Latest news with #Encores!
New York Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: In ‘Wonderful Town,' a Party for Writers and Weirdos
Betty Comden was from Brooklyn, Adolph Green from the Bronx, Leonard Bernstein from Boston. All were born in the 1910s. Yet the mind's eye first spies them huddling around a Greenwich Village piano in the early 1940s, cracking one another up while writing topical sketches for the Village Gate. They called themselves the Revuers. That off-the-cuff, show-off spirit is what they tried to capture in the warm and silly 'Wonderful Town,' their 1953 musical set in and around the Village's crooked streets and rattletrap apartments. Though nominally about the wacky New York adventures of two sisters from Ohio — based on Ruth McKenney's autobiographical New Yorker stories — what it's really selling is something the authors knew firsthand: the joy of finding the place where misfits fit and eggheads shine. But the piece is as jury-rigged as a candle in a Chianti bottle, as rickety as those Village Gate revues. Bernstein goes loco with congas and rags, just because he can; Comden and Green, less interested in character logic than in fun, let a football player rhyme 'learned to read' with 'André Gide.' And with a devil-may-care book by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, based on their earlier play 'My Sister Eileen,' 'Wonderful Town' is an almost random contraption, barely hanging together even when shaped by a light and loving hand. It got that treatment in Kathleen Marshall's 2000 Encores! production, starring Donna Murphy, which transferred splendidly to Broadway in 2003. The Encores! encore that opened on Wednesday at City Center — just the third time in 31 seasons that this invaluable series has returned to a former title — does not reach any of the highs of that earlier production. Anika Noni Rose as Ruth, the older sister, and Aisha Jackson as Eileen, the younger, are well cast, and each has endearing moments. The magazine editor both women fall for is beautifully sung by Javier Muñoz. The choral work is up to the high house standards. But except when it dances, the staging, by Zhailon Levingston, is shaggy and leaden and fatally lacking in laughs. It pains me to say that because his main idea is good. Though we like to think of diversity as a one-way street, always improving, scruffy Greenwich Village welcomed a greater variety of people (and rats) in 1935, when the story is set, than it does today with its wraparound terraces. Levingston builds on the script's comic portrait of impoverished bohemianism — its beret-topped painters, shrink-wrapped Martha Grahams and street-corner Carusos — to celebrate the racial and gender mix the authors omitted from their hymn to Christopher Street as 'the place for self-expression.' But though his feel-good update is more easily accommodated than you might expect, it does not itself make 'Wonderful Town' wonderful. Rose's way with a throwaway line, and Jackson's delightful bubbliness are too often undercut by pictorial vagueness and weird-pause pacing that leave you wondering what's happening and whether the next thing will ever arrive. Even when the sisters dig into the haunting harmonies of Bernstein's 'Ohio' with palpable longing for an easier if emptier life, the weirder-than-usual sound design makes it seem like they're singing about a home on Mars, not in the Midwest. I won't take you through the painful details. In any case, what's most painful is something large: the way the presentational deficits of the production reveal the underlying material to be ickier than I'd imagined. Its satirical portrait of Ruth's ambition to be a writer — her stories, read aloud and performed as vignettes, are deliberately terrible — feels merely meanspirited now; its entirely flippant treatment of the wolfishness of the men attracted to Eileen steps over the border of sexual harassment. That effect may also be a byproduct of time: It has been a momentous 25 years since Encores! first produced the show. Our expectations about what can be treated lightly no less than our expectations of dramatic coherence have changed a lot since then, let alone since 1953. Regardless of the production, 'Wonderful Town,' I'm sorry to report, is not aging well in either respect. And yet: Bernstein's contribution feels as coherent as ever, and fresh and treasurable besides. The chance to hear a 28-person orchestra, led by Mary-Mitchell Campbell, ripping through the score's exhilarating pastiches and gently cradling its loveliness with strings, may, for some of us, override the production's many problems. That the dance numbers are by far the best aspect of the staging is at least partly to the composer's credit as well. He gives the choreographer Lorin Latarro a lot to work with; the new tap insertions, by Ayodele Casel, make a surprisingly good fit when paired with Bernstein's ecstatic polyrhythms. After a pushy 'Urinetown,' a baffling 'Love Life' and now this 'Wonderful Town,' one cannot say that 2025 has been the standout Encores! season that 2024 was. It happens. But even without a high point of praise, we can hail the outgoing artistic director, Lear deBessonet, as she moves, after five years, to her new position as executive producer at Lincoln Center Theater. What she's done in those five years has been, regardless of hits or misses, nothing short of rejuvenating, finding in the series' peculiar mission some of the quirky spark and community spirit that gave rise to American musical theater in the first place. Like those hinterland émigrés cobbling together a revue at a boîte, Encores! at its best embodies the joyful ethos of teenagers putting on a show in a barn — even if the barn is City Center.
