Off-Broadway Play Review—Sarah Ruhl’s “Becky Nurse of Salem”

Becky Nurse of Salem 

Written by Sarah Ruhl

Directed by Rebecca Taichman

Closes December 31, 2022

Mitzi Newhouse Theater, 150 West 65th Street, New York, NY

lct.org

Deirdre O'Connell (center) in Becky Nurse of Salem (photo: Kyle Froman)

With their opaque plots, absurdist situations and flowery language, Sarah Ruhl’s plays hint at significance but—with the glorious exception of her lone Broadway outing, the focused and superb In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play—rarely deliver. 

Her latest, Becky Nurse of Salem, begins tantalizingly by introducing its eponymous heroine, a descendant of an accused woman during the infamous 17th-century Salem witch trials. A tour guide at the local history museum, Becky is held in contempt by her boss Shelby for providing visitors with unauthorized, often crudely expressed versions of famous local events, like her observation that, despite what Arthur Miller wrote in his play The Crucible (which Ruhl uses as a crutch throughout), the accuser Abigail was only 11, not 17, when she was seduced (raped?) by John Proctor.

A mess at middle age, Becky is still mourning her daughter’s opioid overdose death and pops pain pills herself (as well as downing a lot of booze) while trying to care for teenage granddaughter Gail, whose new boyfriend took the hotel job that Becky was hoping to get; and, desperate for a new direction, she visits an actual witch who gives her potions to spice up her love life with a bartender named Bob, with whom she was involved way back in high school and whose own marriage is breaking up.

As written, Becky may not have true inner logic—another unfortunate Ruhl staple—but, like Marisa Tomei, Mary Louise Parker and Laura Benanti before her as offbeat Ruhl heroines, Deirdre O’Connell delivers an impressive display of sparkling comic energy and touching vulnerability, even putting across the clunky nightmares that Ruhl heavyhandedly uses to equates Becky’s travails with the deadly difficulties of her ancestor—replete with chants of “lock her up!” that not only end the first act but begin the second—that they nearly seem substantive and meaningful.

But Ruhl falters, as she often does, by confusing absurdism with absurdity. After setting up the strands of Becky’s problematic existence, Ruhl spins her wheels until simply tying up narrative loose ends with little dramatic or psychological coherence. Such leaden dramaturgy, which robs her heroine of real complexity, shows snippets of Becky’s various relationships and interactions without giving her an interesting character arc.

Rebecca Taichman’s diffuse staging doesn’t help the writing or characterizations cohere; Riccardo Hernandez’s fragmented set, Barbara Samuels’ astute lighting and Palmer Hefferan’s inventive sound design threaten to swallow up, rather than complement, Becky’s story. Good performers like Tina Benko, Thomas Jay Ryan, Candy Buckley and Bernard White get lost in the onstage flailing, and O’Connell is unable to provide a safe landing after an exceedingly bumpy ride.

Broadway Play Review—“Between Riverside and Crazy” with Stephen McKinley Henderson

Between Riverside and Crazy

Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis; directed by Austin Pendleton

Performances through February 12, 2023

Hayes Theatre, 240 West 44th Street, New York, NY

2st.com

Stephen McKinley Henderson, Victor Almanzar and Common in
Between Riverside and Crazy (photo: Joan Marcus)

If there’s a reason to see the Broadway revival of Between Riverside and Crazy, the less-than-scintillating play by Stephen Adly Guirgus, it’s Stephen McKinley Henderson. This superlative actor, who has too often been relegated to secondary roles or as part of ensembles in August Wilson plays—where he’s stolen countless scenes—returns to his most substantial role yet as Pops, a widowed NYPD retiree living in an enormous rent-controlled Upper West Side apartment. Once again, Henderson dominates the proceedings with his gravelly voice, formidable frame and an affecting twinkle in his eye that invites the audience to share in the grand old larcenous time he’s having.

Pops—first seen at his kitchen table with Oswaldo, his son Junior’s convict friend, soon followed by Junior’s bimbo girlfriend Lulu, and finally ex-con Junior himself—is mad at the world, and himself, for how his life has gone. He was shot a few years ago by a rookie white officer, which forced him into retirement, and his ensuing squabble with the city is not going his way; in the mean time, his landlord is hoping to get him out of his incredibly cheap apartment and his former partner, Audrey, and her fiancée—and NYPD lieutenant—Dave are trying to talk him into finally settling with the city. Through all of this, he might as well be hosting a halfway house for Junior and his shady friends. 

