Where Lennon Went Wrong

Let’s agree on one thing: If you’re going to put on a show about the life and music of John Lennon it can’t be a conventional piece of musical theater. Lennon was too much of an iconoclast to give his life the straightforward bio approach. Nonetheless, Don Scardino’s concept of creating a cast full of John Lennons was doomed from the start.

In writing and directing Lennon, Scardino’s idea was to make John a literal everyman, but whatever the musical gains by the use of this intellectual conceit it loses 10 times over because the device is so emotionally distancing. We can’t latch on to Lennon when he’s always morphing into someone else. As a consequence of Scardino’s narrative trick, it’s impossible for those involved to show us John Lennon’s story; all they can do is tell it. Thus is a basic rule of good theater ignored.

There are other reasons for the production’s failure. For instance, how could anyone possibly have thought that a musical about John Lennon would work without a reasonable representation of his collaboration with Paul McCartney and a large sampling of The Beatles’ music? Instead, much of Lennon seems to have been designed to rehabilitate Yoko Ono’s image. She is depicted as very much the heroine of the story — and, man, does that not work! Adding insult to injury, the set is ugly and the choreography is insipid.

The most lamentable things about this misguided musical are the waste of a terrific cast and the fact that John Lennon’s genuinely compelling life story has been so badly botched. He deserved better.

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Once Around the Sun Is Once Too Often

Speaking of bad musicals, Once Around the Sun at the Zipper makes Lennon look like a Tony winner. Start with Kellie Overbey’s book — or perhaps we should say, start with the compilation of clichés that pretends to be the book. Here’s the story of a young singer-songwriter who lets ambition get the best of him.

Okay, some musicals transcend their books with great scores, but not this one. The music and lyrics by Robert Morris, Steven Morris and Joe Shane are pedestrian, with just a few ballads standing out. The cast can’t be faulted, and Jesse Lenat is particularly fun to watch. He essentially makes this show bearable.

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Liev Schreiber Illuminates the Big Screen

Tony Award winner Liev Schreiber plays a guy who knows how to close a deal in Glengarry Glenn Ross. In real life, Schreiber pulled off a coup by securing for himself the chance to write and direct his first motion picture. The film is titled Everything Is Illuminated and it’s based on the critically acclaimed novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.

The plot revolves around a man’s quest to find the woman who saved his grandfather’s life in a small Ukrainian town that was overrun by the Nazis. As the tale unfolds, we come to understand the Holocaust in a very personal, humanistic way. We also come to see that potential heroism is in all of us. Elijah Wood stars in Everything Is Illuminated, which is set to open on September 16th.

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On the Fringe

We’ve been diving into the Fringe for a number of years and we’ve learned to lower our expectations. After all, it’s called “the Fringe” for a reason. So, having seen our first three shows we were rather pleased that only two of them were disappointing because the third was exceptionally good. Let’s get the two we didn’t like out of the way first…

We have to give Brandon Wolcott credit for trying something edgy. His one-person show A Certain Level of Commitment (an actor prepares) explores the crossroads of theater and ego. A self-aware, dryly satiric piece, it’s neither funny enough to be a comedy nor riveting enough to be high drama. It has the faint aroma of early Kiki & Herb but without the energy, and certainly without the darkly comic attitude. As for The Lizards, by Alan Bowne, here’s a short play that seems long because only one thing happens plot-wise and neither the actors nor the director can move on to anything else — that is, not until the performance is over and they (and we) can go out to eat. The story: Some stolen drugs are secretly stashed in a gay man’s apartment, but when the bad guys come to retrieve their stash a week later, it’s gone. For the rest of the play, they try to find it. One character dies — and so does our interest in what’s going on. There is solid acting from the four person cast, but to what end?

Far superior, and apparently ready for a commercial production, is The Miss Education of Jenna Bush. Thanks to a surprisingly sharp script and a thoroughly charming comic performance by Melissa Rauch, this one person show is laugh-out-loud funny — and, believe it or not, also rather touching. We doubt that the real Jenna Bush is anywhere near as adorable as Rauch, who moves way beyond cheap dumb blonde jokes to create a sensationally funny First Daughter. Rauch wrote the piece with Winston Beigel, and it is directed with flair by Tom Wojtunik. Our only suggestion: Shorten it by about 10 or 15 minutes. It’s plenty funny and fast-paced now, but it would be just about perfect if it were tightened a bit.

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[To contact the Siegels directly, e-mail them at siegels@theatermania.com.]