Taking the Godspell to the public square

My legs are sooo soooore. From 9:30 to 1:00 pm on Saturday, Oct. 15, I jumped and danced and shimmied and clapped and slapped my thighs, rehearsing with 84 other people for a "flash mob" appearance in Times Square in support of the Broadway revival of Godspell. As I am an investor in the show, I thought this was a wise move. [Pun intended.] Who am I kidding - the chance to rehearse in a Broadway studio and be part of an Event in the middle of the Great White Way - sign me up!

Perhaps in keeping with the inclusive message of the Gospel, uh, sorry, Godspell, we were a remarkably diverse bunch - young, not-so-young, tall, short, thin, not-so-thin, dancers, actors, at least one writer (moi), teachers, all sorts. One woman had flown in from San Diego, another was there with her daughter, a man I met named Patrick had come in from Phoenix.

Rehearsing for the Godspell flash mob event. 

Our choreographer, Nancy Renee Braun, put us through the four sections of the piece, along with some professional dancers starting things off and punctuating some transitions. What a motivated crowd we were, clapping after we successfully executed every succession of eight-counts. It occurred to me that working in theater is like being in perpetual high school, but with grownup requirements such as reliability, leadership, teamwork and persuasiveness.

There was much talk about how the event was in keeping with Godspell's message of love and joy and community, but one of our dance captains stepped in it a little when she said the musical "isn't religious." Well, I'm not particularly evangelical, but in the interest of accuracy, yes, it actually is. What's regrettable is that Jesus has been used as a bludgeon rather than an inspiration so many times. The Christian message - love God, love thy neighbor - needs no apology, and maybe Godspell is a vehicle that makes it simple and clear.

Just before the flash mob

We worked like crazy, lead producer Ken Davenport showed up to see the last few run-throughs, we got a very brief lunch break, then made our separate ways to Times Square, where speakers had been set up around a space on the pedestrian mall next to the TKTS half-price ticket booth.

Spectators were already waiting to see what might go on in the space when a lone girl walked into the center and blew a couple of long notes on a bugle. Our dancers started their joyful swoops around the space to "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord," then we mobbers seemed to flow out of the crowd to "Day by Day." Then, whoosh, the beat started rocking and we started hopping. Halfway through, we took off our jackets and bloomed into a sea of red Godspell t-shirts. You can see it here

There are a couple of other videos on YouTube, taken by people on their phones. My favorite overheard line from a woman chatting to her companion as they film: "This looks rehearsed." I'll say! As we picked up our jackets and walked away, a woman asked me, "What's Godspell?" I answered, "The 70s rock musical, based on the Book of Matthew." 


Now, I'm off to get the Advil. I'd do it again - in a flash.

The Godspell According to Us

This theater blog started in April with news that I had become a Broadway producer for the munificent sum of $1,000, courtesy of real Broadway producer Ken Davenport's decision to open up the process for his revival of Godspell. Six months later, I am about to become part of a flash mob in Times Square to support the show.

Solange and Jesus on Broadway

To tell the truth, the sweet earnestness of Godspell was never my cup of tea (sorry, Stephen Schwartz); I usually preferred a drier drink. But nobody else on Broadway was inviting me to this particular kind of dance, so I decided to sign up and, once invested, naturally had a stake in seeing this show succeed.

Couple of weeks ago, about 100 of us investors gathered at the Circle on the Square theater to hear Ken update us on the production just before previews began. (Opening night is Nov. 7.)

The show was just in the process of moving into the theater - note all the boxes onstage and the shop vac at left of the photo below. Ken, wearing his red Godspell hat, shared some of director Danny Goldstein's concept for the show. Ken asked us not to reveal the secrets of some production effects (Jesus will walk on water), but it doesn't seem too outrageous to say that Goldstein's idea is that the cast will be a group that happens to wander into an old Broadway theater.