New York Times
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: Long-Lost ‘Love Life' Still Has a Lot to Say About America
In recent years, Encores! has presented productions of musicals with good name recognition, including 'Into the Woods,' 'Titanic' and 'Urinetown.' With its latest offering, 'Love Life,' the series returns to its original mission statement by presenting an obscure show, one devoid of standards at that — nothing in it would start a singalong at even the most hard-core piano bar. Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner's musical opened on Broadway in 1948, ran for 252 performances and over the years has developed a cult following largely thanks to its daring storytelling. It touched on what constitutes the fabric of American life and integrated vaudevillian interludes, thus paving the way for the likes of 'Cabaret' and 'Chicago.' Yet the show has been absent from New York stages in the intervening decades. There wasn't even an original cast recording to help popularize the score. There is grainy footage of one of its original stars, Nanette Fabray, performing 'Green-Up Time' on 'The Ed Sullivan Show,' and some numbers have popped up on various albums, like Bryn Terfel's cover of 'Here I'll Stay.' But for the most part, 'Love Life' is fairly unknown these days. Naturally, this made it a desirable target for Encores!, which is presenting a semi-staged production through Sunday at New York City Center. As directed by Victoria Clark, this 'Love Life' gives us only glimpses of the musical's potential. The vocals are top-shelf, with particularly thrilling ensemble singing and harmonies, especially on 'Susan's Dream,' which almost gets within reach of the Encores! high-water mark of 'Sing for Your Supper' in its 1997 production of 'The Boys From Syracuse.' (Rob Berman conducts the onstage orchestra.) Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Urinetown' Review: More Than Toilet Humor
About halfway through the first act of 'Urinetown,' the characters Hope Cladwell and Bobby Strong reveal their emotions and desires in 'Follow Your Heart.' Their names could have been lifted from a Depression-era musical, and the song itself evokes such romantic classics of that time as 'I Only Have Eyes for You.' 'We all want a world / Filled with peace and with joy,' Hope (the comic revelation Stephanie Styles) and Bobby (an effortlessly charismatic Jordan Fisher, fresh from a stint as Orpheus in 'Hadestown') sing in the Encores! revival that opened Wednesday night at New York City Center. 'With plenty of water for each girl and boy,' they continue. You see, our lovebirds, whom Fisher and Styles portray with a precisely calibrated mix of earnestness and goofiness, live in a dystopian world where water is scarce. Exacting payment for the privilege of peeing has become a profitable business for Hope's tycoon father, Caldwell B. Cladwell (Rainn Wilson, not quite villainous enough), the head of the Urine Good Company corporation. Bobby, on the other hand, is very much from the downtrodden side of the tracks. More specifically he's the assistant custodian at the public toilet known as Amenity No. 9, run by the imperious Penelope Pennywise (Keala Settle, amped up to 11 as if rehearsing for Norma Desmond). The jarring reference to a commodity perhaps more essential than peace and joy in such a lovely number confirms that the 'Urinetown' team of Mark Hollmann (music and lyrics) and Greg Kotis (book and lyrics) was not just a new version of Harry Warren and Al Dubin, the bards of 1930s Warner Bros. musicals. A bespoke pastiche of a specific vintage style, 'Follow Your Heart' also contains a streak of modern sarcasm and political commentary that helps explain why 'Urinetown' has aged so remarkably well since its premiere a little more than a quarter of a century ago. The show, which started life at the International New York Fringe Festival in 1999, had an Off Broadway run in the spring of 2001 and reopened on Broadway on Sept. 20 that same year. It won the Tony Awards for best book, original score and direction of a musical, and ran for two and a half years. The inclusion of 'Urinetown' — an unlikely hit but nevertheless a hit — in Encores! underlines the mission drift of a series that used to be dedicated to flops and obscurities but nowadays simply 'revisits the archives of American musical theater.' In this particular case, the revisiting rehabilitates a musical that did meet an audience at the time, but still felt undervalued as a bit of a lightweight, silly lark. (That Hollmann and Kotis never had another Broadway show probably helped undermine the reputation of their one success.) I confess to not liking 'Urinetown' when I saw it way back when. Most particularly, I felt that the stream of fourth-wall-breaking jokes about musical-theater conventions — mostly courtesy of the narrator, Officer Lockstock (Greg Hildreth), and the urchin Little Sally (Pearl Scarlett Gold, an actual kid as opposed to the original Sally, Spencer Kayden, who was 33 when the show opened on Broadway) — betrayed a disdain for that form. Last night, however, that conceit did not bother me at all. Perhaps Teddy Bergman's exuberant production somehow softened the approach, or perhaps I felt less defensive about it. Most important, I was struck by the