What to See Next Week

It happened again this year, the annual barrage of phone calls and e-mails that arrive right after November turns to December. My out-of-town friends and relatives want to make sure that I’m never lonely so they call to say that they’ll be in town the week between Christmas and New Year’s. They want to see me, the holiday decorations set up around the city, and a smash Broadway show or two. Could I get them tickets to…?

They’re not alone. Thousands of others come from near and far, making the week by far the busiest of the year in NYC. Why else do you think ticket prices skyrocket during those seven days? (They didn’t always; until comparatively recently, New Year’s Eve was the only performance that boosted prices markedly higher. Now, all eight are premium priced. Bah, humbug!)

Well, I shouldn’t blame my friends and relatives too much for asking my help in securing tickets. I remember when I used to be an out-of-towner who’d drive up from Boston right after Christmas, fully expecting to get seats for whatever I wanted to see. On New Year’s Eve 1969, there I was, intent on catching the just-opened Coco. Instead, I wound up at the about-to-close Jimmy.

You’d think I’d have learned from that experience, but no! Two years later I was back on December 27, hoping for Jesus Christ Superstar. I landed instead at There’s One in Every Marriage. (Never heard of it? I understand.) That 16-performance flop straightened me out; ever since, I haven’t made the slightest attempt to get into a Broadway show from December 25 through January 1. But others have always stepped up to take my place. I’ve heard from several of them this year, asking for a pair for Wicked, Mamma Mia! or Hairspray. Well, at least they’re not as bad as my Aunt Adele, a lovely who, in 1994, wanted nine (9) seats for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. “But they can be for ANY performance that week,” she said magnanimously.

So, friends and relatives who insist on coming up during the most difficult week of the year: Let’s get real. The good news is that some of the shows that will have tickets available aren’t artistic also-rans like Jimmy or There’s One in Every Marriage. Take for example, Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker. When the Roundabout announced casting for its revival of the play, theatergoers were hot to see Patrick Stewart; but once the reviews came out, everyone wanted to see the new sensation Aidan Gillen. Fine. Stewart is pretty terrific, too, and don’t forget Kyle MacLachlan. To quote Joanne in Company, here’s a chance to see “a matinee, a Pinter play,” something that used to happen much more routinely on Broaday in the days when Joanne drank to that. Why not take in The Caretaker and see if you’d drink to it or if it drives you to drink.

You’ve heard so much about Anna in the Tropics and its Pulitzer Prize. Did the play have a lackluster reception because too much was expected of it? Would the reviews have been stronger had its reputation not preceded it? On the other hand, would it have even braved town had it not won the prize? Here’s your chance to weigh in with your opinion. I think it’s a lovely production of a fascinating new play with two flaws: you see, I hate it when a playwright presents two characters having an intimate conversation with each other and then a third character surreptitiously shows up in a doorway and overhears what they’re saying, unnoticed by the first two. This happens TWICE in Anna in the Tropics.

Well worth seeing is I Am My Own Wife, Doug Wright’s beautifully crafted one-man play in which Jefferson Mays portrays a German transvestite survivor of both World War II and the Communists. Mays plays plenty of other characters, too — including the playwright, whose letters requesting interviews are read aloud. I was struck by the fact that the voice Mays uses to represent Wright is dullish and nasal; it would seem to belong to a more doltish type than Wright obviously is, given the terrific play that he’s written. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to meet Wright and see if Mays is doing him justice, voice-wise. There’s no question, however, that he’s doing the playwright great justice with his superb performance.

Isn’t it interesting that many critics have endorsed The Retreat from Moscow and many others haven’t? Put me in the wildly enthusiastic camp. Maybe you have to be divorced to appreciate such a play — and, if so, I hope that you are never in a position to appreciate this one. But the fact remains that those of us who have suffered the slings and arrows of this outrageous marital fortune seem to notice that playwright William Nicholson has got it all right, from the first warning signs to the irrevocable end.

Musicals tend to sell better than straight plays, so you may not be able to get in to see Never Gonna Dance. But that could be a good thing, for it isn’t very good. On the other hand, if you were crazy for Crazy for You — which I was not — you might like NGD because it has clearly used that long-run hit’s template to create another so-called adorably daffy show. As for me, I knew as soon as the show started that I wouldn’t be able to get behind it, and here’s why: Just as Lucky is about to marry Margaret, his prospective father-in-law tells him to give up dancing and take “some boring, soul-destroying job.” Sorry, but a character such as this one shouldn’t display that level of awareness. As for Margaret, she’s shallow and strident, which calls to mind Jerry Zaks’s shrewd observation when he started work on his 1987 Anything Goes revival: If Sir Evelyn Oakleigh is a dolt, as he’d always been played, why would Reno Sweeney be interested in him? Zaks’s solution was to make Evelyn a rounded character rather than a silly fop — a lesson that Never Gonna Dance librettist Jeffrey Hatcher might have learned but didn’t. The plot of the show would have been more interesting if Margaret was presented as a person who’s worthy but just not right for Lucky. (Hatcher’s second act opening contains another groaner when someone says of Lucky and Penny, “Look, class, it’s the Swing Time Dance Studio’s most successful couple!” — thus offering the type of exposition that Urinetown‘s Little Sally rightly believes can kill a show.)

Never Gonna Dance is one of those shows where the leading man says to the leading lady, “There’s something I have to tell you” — but he’s interrupted and then he doesn’t get around to say what he wanted to say and, of course, she finds out the truth and why am I going on with this sentence when you know where it’s going? There’s a big plot point concerning Lucky’s lucky quarter, which he loses and works incredibly hard to get back…and when he does retrieve it, he hands it over to his pal Alfred. We’re introduced to two other dancers who are terrific in their number, but we aren’t supposed to like them because they’re Lucky and Penny’s competition. So why does the show spend time showing us how terrific they are as? Well, it’s a way to get in more choreography by Jerry Mitchell, who lost the Tony last year because Hairspray had an average amount of dance while Movin’ Out was all dance. Never Gonna Dance contains as much choreography as possible, as if to ensure that Mitchell will win the award; unfortunately, his work here doesn’t display nearly enough imagination to warrant such an honor.

I will say this for Never Gonna Dance: Michael Greif has directed Noah Racey, Nancy Lemenager, Karen Ziemba, Peter Gerety, and everyone else in the company in such a way that they all seem to be thinking hard about the lyrics they’re singing and feeling each word. So if you do wind up at Never Gonna Dance, you will be pleased to see that aspect of the show beautifully realized.

I’ll do what I can to help my friends and relatives see the shows they want to see next week. But I don’t want to hear anyone say, “I know the last week of the year is a toughie, so I’m purposely waiting a week and I’m not coming up until January 2. Now, can you get me seats for The Producers?”

********************

[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]