Latest news with #DavidYazbek
CNN
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
‘The saddest, darkest stuff is often the funniest': Composer David Yazbek on ‘Dead Outlaw'
Broadway luminary David Yazbek speaks with Bianna Golodryga about 'Dead Outlaw,' the bizarre-but-true story taking the theater world by storm.
Globe and Mail
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
In Stratford's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, never before has cheering for the bad guys been so fun
Title: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Written by: Jeffrey Lane and David Yazbek Performed by: Shakura Dickson, Jonathan Goad, Liam Tobin, Sara-Jeanne Hosie, Derek Kwan, Michele Shuster Director: Tracey Flye Company: Stratford Festival Venue: Avon Theatre City: Stratford Year: Until Oct. 25, 2025 Critic's Pick The Stratford Festival sure seems to have a thing for the French Riviera. Last year, the fest's Avon Theatre was transformed into La Cage aux Folles's colourful Saint-Tropez nightclub. Now, just six months after that soft hug of a musical closed, the theatre has once more been vaulted to warmer climes with a gangbuster production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – complete with many, many palm trees. One of the early 2000s' lesser-produced musicals, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the eponymous musical adaptation of Frank Oz's 1988 film, is a hoot and a half – and its relative obscurity suggests that most audience members will get to enjoy the twists of its story and score. David Yazbek's songs, equal parts catchy and clever, teem with earworms and sneaky double entendres – good luck getting the musical's penultimate Dirty Rotten Number out of your head when you leave the theatre. The show's basic premise is quite simple: Lawrence Jameson (Jonathan Goad) is a con man worthy of Saul Goodman, living large in an expensive villa on the sea. His chummy accomplice Andre Thibault (Derek Kwan) helps him to steal women's jewellery and cash – it doesn't hurt, risk-wise, that Andre is the resort town's chief of police. When one day a younger cad appears on the scene, a syrupy southern drawl on his lips, Lawrence realizes his reign as the Riviera's chief sleaze might be in danger. And so, reluctantly, he takes Freddy Benson (Liam Tobin) under his wing. A perfect mark soon appears – soap heiress Christine Colgate (Shakura Dickson) – and before long, a strange love triangle emerges between the coast's most vile swindlers and its sweetest, most generous guest. Of course, chaos ensues. Jeffrey Lane's whip-smart book, though somewhat devoid of authentic pathos, is surprising, edgy and nimble, resulting in a vibrant, uncomplicated musical that hardly feels its two-and-a-half-hour runtime. Originally slated to be directed by the late Bobby Garcia – the run is instead dedicated to his memory – Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is instead efficiently steered by Tracey Flye. It's a highly enjoyable yet imperfect production. Stephanie Graham's choreography is at times overly busy, and Ranil Sonnadara's sound design could use a few tweaks. Particularly at the top of the show, Yazbek's lyrics have a habit of getting lost in the brass. (That's not helped by the actors' faux accents – Kwan's French joual, in particular, is often quite muffled.) Acting-wise, Flye's cast simply flies – Goad and Tobin work in terrific synchronicity, and Dickson, charming as ever, doesn't broadcast the musical's cheeky ending before it arrives. Sara-Jeanne Hosie's Muriel, too, is funny and swank. Musically, the production is less consistent – opening night sound issues aside, Dickson's belted high notes are occasionally a hair flat. Goad, too, often approximates songs' notes rather than landing squarely on them. Tobin, meanwhile, saddled with the show's most demanding song-and-dance numbers, gleams in the role of Freddy – he's reliably tuneful and relentlessly witty. Michele Shuster is another standout in the impactful side role of Jolene Oakes – it's a shame we don't see her much after the first act. On the technical side of the Riviera, Lorenzo Savoini's attractive set makes a fab playground for the titular scheming scoundrels. Sue LePage's costumes, on the other hand, occasionally feel a touch random, neither anchoring the show in any particular time period nor telling us much about the characters wearing them. These are all fairly minor gripes, though, for what's so far been the most watchable of the Stratford Festival's four openings this year. Yes, the show shares more than a few similarities with last year's La Cage aux Folles, and that show wore its heart on its sleeve in a way I found myself missing here – at a certain point, laughing at oily thieves starts to feel a bit icky in the absence of less superficial subplots. (A budding romance between Muriel and Andre, played almost entirely for laughs here, tries to fill that gap, but only to moderate success.) On the whole, though, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a damn good time, a creative programming choice that's been given a hilarious, mostly well-executed production by Flye and her team. In all truth, I'll probably catch it again before it closes this fall: Never before has cheering for the bad guys been so fun.
The Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown review – a gorgeous take on a flawed musical
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is one of those films you really should have on your bucket list. Pedro Almodóvar's 1988 Spanish farce (currently streaming on SBS on Demand) follows actress Pepa, whose lover Iván has broken up with her over answering machine, and her long day trying to get in touch with him. Along the way, she collides with Iván's ex-wife, a young couple who turn out to also be connected to him, and her best friend Candela. Men are ruining everyone's day. It's funny, clever and dark. The musical adaptation, written by Jeffrey Lane (best known for his musical adaptation of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) with music and lyrics by David Yazbek (also Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and more recently the freshly Tony-nominated Dead Outlaw) premiered on Broadway 15 years ago – to middling (at best) reviews. Both its New York and West End seasons were cut short due to poor sales. So why is this musical getting a fresh run in Australia? Three words: director Alexander Berlage. He's the perfect fit for a show that needs to be stylish down to its bones – and needs a new vision. Berlage started out on the experimental side of indie theatre before he found his way to musicals (often as a lighting designer as well as director), immediately committing to theatrical rigour, camp and playful subversion. His first outing at the Hayes, Cry-Baby the Musical (based on the John Waters film) restored an anarchic spirit to a show that had turned saccharine on Broadway; the follow-up, a deliciously complex and sleek staging of American Psycho, was another success in finding the right tone for a show that had flopped in New York. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Who better, then, to take on Almodóvar's camp farce and make it pop? And this production really does pop: Hailley Hunt's set – Pepa's apartment – is a dream to look at, and cleverly evokes all of Madrid through just a few set pieces. It's red curtain-ringed and deliciously decorated, and when Phoebe Pilcher's lighting drenches the space in reds and blues, it's gorgeous. Amy Hack (who most recently starred in Yentl in Melbourne and Sydney) is glorious as Pepa: it's a deeply lived-in, individuated performance that takes inspiration from, but does not copy, the film. This is a character in crisis, but also comic and genuinely complex – the key is in the title, this woman is on the verge of a breakdown – and Hack gives a gorgeously risky and boldly funny performance that will be one of the year's best. Together, Berlage and Hack are doing great, inventive work (there are delightful staging choices, especially small moments of character and tableau detail, that elevate scenes). It's genuinely a pleasure to watch. There are, however, two big problems. The first, which is fixable, is the sound design and engineering: on opening night, it was often difficult to make out the lyrics. Musicals reveal key plot and character information in songs, from facts and exposition all the way to moments of revelation, so if we can't hear it, we're lost. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion The second is that it's just not a very good musical. Yazbek's Spanish-styled score sounds bright but isn't varied enough to have us leaning in and listening closely, especially when it's already hard to hear. The show has a male narrator (Aaron Robuck, playing the taxi driver who Pepa encounters several times in the film) who feels extraneous to the narrative. More broadly, the book is a mess. When taking a farce from film to stage, you need to recalibrate your narrative. In a musical, everything is already heightened, so you need to establish an emotional reality in your farce for it to have a sense of stakes. Lane and Yazbeck's musical saves the bulk of stripped-back emotional realness for the second act, but it's too late by then to introduce them – we've been dialled up to 11 since the first scene. Berlage does his best to mitigate this – and the ending is strikingly, surprisingly, moving – but he can't change the book or the score, which do not rise to the greatness of Berlage, Hack or the original film. So, should you see it? If you love musicals and want to see a performer at the height of her powers, yes. Hack is well worth the trip, and you deserve a treat. Otherwise, give the film a try. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is at Hayes theatre, Darlinghurst, until 8 June.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Broadway musical 'Dead Outlaw' up for seven Tony Awards
The musical 'Dead Outlaw' is up for seven Tony Awards, including Best New Musical and Best Leading Actor in a Musical, and actor Andrew Durand and composer and lyricist David Yazbek join Morning Joe to discuss.