As usual with Guirgis plays, this is a world not often seen onstage: the multiethnic diversity of his characters, most of whom are living on the margins of society, bursts into vivid life thanks to his unerring ear for their authentically slangy talk. However, although his grasp of the language of these marginal people is convincing, he often goes too far just for laughs: early on, for example, Pops has to ask who Ben Affleck is, while later, he nonchalantly tosses off a Justin Bieber reference. Would Pops really know about Bieber but not Ben?

Guirgis is also on shaky ground when putting his characters through their paces. When the supposedly sterile Pops is seduced by a Brazilian church lady hoping to get money out of him, he ends up having a miraculous orgasm; later, when he finally agrees to the city’s settlement, Pops wants Audrey and Dave to throw in something personal as their part of the bargain: her $30,000 engagement ring. 

And everyone gets a relatively happy ending—even Oswaldo, who earlier cold-cocked Pops when he wouldn't give him his credit card—underlining Guirgis’ desperate stratagems in getting from A to B, with the contradictory behavior on display less like the messily real complexity of life and more the improbable contrivances of the playwright.

Still, the play is never less than entertaining in Austin Pendleton's generous and well-paced production, which allows the terrific cast the ample breathing room that Guirgis’ breathless torrents of dialogue rarely do. The single newcomer, rapper Common, plays Junior with occasional hesitancy but plausible bemusement. 

Walt Spangler’s outstanding apartment set, which provides a comfortably lived-in backdrop to the fuzzy goings-on, also doubles as a frame through which to watch the acting genius of Stephen McKinley Henderson, whose characterization has deepened and darkened in the years since he last assayed it, bringing onstage the baggage of so many victims of police shootings.

December '22 Digital Week III

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

The Banshees of Inisherin 

(Searchlight)

In Martin McDonough’s newest blackly comic fable, two longtime friends have a falling-out: Colm decides one day that he doesn’t want to be best buds with Pádraic ever again, and he goes to extremes to ensure that that happens. McDonough’s dialogue is always clever and colorful (lots of “fecks”), the performances of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as the former friends are wise, authentic and full of feeling—and Kerry Condon, as Pádraic’s devoted spinster sister Siobhán is just as good—and the locales look breathtaking. But it’s all at the service of a strained metaphor for how relationships—whether personal or geopolitical—can easily fray and it never rises above the allegorical, to its ultimate detriment. The film looks lovely in hi-def; extras include deleted scenes and an on-set featurette.

Death Game 

(Grindhouse Releasing)

Rescued from obscurity, Peter Traynor’s 1977 slow-burn thriller—originally made in 1974 but held back due to Traynor’s legal troubles—stars Colleen Camp and Sondra Locke as crazed young women who make husband Seymour Cassel pay for letting them into his house while his family’s are away: they tie him up and abuse him psychologically and physically. This has been both touted as feminist and derided as exploitative, and it’s a little of both, although Traynor only occasionally crosses from gratuitous violence and sex to a meaningful study of aberrant behavior. The film’s new hi-def transfer has nice grain; extras include new Camp, Locke and Traynor interviews, audio commentaries and a similar-themed, equally obscure 1973 feature, Little Miss Innocence.

A Fish in the Bathtub 

(Cohen Film Collection)

Joan Micklin Silver’s 1998 screwball comedy surveys the ultimate dysfunctional Jewish family: Jerry Stiller can’t believe that longtime wife Anne Meara is leaving him—his insistence on keeping a fish in the bathtub is the last straw—beginning a domino effect of recriminations among the rest of the family. Silver has assembled a top-flight cast—including Mark Ruffalo at the beginning of his career, Missy Yager, Jane Adams and Doris Roberts—but the humorous situations are middling and mild, with little observational insight. There’s a fine hi-def transfer; lone extra is a Q&A with Silver and scriptwriters John Silverstein and David Chudnovsky.  

