By Barbara & Scott Siegel
From Sunset Blvd To Death Becomes Her – Looking at Musicals As We Approach the Halfway Point of the Season…
Here we are at the anchor moment of the 2024-25 Season, that point when the last shows of 2024 will be opening before Christmas. We are climbing to the top of the hill. After that comes the chasm of January and February before the big rush in the Spring toward the Tony cut-off. So, where are we now? How is the season shaping up?
From our perspective, both on and Off Broadway, this could be the first half of a very exciting season. Not that there aren’t failures and disappointments, but the richness and variety of the offerings so far, along with the quality of so many of the shows, portends the best theater season since the end of the pandemic, and maybe for a lot longer than that. But not necessarily among the musicals. To that end, this column and the one that will follow later this month, will look at a broad cross section of what’s been happening this Fall. And with this column, we’ll start with a look at some of the musicals…
Let’s briefly deal with Tammy Faye first. The best thing about it is that it’s inside the newly renovated Palace Theatre. It is wonderful to have that grand old house back in the mix. While the entrance used to be under the bright lights of Times Square, the entrance is now on West 47th Street (the side street). The next best thing about Tammy Faye is the bright and vibrant performance of its star, Katie Brayden as the dynamic, if flawed,Tammy Faye Bakker, followed by the always engaging Christian Borle who plays her even more seriously flawed husband, Jim Bakker.
The music has some life, the lyrics do not. The book doesn’t have a strong, narrative through-line that brings the story to a proper finale; perhaps because real life would not cooperate to provide it. So, in the end, the story falls flat.
Finally, if you were around and aware of the rise and fall of the Bakker folks, you would know that is was a nutty religious side show. It’s one truly redeeming fact was that Tammy Faye was a sincere Christian who defied the religious right to embrace the gay community at the height of the AIDS crisis. She was, indeed, a heroic figure at that moment in time. Perhaps the producers of the show were thinking that the gay community would come out in droves to support this musical because of that fact. If that was their thinking, they should have built the musical more fully around that shining moment and not her whole life story.
The gay community did not come out in support of the show. Almost no one came out in support of the show. We have never been to a press night of a Broadway show in which the theater had so many empty seats. Even before we saw the show, the closing notice had been posted. Tammy Faye won’t be the only casualty of this Broadway season, but at least you can understand the many and varied reasons for its failure.
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Sunset Blvd. is brilliantly bad. There is so much to admire and enjoy about this riveting and entirely new take on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaption of Billy Wilder’s movie. But for all the exciting innovations, the musical is also a disappointment.
Let’s cut to the chase on this; if you loved the original version of the musical, we suspect you will have some problems with the new concept. If you either didn’t love the original or never saw it, you will likely be enthralled with this brand new version of the show. We get it. Nicole Scherzinger, as Norma Desmond, has a voluptuous voice to match her striking appearance. But she’s a lousy actress. On the other hand, Tom Francis, as Joe Gillis, nearly steals the show, especially with his second act entrance in which the title song, “Sunset Blvd.” has been moved to stunning effect.
If you’ve heard any details about this new version of the show, you have probably heard that it uses huge screen video images to literally project the musical. The usage is extremely compelling, especially as it harkens back to the original film version of the story. But after you’ve seen Norma Desmond/Nicole Scherzinger is countless huge close-ups, when we get to the show’s iconic climatic line, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille,” the musical is robbed of the impact because we’ve seen so many such close-ups before. It’s a disappointing, deflating finale.
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Show closings continue, and business is so poor for some of these shows that they aren’t even waiting till after the Christmas holiday season to close. And one can understand why in the case of Swept Away. This dark musical drama about canabalism is not what you’d call happy family fare for the holidays.
Based on a true story about the men on a lifeboat who tried to survive the aftermath of their shipwreck, the book by John Logan is as sturdy as the ship that went down in a storm (which is to say, not sturdy enough). On the other hand, the music and lyrics by The Avett Brothers evokes a rich sea shanty tradition and helps keep the story afloat (pun intended). More on the plus side: the performances by John Gallagher, Jr. and Stark Sands as two brothers with opposing views on life, are superlative.
There is a big BUT here. But if you saw The Life of Pi on Broadway last year, you saw another story of a shipwreck and survival at sea that was far superior in every way — and still failed — so you have to wonder what compelled the producers to bring this to Broadway.
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Jukebox musicals continue to be a Broadway mainstay; the current version in the genre is A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical. Like so many of the lesser jukebox shows, the problem is the book. You can’t go wrong with the music, and the performers who sing the songs are uniformly exciting singers (and some of them are dynamic dancers, too), but the book just plods along in a narrative of Armstrong’s questionable relationships with women, while never actually dealing with his less than stellar behavior.
It’s often the case that the less you know about the subject of a biographical piece, the more you enjoy the learning experience. Conversely, the more you know about someone, when you sit through their story, the less you enjoy it because you know too much. Why did they leave this out? Why did they bend the truth? How dare they claim this event was more important than that event? The sad truth about the Louis Armstrong musical is that despite not knowing very much about his life, it was still boring!
But the music is wonderful, so we’re only going to complain to a point. And you can pretty much count on James Monroe Iglehart getting a Tony nomination for playing Louis Armstrong. It might just be worth seeing for his performance.
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Just when it seemed that there wasn’t a musical in sight during this first half of the season that was firing on all cylinders, Death Becomes Her arrived at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. It’s a flat out musical comedy masterpiece. It’s not trying to change the world; it’s just trying to entertain — and it does so with energy, imagination, and style. It is simply great fun!
The three leads: Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard, and Christopher Seiber devour the gorgeous scenery, and the two women, in particular, belt their faces off while Sieber is hilarious as the woebegone man in this push and pull threesome.
A dark musical comedy based upon the hit movie of the same name, the book by Marco Pennette keeps the story spinning without letting the air out of it, while the clever lyrics by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey dominate their music — but that’s okay because it isn’t about pretty, it’s about funny. And Comedy Becomes Her!
Look for this show to dominate the Tony nominations for Costume Design (Paul Tazewell), Lighting Design (Justin Townsend) and set design (Derek McLane). The whole look and feel of the show speaks volumes about the spirit of Broadway musical comedy. And the biggest Tony winner of all will be the show’s director/choreographer: Christopher Gattelli. Death Becomes Her will run all season, and probably well beyond.
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Next column…Straight Plays During the Fall Season!
