging and as for the acting, it was mostly of the hit or miss variety, even if everyone sang gloriously. In the end, the voices were enough to carry the day--who wouldn't welcome another listen to Stephen Sondheim's macabre masterpiece of a score?

At the opening night gala at Lincoln Center on March 9, I had a chance to meet opera star Mark Delavan, alternating in the lead role with former Broadway Phantom Timothy Nolen. Dressed in a kilt, Delavan gushed about the opportunity to cross genres and take on the mammoth role: "It's got everything! It's got pathos… he's disturbed… he gets to kill. A high body count! It doesn't get any better than this!" Delavan recalled the first time he encountered Mr. Todd, when he saw the original videotaped version of the Broadway production on Showtime: "When George Hearn sat down and clenched those razors, I thought, 'This is the most luscious thing I have ever heard in my life!' And he's singing about a friggin' razor!"

"I've always wanted to sing a Sondheim score," offered British diva Elaine Paige, who has previously won acclaim singing scores by Andrew Lloyd Webber (as Eva Peron in Evita, Grizabella in Cats and Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard), Cole Porter (Anything Goes), Rodgers and Hammerstein (The King and I) and the boys from ABBA (Chess). She called the experience of playing meat pie queen Mrs. Lovett in an opera house "surreal," noting the daunting size of the stage itself. "When I'm in the wings waiting to go on," she noted. "The action on the stage is so far away from where I'm standing!" After Sweeney, Paige will take it down a notch, embarking on a small concert tour of England. "I've been singing with orchestras for 10 years," she said. "So I've decided to go out with a small band instead and hit some of those jazz standards. Talk about going from one extreme to the other!"

I also ran into Judith Blazer, the production's delicious Beggar Woman, who said she'd never pictured herself in the role before being asked to audition. "I missed out on playing Johanna," she said of Sweeney's ingénue part. "I was recently asked to play Mrs. Lovett and I said, 'Oh, I don't know. Not yet!' But I never thought of the Beggar Woman before." Blazer dug headfirst into research for the part, observing homeless people on the streets of New York and also getting back to her opera roots with the score's demanding vocals. Next up for Blazer is Yankee Doodle Dandy!, a new musical about George M. Cohan at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre.

Blazer has also started a new theater company/school called The Artist's Crossing, lining up an impressive group of talents to join her in the company: performers David Garrison, Malcolm Gets and Lee Merrill, director Tina Landau and composer Joseph Thalken. There's just one thing missing: "We need students!" Blazer blurted. "We need 20 students between the age of 18-29!" Interested? Check out their website for an application and more information.

CAROLINE DOESN'T NEED YOUR CHANGE (BUT HER CO-STARS MIGHT!)
Looks like Caroline won't have to keep counting the coins in her change cup much longer. Inside sources say Tonya Pinkins, the Tony-winning actress who plays the bitter, poverty-stricken maid in Caroline, or Change, has worked out a sweet deal for the Broadway transfer of the show. Although the entire company is agreeing to favored nations contracts (which means they're all paid the same amount), Pinkins' deal has been spiced with extra pay for living expenses, relocation fees and childcare (which should help with the reported $104,680 she was in arrears in child support last summer, at which point The New York Post put her on its cover as one of the city's worst "deadbeat" parents).

When all is said and done, Pinkins will be taking home close to 10 times more than her co-stars (and maybe more after a rumored Tony bump). Bully for her, but doesn't that suck for the rest of the company, many of whom are longtime theater vets now being asked to earn the same salary as some just-off-the-bus chorus boy over at 42nd Street?

I'm not the only one asking that question--I hear that the cast is up in arms about the wheeling and dealing going on behind their backs. In fact, many of them haven't agreed to their paltry offers yet. Looks like Chuck Cooper, the pimp daddy Tony winner of The Life, won't be returning to play the roles of the city bus and the drying machine. Speaking of inanimate objects, Adriane Lenox will definitely not be reprising her role of The Moon (if you could call it a role), leaving casting directors to comb the streets for a more "matronly" actress for the part. The casting folks have also put out a notice for the role of Rose Stopnick Gellman, a move insiders say was simply a scare tactic to get the off-Broadway star, the always-terrific Veanne Cox (a Tony nominee for Company), to put her John Hancock on paper.

So it seems that the people on stage may be just as miserable as audience members like me, who found Caroline, or Change to be a big, pretentious snooze of a show when it played downtown. But like it or not, here comes Caroline, ready to throw more than a few wrenches into this year's Tony Award race. Wake me when it's over.

LOOK AT HER NOW
When Rent first opened--no let's make that exploded--on Broadway back in 1996, everyone wanted a piece of the cast. After all, they were all young, sexy and ridiculously talented. Case in point: Idina Menzel, the wedding singer-turned-Greenwich Village rocker, who made her debut as lesbian Maureen and seemed to fit right into a music scene that groomed 20-somethings like Alanis Morisette and Fiona Apple into edgy rock grrrl pop stars. During the first year of Rent's run at the Nederlander Theatre, Menzel signed with Hollywood Records and began working on what would become her debut album, 1998's Still I Can't Be Still.