On the Yard/A Walk on the Moon 

(Cohen Film Collection)

Joan Micklin Silver’s husband, Raphael Silver, was also a director, and this set collects two of his features, scruffy films distinguished by their authenticity. 1978’s On the Yard, set in a prison, follows the daily interactions of prisoners and those guarding them, while 1987’s A Walk on the Moon follows an idealistic American trying to save the world as a Peace Corps volunteer in Central America. There are moments, but the low budgets have their limits; best are performances by John Heard (Yard) and Patrice Martinez (Moon). Both films have good hi-def transfers. 

Stravinsky’s Mavra/Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta 

(Bayerischen Staatsoper)

Two operas by Russian composers written three decades apart—Stravinsky’s Mavra in 1922 and Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta in 1892—are uneasily stitched together in Axel Ranisch’s fitfully satisfying 2019 Munich staging. While visually interesting and musically lovely, the ultimate point of Ranisch’s conceit remains opaque. Beautifully singing the heroine roles are Anna El-Kashem in Mavra and Mirjam Mesak in Iolanta, while the scores are sumptuously performed by the orchestra, chorus and children’s chorus under conductor Alevtina Ioffe.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week  

Highlander 

(Lionsgate)

Russell Mulcahy’s original 1986 fantasy—filled with violence and time-travel—has become a tremendous cult hit over the decades, so it’s a no-brainer this has gotten a UHD release. As clunky and even risible as the movie often is—and, with Christopher Lambert in the lead, extremely wooden as well—there’s an undeniable sheen to the visuals that is matched by Queen’s soaring music as in the best MTV videos (which was Mulcahy’s first job). It all looks spectacular in 4K; the Best Buy-exclusive steelbook includes an accompanying Blu-ray disc, bonus interviews and featurettes (with new featurettes on the 4K disc) and postcards.

The Polar Express 

(Warner Bros) 

The first feature to entirely utilize motion-capture animation, Robert Zemeckis’ 2004 holiday movie is as much a slog as it is uplifting: the characters are often irritatingly fake-looking instead of capturing their true essence. There are stunning images galore, but this is an unavoidably repetitive adaptation of a beloved—and short—children’s book. And giving Tom Hanks five roles is four more than he can handle without leaning on his usual tics. The 4K/UHD transfer looks dazzling; extras include making-of featurettes on the accompanying Blu-ray.

In-Theater Release of the Week

Going All the Way

(Oscilloscope) 

Mark Pellingon’s 1997 adaptation of Dan Wakefield’s novel about GIs Gunner and Sonny returning to small-town middle America in the conservative ’50s has been recut by the director himself—the result is a marginally better but still fairly superficial movie about an era that’s been covered many times. Still, there are enjoyable performances by Jill Clayburgh (R.I.P.!) and Lesley Ann Warren as Sonny’s and Gunner’s moms, respectively, and Rachel Weitz, Amy Locane and Rose McGowan are excellent as the women they bed down. Ben Affleck is unfortunately one-note as Gunner, but Jeremy Davies gives a sensitive, thoughtful portrayal of Sonny. 

DVD Releases of the Week 

And Just Like That ... 

(HBO)

The long-gestating sequel to Sex and the City came and went just like that without making much of an impression—except for killing off Carrie’s main squeeze, Mr. Big (and just in time too, for actor Chris Noth got cancelled after sexual abuse allegations). The main problem is that, without Kim Cattrall’s Samantha, the dynamic balance among the main characters is severely out of whack: Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte are just not that interesting without her, and that came through in this series’ 10 watchable but forgettable episodes. Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon seem bored, but at least Kristen Davis has a little energy left.

The Invisible Witness 

(Distrib Films US) 

Director Stefano Mordini’s twisty, Hitchcockian thriller recounts the events leading to the murder of a big wig’s mistress from various points of view, including that of the lawyer trying to make sense of what happened to ensure he gets a fair trial—or is she up to something else? For its first 90 minutes, the fast pace imaginatively suspends viewers’ disbelief as we get caught up in the various possibilities that led to the killing, then it’s all ruined in a final reveal that simply makes no sense. It’s too bad, because it’s done so thrillingly and enacted brilliantly by Riccardo Scamarcio as the suspect and Miriam Leone as his mistress. 

The Student and Mister Henri 

(Distrib Films US)

The late, great French actor Claude Brasseur—who died in 2018—is the main reason to watch this 2016 dramatic comedy about a crusty old widower who, after an independent young woman rents out a room in his apartment, begins to slowly build a relationship with her filled with friction but, later, mutual admiration. Although director Ivan Calberac’s film does little original with this umpteenth iteration of some sort of odd couple that’s thrown together, both Brasseur and Swiss actress Noemie Schmidt do their best to keep this afloat.