USA Today
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
‘Dead Outlaw' review: Transcendent mummy musical brings bizarre true story to life
'Dead Outlaw' review: Transcendent mummy musical brings bizarre true story to life NEW YORK — Who needs a defibrillator when you have 'Dead Outlaw?' David Yazbek's latest curio, which opened April 27 at the Longacre Theatre, is a waggish, walloping, what-in-tarnation musical; the sort of coup that is so sublimely strange and strangely profound, it will revive your faith in Broadway itself. That's a whole lot of words for a show where the lead character spends half the 100-minute runtime with his mouth pursed shut in a casket. But that's also part of its genius. 'Dead Outlaw' is based on the unbelievable true story of Elmer McCurdy (Andrew Durand), a haplessly inept train robber who was born in 1880, died in 1911, and buried in 1977. After he was gunned down by police, McCurdy's body laid unclaimed in an Oklahoma funeral home for months. Embalmed with liberal amounts of arsenic, he was eventually propped up and put on public display, with looky-loos paying two bits to gawk at the so-called 'bandit who wouldn't give up.' But McCurdy's story didn't end there. For decades, his mummified corpse was passed around and sold into traveling carnivals, wax museums and exploitation movies, ultimately landing at an amusement park in Long Beach, California, where McCurdy's body was painted flaming red and strung up in a haunted house. The macabre details of how his remains were discovered and identified are all revealed at the top of the show, which traces his wild, woebegone journey from Jesse James wannabe to neglected carrion. 'Dead Outlaw' is ingeniously directed by David Cromer, whose production is arrestingly lit by Heather Gilbert, with kooky, homespun scenic design from Arnulfo Maldonado. The narrative unspools like a spellbinding campfire tale, as a six-piece band – led by the gruff yet inviting Jeb Brown – unleash a maelstrom of mandolin- and banjo-laden earworms, from McCurdy's snarling barnstormer 'Killed a Man in Maine,' to the sultry stick-'em-up 'Indian Train.' The electrifying score, written by Yazbek and Erik Della Penna, is pure, undistilled Americana, but with the scorching rock edge of 'Passing Strange' and the mordant, satiric delights of 'Little Shop of Horrors.' In 'Up to the Stars,' a coroner (Thom Sesma) croons Dean Martin-style atop his autopsy table, musing how even the most sensational deaths all come down to forensic pathology in the end. And in the sweet-and-sour 'Millicent's Song,' a teenage misfit (the phenomenal Julia Knitel) divulges her youthful fears and yearnings to the lifeless McCurdy, who's been stashed in her living room by her filmmaker dad. As the girl prepares to leave home, she confesses her unwonted envy for the felonious crowbait: 'You get to stay the same / and I wish that I could, too / growing up ain't as easy as it seems.' Durand delivers the most indelible performance of the season as McCurdy: motionless, flat-eyed and unblinking as he stands upright in a wooden coffin for much of the show, reduced to a rifle-toting rag doll. It's a mind-blowing physical feat, to be clear, but he also imbues the tetchy character with a potent, devastating undercurrent. As imagined by playwright Itamar Moses in his incisive yet humane book, McCurdy was someone who longed to make some sort of mark on the world, but he had neither the good fortune nor the skills to achieve much of anything. The harsh reality is, most of us aren't destined to be revered or remembered, and it's impossible not to take pity on our perished desperado as he's continually chewed up and discarded as a trifling sideshow oddity. When the clock finally runs out, all we really hope for and deserve is some peace. That futility, and tragedy, is poignantly rendered in Durand's stiff, cold hands. In the staggering 'Dead Outlaw,' death is both commodified and desensitized; a cruel fact of life that we are pummeled with repeatedly throughout the musical. ('Your friends are dead / your dog is dead / and so are you,' Brown growls in the cheeky, name-dropping finale.) But in facing our bleak mortal coil with a laugh and a song, McCurdy's hair-raising, pulse-racing resuscitation helps us all feel a little more alive. 'Dead Outlaw' is now playing at the Longacre Theatre (220 W. 48th Street).