craftsmanship that holds 'Urinetown' together. When the score does not nod toward the Hollywood of the 1930s, it winks at the Berlin of the 1920s musicalized by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, or glances at the Paris of the 1830s as immortalized by 'Les Misérables.' And of course the title brings to mind Steeltown, the setting of Marc Blitzstein's agitprop play with music 'The Cradle Will Rock,' from 1937. Like that city, 'Urinetown isn't so much a place as it is a metaphysical place,' as Little Sally puts it. Yet musically this never feels like a patchwork showing its seams. Rather, 'Urinetown' now comes across as a sui generis oddity that is more than the sum of its parts. Contributing to this re-evaluation is the Encores! orchestra, under Mary-Mitchell Campbell's direction, as it is slightly bigger than the Broadway one (nine players as opposed to five) and beautifully fills up Bruce Coughlin's expanded orchestrations. But what really has changed, of course, is the context in which we watch 'Urinetown.' 'Gosh, I never realized large, monopolizing corporations could be such a force for good in the world,' Hope says early on, before she falls for Bobby and they both become radicalized by the injustice that surrounds them. The show anticipated a society in which our movements, including the most intimate ones, are nickeled and dimed for profit. The humiliation — or worse — awaiting those who lack the cash to use a shared bathroom hits harder. Too bad for those who are not winners in a cutthroat world. 'Don't be the bunny,' Cladwell sings, explaining his worldview. 'Don't be the dope. Don't be the loser.' Admittedly, Act 2 does not have the nerve to follow through on the story's darkest turns, even if the show does kill off a major character. Still, the return of 'Urinetown' proves that the show was more than a flush in the pan.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jenny Gersten Named Artistic Director Of New York City Center's Encores!
Jenny Gersten, New York City Center VP & Producer has been upped to the new position of VP & Artistic Director, Musical Theater, according to New York City Center President & CEO Michael S. Rosenberg. In this newly created position, Gersten will serve as artistic director of the popular and Tony-honored Encores! series and Annual Gala Productions. Responsible for programming and producing all musical theater titles at the historic institution, Gersten will continue to build on the innovation and diverse artistic voices that have brought ongoing success to City Center's Encores! productions including Jelly's Last Jam, Once Upon a Mattress, Ragtime, and Titanic. More from Deadline 'Once Upon a Mattress', 'Jelly's Last Jam' & 'Titanic' To Get Encores! Treatment; Ephraim Sykes & Jennifer Holliday Set For City Center Gala 'Pal Joey' New York City Center, Home Of Popular 'Encores!' Series, Names Michael S. Rosenberg New President & CEO Neil Patrick Harris Joins 'Into The Woods' New York Encores! Production Over the last season, the center's musical theater attendance has reached an all-time high with nearly 30% of those tickets purchased for $40 or less. Gersten will also work with Stanford Makishi, VP & Artistic Director, Dance, and Tia Powell-Harris, VP, Education & Community Engagement, to expand the intersection between musical theater programming with dance, education, and community programs. A key member since joining the City Center team in 2020, Gersten will lead the Encores! artistic team—Music Director Mary-Mitchell Campbell and Producing Creative Director Clint Ramos—following Artistic Director Lear deBessonet's previously announced departure at the end of the season. Rosenberg said, 'Jenny has been instrumental in the success of our musical theater programs. Her artistic sensibilities and deep ties to the community brought new voices to our productions, and her deft producing skills provide the crucial space for an artist's vision to take shape. She has a keen understanding of City Center's legacy, and her long-standing experience in the industry makes her the natural choice. We are truly fortunate to have such a thoughtful and engaged leader to build upon our artistic success and mission of accessibility.' Gersten said, 'I'm a New Yorker first and a musical theater fan second. Making musicals happen at City Center is the greatest privilege—to be of service not just to musical theater lovers, but also to our many communities.. An award-winning producer, Gersten's work spans non-profit institutions and commercial theater. She began her career as associate producer and subsequently as artistic director of Williamstown Theatre Festival. Gersten served as associate producer at The Public Theater, executive director of Friends of the High Line, and producer at PAC NYC during design and planning. Recent credits include Just for Us (Broadway), Beetlejuice (Broadway), Sweeney Todd (Off-Broadway), Gavin Creel's Walk On Through (with MCC), and the Broadway transfers of City Center productions of Parade and Once Upon a Mattress. Best of Deadline 'Knives Out 3': Everything We Know About The Second Rian Johnson Sequel 2025 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Oscars, Spirits, Grammys, Tonys, Guilds & More How to Watch The 67th Annual Grammy Awards Online And With Cable