CD Releases of the Week

Nico Muhly—The Street 

(King’s College, Cambridge)

In this work based on the Stations of the Cross, composer Nico Muhly pares the music to the bone, literally, as a solo harp intones the magisterial drama of Jesus’ final walk toward Mount Calvary before his crucifixion. Alice Goodman’s libretto for these 14 movements provides short meditations of hope, and the two discs do present two versions of the work itself. First, following a Bach partita played by harpist Parker Ramsay, is strictly instrumental; the version on disc two, nearly twice as long in length, includes a narrator and plainchant chorus. Ramsay plays gloriously throughout, with Rosie Hilal as a sensitive narrator and the striking sounds of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge.

Hans Pfitzner—The Little Elf of Christ 

(Orfeo)

German Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949), a conservative composer best known for his dour, stately opera Palestrina, also composed this straightforward music drama about an elf who sacrifices himself to the Christ child to allow a sick child to survive Christmas Eve. As holiday music spectacles go, this might not win many converts—at least on CD; perhaps a colorful staging seen on disc would help—but this 1979 recording has a classy cast (Helen Donath as the Elf, Janet Perry as the Christ) along with the accomplished Munich Radio Orchestra and conductor Kurt Eichhorn to put it over musically.  

Broadway Musical Review—“Some Like It Hot”

Some Like It Hot

Book by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin; music by Marc Shaiman

Lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Whitman

Directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw

Opened December 11, 2022

Schubert Theatre, 225 West 44th Street, New York, NY

somelikeithotmusical.com

The cast of Some Like It Hot (photo: Matthew Murphy)

Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder’s 1959 crossdressing farce, is one of the classic movie comedies, with music, romance, gunplay, Marilyn Monroe and one-liners galore, including one of the great closing lines ever. So why turn it into a Broadway musical?

The entertaining but way overlong Broadway version answers that question…sort of. Much of the skeleton of Wilder’s film remains with a few notable departures. This isn’t bad in itself, especially if one remembers that slavishly copying the movie did the recent Almost Famous no favors. 

Book writers Matthew López and Amber Ruffin have made saxophonist Joe and double bassist Jerry—musicians in Prohibition-era Chicago who are on the run after witnessing a mob hit, disguised as women in an all-female touring band—brothers from another mother: although Joe (the indefatigable Christian Borle plays the Tony Curtis role) is still white, but Jerry (the imposingly talented J. Harrison Ghee stepping into Jack Lemmon’s heels) is now Black, leading to occasionally amusing jokes about their long friendship.

Lopez and Ruffin have also moved the band’s destination from Florida to San Diego, which lets them pivot toward Hollywood in the back-story of Sugar Kane, played by Marilyn Monroe in the movie as the ultimate dumb blonde. Instead, the musical’s Sugar is a self-possessed, no-nonsense performer with her sights set on the silver screen, and she falls for Joe while he’s in the guise of a German scenarist with writer’s block. Adrianna Hicks makes Sugar a fiery femme fatale with a soaring voice to match, but there’s little romantic chemistry between her and Borle, who affects an intentionally horrible Teutonic accent as opposed to the tongue-in-cheek Cary Grant impression Curtis did in the film.

The plot is more convoluted onstage than onscreen, and even though the show sprints along in its first half—adroitly assisted by Scott Pask’s exquisite sets, Gregg Barnes’ sparkling costumes and Natasha Katz’s snazzy lighting—the second act bogs down with a few clunky songs. (All of the tunes, by Marc Shaiman with lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Whitman, are proficient big-band pastiches, though less of them would be more.) And when we get to a tour de force of literal door-slamming and tap-dancing in the final chase scene, “Tip Tap Trouble,” choreographed by director Casey Nicholaw with the frenzied determination that marks all of his work, it’s simultaneously breathtaking and exasperating.

And where are the movie’s classic lines? The second-most famous, buried in the lyrics to “Vamp!”—“this fellow won’t be mellow/more like jell-o that’s on springs”—describes Joe and Jerry in women’s attire rather than, in the movie, how Sugar moves as she walks past them. It’s a minimally clever repurposing of a great, but objectifying, line. Then there’s that last bit of dialogue, which is completely MIA since the musical’s final scenes move the plot in a different direction than the movie—there’s really no room for it in this context.