Ken talked about the sound design challenges in a theater in the round and the location of the band, as well as what some audience members might be doing as part of the show. The production's budget is about $5 million, a number that's been publicly announced, and there are about 600 small investors. I asked if it was the small investors who put it over the top (a planned revival in 2009 never got off the ground due to lack of financing), but Ken responded that we were all "people of Godspell," which is his term for the investment group.    

Ken Davenport updates his fellow producers on the Broadway revival of Godspell

The poster I'm holding, above, was among the promotional items available at our meeting.

In the six months since April, Ken has kept a daily blog of the show's progress, detailing the many steps a producer takes to get a show to Broadway.

In a way, I've felt oddly detached from the experience, but also deeply part of it. Detached because for me, whether I'm directing a show or reviewing it, I'm directly involved. That's what I love about theater, it's in-person. But Ken has done something historic here. The world of Broadway producers can be pretty small and only open to those with serious money. He's invited us in and let us watch over his shoulder.

So, tomorrow (you thought I'd forgotten), there's going to be a flash mob event in Times Square. On a Saturday, I'm going to get up in time to be at a rehearsal studio by 9 am. And I'm going to make a fool of myself at the Crossroads of the World. Maybe a holy fool.

Heroes for all ages

On a day filled with human concerns both large and small - I learned of the deaths of two friends, got stung by a wasp and fell on the sidewalk, turning my ankle - I entered the realms of gods and heroes via a dramatic reading of the Greek epic The Iliad at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Broadway actor Anthony Newfield, who edited the selections for the evening using a new translation by Stephen Mitchell, is artistic director of Poetry for Peace, which presents readings of great works that deal with war and peace.

The cast of The Iliad, presented at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York. Anthony Newfield is at the far left.

The work was punctuated by percussion and incidental music from Marlon Cherry, whose vigorous bass drumming created an appropriately war-like milieu.

It's a daunting work - some 15,000 lines in all (edited into a two-hour performance), dozens of warriors, gods and goddesses, even rivers and horses and mountains figure in the awesome story of the war between the Greeks and the Trojans.  


The impressive cast, including Theatre Hall of Fame member Dana Ivey as Hera and Hecuba, admirably negotiated Homer's poetry. Bryce Pinkham, late of the cast of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, crafted a particularly intense Achilles. And what a story: the Greek leaders Achilles and Agamemnon arguing over going to war; the Trojan Paris stealing Helen, wife of the Greek Menelaus; the Trojan Hector slain by Achilles and dragged behind his chariot; Hector's father Priam sitting down to dinner with his son's killer to ask for the body. And the gods, above it all yet intervening in human affairs and pursuing their own amorous paths.

The cathedral's magnificent grey and beige stone was a dignified setting for such a tale, one that sent us out into the unusually warm fall night with swords ringing in our ears and the cries of titans. 

Two magnificent Henrys

Laurence Olivier as Henry V - "Once more unto the breach, dear friends!"

Recently, I experienced two examples of inspiring, exciting theater - outside the bounds of a conventional theater.

The first was the 1944 film of Shakespeare's Henry V, which I own because I love the play and because Laurence Olivier was one of the most thrilling actors of any generation. I screened it for myself and daughter Florence because we had tickets to a New York Philharmonic concert that was to feature the second example -- Henry V: A Musical Scenario after Shakespeare, in which arranger Christopher Palmer interspersed William Walton's music for the film and some of the speeches from the play. Christopher Plummer was to appear with the orchestra and I snapped up tickets a couple of months ago. In the last 15 years, I've seen Plummer onstage as John Barrymore in Barrymore, Julius Caesar in Caesar and Cleopatra and as King Lear, which ranks as one of the greats. I interviewed Plummer in Toronto around the time of Barrymore and it was a marvelous encounter.

What a joy is was to view Henry V again, to see how one man's vision and passion - Olivier is also credited as director and producer - could create such a satisfying achievement. From the brilliant opening at the Globe theater to the field at Agincourt, the film's visual style moved from realism to the style of the drawings in the Duc du Berry's Book of Hours. Olivier is first seen backstage at the Globe as the actor playing Henry, waiting to make his entrance. His face is all concentration, listening for his cue, but he gives just a little cough - slightly nervous? a little throat-clearing just to get the voice ready? - that makes the actor suddenly very human.