Excited to show my support on the day of its release, I can remember walking into Virgin Records Union Square and having to look hard to find the fruit of Menzel's labor. I finally found it filed under her name, but why wasn't the album displayed at the front of the store? Why weren't there posters on the walls? A video in heavy rotation on MTV? Clearly, the people at Hollywood Records didn't know what to do with Menzel--a talent that perhaps didn't fit into the Alanis mode as tightly as they'd hoped. Although Menzel promoted her songs heavily with her participation in that summer's Lilith Fair, the album faded off the shelves, and she parted ways with Hollywood Records.

In the years following Still I Can't Be Still, Menzel focused her energies back to the stage, showing her versatility in a variety of roles spanning the 20th century, from the raucous jazz-era party girl in The Wild Party to the sweet World War II war bride of Summer of '42 to the hippie flower child of Hair to the contemporary pop and soul of spoiled princess Amneris in Aida. Now, Menzel is enjoying life as a bona fide Broadway star playing Elphaba, the green girl at the center of the smash hit Wicked at the Gershwin Theatre.

In a way, she's also a chart-topping recording artist, as the Universal Records original cast recording of the show has proven to be the fastest-selling show tune album since, well, Rent. Fans of thrilling Broadway belting (my hand is raised) have much to savor in the work of Menzel, whose voice soars to high-reaching levels in Stephen Schwartz songs like "Defying Gravity" and "No Good Deed." But there's also a kinder, gentler Elphaba, who heartbreakingly realizes "I'm Not That Girl" midway through Act One.

Fans of that ballad (one of my favorite moments in the show) will want to get their hands on Here, Menzel's self-produced EP now available in the theater lobby or online at CD Baby (Click to buy!) Working with R&B music maestro Jamey Jaz, Menzel explores her softer side in Here, a radio-friendly collection of six songs that musically keeps things simple while still highlighting Menzel's formidable talents not only as a singer with soul but also as a songwriter.

"My first album was much funkier, with a harder edge," Menzel explained when we chatted recently. "With this new one, I wanted to do something intimate. I got a lot of criticism that the first album wasn't about my voice enough--that it was too much about the production, so I went the complete opposite direction this time." The soft-spoken star also admitted that with Here, she hoped to appeal to the more general audiences that are filling the seats at Wicked: "I didn't want them to get in the car after the show and put it on and be thrown by something loud and edgy!"

"I didn't get the recognition for my first album I had hoped for," Menzel said when I asked what inspired her to put Here together at this point in her career. "And I've been doing these gigs over the past few years and getting great feedback. I just thought, 'There is an audience for this.' It may not be big enough for MTV to play my videos but it doesn't mean I shouldn't record my music." She admitted that she has a much healthier attitude about the music business this second time up at bat: "I'm a songwriter and I'm constantly writing, so there's no reason I shouldn't get my music out there. Whoever wants to buy it will. I don't feel desperate to sell it. I did it for the true love of making music."

Menzel's got a big fan in Taye Diggs, her movie star husband whom she famously met in Rent and married last year in a ceremony on an ocean cliff in Jamaica. The twosome reunited onstage over the holidays when Diggs filled in for ailing Norbert Leo Butz in the role of Menzel's onstage suitor Fiyero. From the audience, the pairing was gushingly romantic. But how did it feel for Menzel herself? "It made me so nervous!" she revealed. "I felt like I was on stage with a celebrity or something. I was so aware of everything I was doing. It was like, 'Hey, this is my show! I should be the one feeling confident!'"

I'm the one feeling confident about Menzel having a good shot at winning a Tony this year, despite stiff competition from critical darlings (and past winners) Kristin Chenoweth (the other knock-out Wicked leading lady), Donna Murphy (Wonderful Town) and the aforementioned Miss Pinkins. I keep thinking those other gals could split a certain section of the voters with Menzel emerging as the winner. Having seen her work in Wicked several times now, Menzel keeps growing in the role and without a doubt has the loudest fans of the bunch!

And then there's the little issue of attendance records. Certainly, Bernadette Peters was hurt in last year's Tony race by her missed Gypsy performances, an unfortunate diva trait carried on this season by Chenoweth and Murphy. And Menzel? Hasn't missed a show yet, folks! Menzel's Harvey Fierstein-esque record almost was challenged by yesterday's snowstorm, however. Up-and-coming standby Eden Espinosa was apparently warned she might have to get green as Menzel sat stranded in an airport in Toronto, where she was visiting Diggs on location for the heist film 11-99. In the end, Menzel's plane landed in New York and the trooper went on with the show. And Chenoweth? Out sick.

BETTING ON IDOLS
After last week's ridiculous wild card show, I dropped from first to 13th place (out of 25) in a heated American Idol Broadway.com office pool led by David Hatkoff from our ticketing department (who has now suspiciously taken the lead). Anyway, I'm obsessed with the Fox show--weed out that cheesy football jock, that wannabe Mariah Hawaiian chick and that conceited daughter of the defected Bulgarian pop "star" (?!?) and you've got a great competition. What's truly stellar about this year's line-up are the divas--put LaToya London in as Deena, Fantasia Barrino as Lorell and the underappreciated Jennifer Hudson as Effie and you've got a killer Dreamgirls trio. And I am telling you they'd be amazing!

That's it for now. Talk to you next week. Please e-mail me any of your questions, comments or critiques!

Paul Wontorek
Editor-in-Chief

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