For all its hyperkinetic busyness, Some Like It Hot the musical only fitfully succeeds at fusing old-fashioned show biz with new-fangled gender attitudes. Well—to paraphrase that immortal line in Billy Wilder and I.A. L. Diamond’s original script—no show’s perfect.

December '22 Digital Week II

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Broker 

(Neon)

Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s films chronicles the lives of outsiders, those people on the margins who create their own family dynamic, however tenuous. His latest hard-edged drama, and his first shot in South Korea, follows a pair who steal babies from drop boxes, sell them for adoption and eliminate the security camera footage of the thefts; they are soon join by a young woman who wants to meet the family that has adopted the baby she reluctantly left behind, while a couple of detectives are on thir tail. Kore-eda is honest and sympathetic to all of his flawed but humane characters, and if Broker falls short of his best films—Like Father Like Son, Shoplifters, After Life—it nevertheless is propelled by his precise observational insights.

Blanquita 

(Outsider Pictures)

Fernando Guzzoni’s downbeat but powerful drama introduces Blanca, an 18-year-old single mother who accuses a noted politician of  rape and imprisonment; this accusation soon provokes people on both sides—those who are supposed to be her advocates as well as those pushing back against her accusation—to question her story. Guzzoni navigates this prickly subject matter with a keen eye, never tipping the balance into exploitation, and the film’s searing indictment of a society that doesn’t (or won’t) protect its children is made more immediate by Laura López’s fearless portrayal of Blanca.

The Treasure of His Youth 

(Little Bear Films) 

The career of the legendary Italian photographer Paulo Di Paolo is recounted by director Bruce Weber in this beguiling documentary that showcases many of his classic images alongside often charming tales of how he started in the business—he’s 94 when Weber starts shooting. Most touchingly, Di Paolo discusses his close relationships with some of his most famous subjects, like actress Anna Magnani along with director Pier Paolo Pasolini, the latter of whom was viciously murdered in 1975 in Rome. Di Paolo’s eyes still well with tears upon discussing Pasolini.

4K Releases of the Week

Elf 

(Warner Bros)

Will Farrell was never more in his element as Buddy, who was raised by the elves in Santa’s workshop until he discovers that his real father is a rich executive in Manhattan in Jon Favreau’s cute 2003 holiday perennial. Although it goes on a little long, Farrell has moments of supremely silly strangeness, while he’s matched scene for scene by Zooey Deschanel as Jovie, the Gimbel’s employee who falls for his innocence; she’s never been better than she is here. The film looks quite good in UHD; extras include Favreau’s and Farrell’s commentaries, deleted/alternate scenes, a 90-minute on-set doc hosted by Farrell, and other featurettes.

Smile 

(Universal)

Laura Hasn’t Slept, a creepy 2020 short by writer-director Parker Finn was expanded into this crude feature about a psychiatrist haunted by a malevolent entity that is causing its victims to commit suicide. The concision of the original short gives way to a flabbiness that wallows in jump scares—how many wine glasses does the heroine have to keep dropping on the floor?—and contrived situations than even The White Lotus would consider too much. Still, there’s a lively performance by Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) in the lead, which makes the repetition more palatable. Extras include Laura Hasn’t Slept with Finn intro, Finn commentary, deleted scenes, and a making-of and making the score featurettes. 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Michael Haneke—Trilogy 

(Criterion Collection)

Austrian enfant terrible Michael Haneke has made a career out of cleverly devised cinematic provocations, and it his first three films—The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny’s Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)—are the most original and memorable of the formal experiments and unsettling narratives he has spent more than three decades creating. The horrors of isolation have never been so savagely dramatized, and the films’ powerful moments outweigh the more obvious ones. The hi-def transfers in this set are immaculate; extras comprise 2005 interviews with Haneke about each film; interviews with Benny’s Video actor Arno Frisch and film historian William Howarth; Benny’s Video deleted scenes; and a 2013 documentary Michael H., Profession: Director. 