Before he appears, there are a bevy of highly competent British character actors playing the Chorus, the Archbishop of Canterbury, etc., with that ripe British rolling-r type of Shakespearean delivery. But God, Olivier's voice could cut glass. At the climaxes of the great speeches - "Saint Crispin's Daaay!" - there was a ring to his top notes like an operatic tenor's. I saw Olivier onstage twice in London, as Shylock and James Tyrone and from each of those performances, I can still hear his voice - as Shylock, a piercing cry of anguish at the end of The Merchant of Venice when he is forced to convert to Christianity and as James Tyrone, a world of regret as he recalls compromising his artistic ideals for monetary success and wonders, "What was it ... I wanted ... to buy?"

As we approached Lincoln Center, the program appeared to be sold out, since we saw people holding "need a ticket" signs. The Philharmonic and maestro Alan Gilbert opened its program with the Overture and Bacchanal from Tannhauser, then after intermission were joined by the American Boychoir and Manhattan School of Music Symphonic Chorus and Chamber Choir for the choral parts of Walton's score. Plummer, wearing a dapper burgundy-colored dinner jacket, entered to applause. He is 81 and on the first line - "O for a muse of fire!" - his voice was slightly throaty and I thought, "Oh no, he's old."

Christopher Plummer appearing with the New York Philharmonic

Old? OLD? For the next hour, that man of four score years roamed the stage of Avery Fisher Hall, using a wireless head mic, reciting all the speeches from memory. (I had thought he would be at a lectern.) His voice scaled stunning Olivieresque heights in the great rousing-the-troops speeches and Walton's stirring music created a thoroughly satisfying piece of theater.

What great theater we saw this weekend - on a movie screen and in a concert hall.        

Real people, not cardboard "heroes"

On this significant weekend, marking the tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Armonk Players in Armonk, N.Y., north of New York City, is presenting the play "The Guys."

It was written by journalist Anne Nelson, a faculty member at my alma mater, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I'd read about the play and the feature film that starred Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia, but never seen it and finally caught up with it this weekend, of all weekends.

Written just a couple of months after the attacks, it is a work of drama and of journalism. Through a mutual acquaintance, Nelson was approached by a fire captain who had been asked to deliver eulogies and was literally at a loss for words to describe the men he lost.

In the play, the writer, Joan (played by Jeanne McCabe) interviews Nick (Dick Nagle) about Bill, Jimmy, Patrick and Barney, drawing out their unique qualities in order to help Nick tell their stories. The script makes a quiet comment on the overused word and concept of heroes. "All this hero stuff? That wasn't Bill," says Nick, who describes a quiet, dependable kind of guy. The fire captain is clearly under great stress, as he tells the journalist several times, "I just don't know where they went," referring to confusion over where exactly his men were killed.

Joan, in awe of the firehouse world and a culture she comes to know through Nick's recollections, tells him, "This is all I can do - words," but he assures her that is exactly what he needs. For my part, I was very affected by the play's illustration of the writer's place in the world - finding the right words to make sense of things.

The two actors were highly skilled, but I thought McCabe was just a little too low key and it was a little difficult to hear all the lines. Nagle actually is a retired New York City Fire Department lieutenant and brought a wonderful gentlemanly presence to Nick. The scene where he enlightens Joan about the difference between "engine" and "ladder" companies was delightful.

After the performance, there was a talkback with the audience and we heard more remarkable stories. One woman brought her elderly father, also retired from the fire department and spoke about the loss of her cousin in the twin towers - a woman who had served as her floor's fire warden. Another man, a current firefighter, related how he and some off-duty colleagues commandeered a mail truck ("and that's a federal offense") to get down to the burning trade center.