The Ambush 

(Well Go USA) 

Director Pierre Morel has already shown, in Taken and The Gunman, a talent for ratcheting up tension, which he does in this potent recreation of a real-life firefight during the Yemen War between United Arab Emirates soldiers and the rebels who have pinned them down in a valley. Although the claustrophobic life-and-death situations might become repetitive in lesser hands, Morel is able to keep things moving, which accentuates the drama’s ferocity. There’s a superior hi-def transfer.

Attack of the 50-Foot Woman 

(Warner Archive)

Nowhere near the top of the list of ’50s sci-fi thrillers, this 1958 B movie about a woman who grows to enormous proportions after an encounter with a giant alien has a cheesy charm that’s undermined by its cheap-looking effects and less than impressive performances. Director Nathan Hertz has a minimal amount of talent, but there’s a campy “so bad it’s good” feel that makes it all watchable—like a 66-minute car crash of sorts. The Blu-ray transfer looks terrific; lone extra is a commentary by actress Yvette Vickers and film historian Tom Weaver.

The Ballad of the Sad Café 

(Cohen Film Collection)

Edward Albee’s play of a Carson McCullers novella about a domineering woman running the lone café in a small Southern town was turned into a stagey, not entirely convincing film by novice director Simon Callow in 1983, starring Vanessa Redgrave in a physically imposing but emotionally distant lead performance. While Keith Carradine, Austin Pendleton and Rod Steiger give colorful portrayals as the various men in her life, director Callow never finds the proper handle on material that needs a more subtle guiding hand. The hi-def transfer is very good; lone extra is a commentary by critic Peter Tonguette.

Medusa 

(Music Box Films)

In Anita Rocha da Silveira’s toughminded satire, Mari and a group of likeminded evangelical young women prowl the streets physically abusing those they deem to be too sinful, even while remaining blissfully (or willfully) unaware that they are helping to promote a fascistic, misogynist regime. The problem is that, after setting up this unsettling glimpse of an hypocritical society—with parallels to what is really happening in her native Brazil and elsewhere—da Silveira concentrates on eye-popping colors and stylish visuals, which becomes grating after two hours. But, in lead actress Mari Oliveria, the director has a remarkably vital collaborator. The film looks stunning on Blu; extras include a director Q&A, video essay, deleted scenes and interviews.

Ticket to Paradise 

(Universal)

Pairing George Clooney and Julia Roberts in a rom-com would have seemed a no-brainer 20 years ago; putting them together now—as the divorced parents of a daughter who surprises them by announcing that she’s getting married to a local guy she met while vacationing in the tropics—seems kind of desperate, as through most of Ol Parker’s movie they basically insult each other while trying to sabotage the wedding. There are a few laughs along the way, as the pair does have chemistry together, but movie has the feel of an extended gag reel (there is one actually shown over the credits). There’s a nice-looking Blu-ray transfer; extras are on-set featurettes and interviews.

CD Release of the Week

Martinů Operas

(Capriccio)

Czechoslovakia’s Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959), one of the most underrated 20th century composers, had an estimable musical career that ran the stylistic gamut from solo piano and chamber music to orchestral and stage works. This superb disc collects two of his wonderful one-act operas, the early Larmes de couteau (Knife Tears, 1928) and the masterly—and perfectly titled—Comedy on the Bridge (1935, revised 1951). There’s no shortage of frothy but arresting music on display, performed with the necessary lightness of touch by the Stuttgart State Orchestra and vocal soloists under the direction of conductor Cornelius Meister.

Broadway Musical Review—“Kimberly Akimbo” with Victoria Clark

Kimberly Akimbo

Book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire; music by Jeanine Tesori

Directed by Jessica Stone; choreographed by Danny Mefford

Opened November 10, 2022

Booth Theatre, 222 West 45th Street, New York, NY

kimberlyakimbothemusical.com

Victoria Clark in Kimberly Akimbo (photo: Joan Marcus)

All hail, Victoria Clark!

Tony winner for The Light in the Piazza back in 2005, Clark has done solid work since, but she’s rarely gotten another juicy role—until now. Whatever its considerable shortcomings, the musical version of David Lindsay-Abaire’s play Kimberly Akimbo is worth seeing for Clark’s wonderfully humane performance in the eponymous role, as a teenager with progeria, which makes her body age more than four times faster than normal.

The original play didn’t cry out for musicalization. Lindsay-Abaire’s 2001 comic fable tried a tricky balancing act of absurdism and empathy, in the mode of Christopher Durang, only fitfully succeeding as it followed Kimberly’s travails with her dysfunctional family. 

For the musical, the archness seems to stick out more, and Jeanine Tesori’s songs feel as if they are pulling this weirdly schizophrenic story in antithetical directions. Tesori is not your typical Broadway composer, but her songs (with a couple exceptions) come off as standard show tunes that rather unconvincingly bump up against Kimberly’s bizarre life.

Jessica Stone’s directing has a tendency to highlight the strangeness embedded in the original play, which in effect diminishes Kimberly herself. For example, Kimberly’s aunt Debra was already overwritten, her manic proclivities writ large, but as overacted by Bonnie Mulligan, obviously nudged by Stone, it tips the scales too far, making Kimberly too often a spectator in her own story.

Pattie, Kimberly’s mother, is played by Alli Mauzey, also inclined to overact, but she at least seems like a woman angry with her lot in life. Conversely, Steven Boyer is subdued as Kimberly’s father, Buddy, which makes his faults all the more forgivable. His song about his daughter, “Happy for Her,” is one of the best in the show, illuminating rather than underlining what the playwright originally created. Of Kimberly’s high school friends (who weren’t in the original play), Justin Cooley is most memorable as Seth, Kimberly’s awkward suitor. 

But through it all hovers Clark, who never condescends to the fact that she’s a 63-year-old playing 15. Instead, she gives a profoundly touching portrayal that grounds even the show’s goofiest moments—like Debra’s ridiculous money-laundering scheme—in something approaching a plausible reality. Clark even makes the treacly sentiments of the climactic song, “Before I Go,” emotionally palatable. Without her, this show would be even more akimbo.

December '22 Digital Week I

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 

(Warner Bros)

Despite its pedigree—a screenplay by John Hughes and a cast of reliable comic actors—this 1989 sequel to Vacation and European Vacation is as bumpy a ride as the first two entries, with similar ratios of satisfying to cheap laughs as the Griswolds attempt to have a happy holiday gathering despite seemingly everything going wrong. Chevy Chase does his usual sometimes funny, sometimes not shtick, and there are good moments from Beverly D’Angelo, Brian Doyle Murray, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, E.G. Marshall, Doris Roberts, Diane Ladd and the otherwise forgotten Nicolette Scorsese. The 4K image look solid; lone extra is a commentary by D’Angelo, director Jeremiah S. Chechik, Randy Quaid, Johnny Galecki, Miriam Flynn, and producer Matty Simmons.

Westworld—Complete 4th Season 

(Warner Bros)

Fans of Westworld think the series went off the rails during its fourth season, and to an extent, they’re right—jumping forward several years (twice!) and setting much of the plot in a recognizable Manhattan (with the High Line in evidence) is a detour from previous seasons. On the other hand, since it has always taken sharp narrative curves, season four could be considered par for the course. The always humanizing presence of both Thandiwe Newton and Evan Rachel Wood keep things grounded, along with the dazzling-looking settings, which mesmerize even more in 4K. All eight episodes are included on both three UHD discs and three Blu-rays; hours of extras comprise making-of featurettes and interviews.

In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week 

In the Court of the Crimson King—King Crimson at 50 

(DGM)

For a half century, guitarist Robert Fripp has created his own niche in rock music annals with prog giant King Crimson, which has gone through many iterations over the decades; yet, no matter who else is in the group, Fripp is the constant, focused on the music even at the expense of his relationship with other members. Toby Amies’ candid documentary tactfully explores that delicate balance, as we hear from Fripp and current and former band members like Ian MacDonald (who died earlier this year), Adrian Belew, Bob Bruford and Tony Levin to present a compelling warts-and-all look at the creative process, with great musical moments both onstage and in rehearsal.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Christmas Eve 

(Naxos)

Although this opera by Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov isn’t among his most well-known, Germany’s Frankfurt Opera has given it a high-wire production by director Christof Loy, which was filmed last winter. The fantastical plot is business as usual for Rimsky, whose music often sounds ravishing, especially when sung by Julia Muzychenko as the heroine Oksana. Conductor Sebastian Weigle leads the orchestra and chorus in a focused and sumptuous performance. As always, there’s excellent hi-def video and audio.

Christmas Concerts 

(SWR Classic)

These two holiday concerts by the SWR Vocal Ensemble, “Silent Night” and “Christmas Carols,” were respectively recorded in 2017 and 2018 at the properly solemn confines of the Gaisburg Church in Stuttgart, Germany. Led by conductor Marcus Creed, the vocal ensemble—with its soloists often splendidly taking the lead—beautifully sings such perennials as “The Holly and the Ivy” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” along with other seasonal music by such composers as Britten, Howells, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Mahler and Schumann. The Blu-ray video and audio look and sound sumptuous.

The Night of the Iguana 

(Warner Archive)

In John Huston’s spirited 1964 adaptation of a rambunctious Tennessee Williams play, Richard Burton chews the scenery as T. Lawrence Shannon, a former priest turned tourist guide leading a group to Puerto Vallarta; he’s being harangued by stern Judith Fellowes (Oscar-nominated Grayson Hall), who believes he’s trying to seduce her 16-year-old niece, Charlotte Goodall (a very Lolita-like Sue Lyon). Along for the ride are a gleefully effervescent Ava Gardner as Maxine Faulk, an old friend who might become a new flame, and a properly dowdy Deborah Kerr as spinster Hannah Jelkes. The hi-def transfer makes Huston’s B&W images really pop; extras are on-set and retrospective featurettes.

Star Trek Discovery—Complete 4th Season 

(CBS/Paramount)

In the fourth season of the latest Star Trek spinoff series, USS Discovery captain Michael Burnham heads the crew that tries, in a post-cataclysm environment, to help rebuild the United Federation of Planets. These 13 episodes provide enough of the familiar space drama to satiate even the most finicky Trekkie, while the performances of Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham and Anthony Rapp as scientist Paul Stamets can be recommended to all viewers. There’s a very good hi-def transfer; extras include on-set featurettes, deleted scenes, audio commentary and gag reel.

DVD Releases of the Week

Blonde—The Marilyn Stories 

(Film Chest)

With the release of Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, in which Ana de Armas makes a heartbreaking Marilyn, Monroe is once again getting media attention, hence this three-disc set that brings together documentary and fictional accounts of her life, career and untimely death. Of the features centering each disc—2001’s biopic Blonde with Poppy Montgomery, 1991’s Marilyn and Me with Susan Griffiths and 1976’s Goodbye Norma Jean with Misty Rowe—the most interesting is the latter, exploitative but anchored by Rowe’s quite sympathetic portrayal. Extras are a 1986 documentary; Marilyn’s first TV appearance, on The Jack Benny Show in 1953; and a short doc, 1967’s The Legend of Marilyn Monroe, narrated by John Huston, who directed Marilyn at the beginning and end of her career, in both The Asphalt Jungle and The Misfits; but beware, the video quality is pitched somewhere between VHS and DVD.

Amazing Grace—Country Stars Sing Songs of Faith and Hope 

(Time/Life)

Time-Life’s latest massive boxed set is this behemoth, which is made up of 10 discs of  more than 150 performances of spirituals and other gospel songs by some of country music’s biggest stars, from George Jones and Loretta Lynn to Dolly Parton and Reba McEntire. Among the classic tunes they perform are “Amazing Grace,” sung by both Jones and by Josh Turner; “Coat of Many Colors,” sung by Parton; and “How Great Thou Art” by McEntire. In addition to the memorable live performances, many enticing extras include two DVDs of Opry Gospel Classics, including rare archival performances by Johnny Cash, Barbara Mandrell, Charley Pride, Porter Wagoner, and more; interviews with the likes of Vince Gill, the Oak Ridge Boys and Statler Brothers; bonus performances; and a 36-page collector’s booklet.

CD Release of the Week

Aram Khachaturian—

Piano Concerto/Concerto-Rhapsody/Masquerade 

(BIS)

Known for his engaging ballets Spartacus and Gayane (the latter featured so prominently in Kubrick’s classic 2001), Russian composer Aram Khachaturian (1903-78) was an endless reservoir of glorious tunes, so it shouldn’t surprise anybody that this disc of his piano music, especially the D-flat major Piano Concerto and Concerto-Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra, is crammed with one exquisite melody after another. On the two orchestral works, conductor Andrew Litton leads the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in lovely accompaniment to the excellent soloist Iyad Sughayer, who shows in the solo Masquerade Suite that he can easily alternate between delicacy and bombast whenever it’s needed.