Florence came with me to the performance. She was just four years old in 2001 and on the drive home we talked of her memories of the event. I still have the drawing she made of a plane heading toward two rectangles. Because she was a little child, she drew faces at the windows of the plane, and they are smiling.

Tomorrow, I'll be in the soprano section of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Mamaroneck, N.Y., and we will sing part of Faure's Requiem and we'll remember.    

Baby, It's Who?

Beth Leavel (center) and, from left, Crystal Starr, Christina Sajous, Erica Ash and Kyra Da Costa.

 

A friend had a spare ticket to Baby It's You at the Broadhurst Theatre and invited me along. Heck, a Broadway show for free, and the music of the Shirelles, the girl-group hit machine of the late 1950s and early 1960s - how could I lose, I thought. The evening wasn't a total loss, by any means, despite the somewhat savage reviews the show earned when it opened in April (it closes Sept. 4).

Since I was a little kid when the events in the show took place, some of this was new to me, nevertheless the bare elements of the story (which is where one should always start) were pretty close to jaw-dropping. New Jersey housewife Florence Greenberg (white and Jewish) discovers four young black female singers. She thinks they're terrific and manages to muscle into the male-dominated Manhattan music business. She starts a record label, Scepter Records (in the end, she will found three), and propels the girls, now called The Shirelles, to enormous success. Back in the suburbs, her relationship with her husband, daughter and son (who is blind) grows shaky. In the city, she has a deeply-felt affair with the black songwriter and producer Luther Dixon. Wow!

With such great material, it's a shame the creators -- Floyd Mutrux, Colin Escott and Sheldon Epps, sharing various author and directing roles -- didn't trust the story but opted for a commercial decision to wedge it between the hit songs.

With 31 numbers (not including reprises), the show has more of a revue feel, and the jukebox nature of the proceedings are underlined with a projection of -- a jukebox on a scrim at the beginning. After the third song, I wrote in my notes, "When story start?"

The most enjoyable aspect of Baby It's You, for me, was the top-notch talent of the performers - Beth Leavel as Florence, four wonderful young women (see caption above) as The Shirelles, the smooth and elegant Allan Louis as Luther and a candidate for the hardest-working man in show business, Geno Henderson, who plays narrator Jocko and channels Ron Isley and Gene Chandler.

The songs - "Mama Said," "Dedicated to the One I Love," "Tonight's the Night," "He's So Fine," "Soldier Boy," "Baby It's You" (with the electrifying cry "don't want nobody, nobody") - can't help but bring a smile and for the target market crowd, memories of younger days. I'm not quite the target market. For me, the Beatles and all the 1960s music that followed blew away everything from Elvis to The Shirelles. How ironic, when one realized that the Beatles covered them. It was only later that I discovered all that wonderful 1950s and early 60s pop and rock 'n' roll. 

But as the show continued, it began to seem like an assembly line, with sets slid on and off, characters walking on, saying a few lines, doing a number, then leaving. The costumes were terrific, but the budget must have been awesome, there were so many - and eventually, one started to think, "another outfit, why?"

The performers were winning me over until a concert scene reeled off "Shout," "Mama Said," "Duke of Earl" and "Foolish Little Girl." Next, actress Kelli Barrett (another fine actress and singer) strolled out as Lesley Gore to sing "It's My Party" and I thought, "OK, enough. Is this about the Shirelles or just an excuse to trot out lots of hits for the 55+ demographic?"

The real loss in Baby It's You is the lack of story involving the women who were the four Shirelles. There are only a couple of brief scenes where we see real people behind the smiling, perfectly dressed and coiffed girl group, but otherwise they're little more than puppets. How did Shirley, Doris, Micki and Beverly really feel about Florence Greenberg and her "discovery" and management of their career? Did any of them object, rebel, want to do something different, have artistic disagreements? The story of The Shirelles isn't only their hits. Maybe the real story is yet to be written.   

 



 

Bring "Enemies" to New York!

I traveled to Pittsfield, Mass. this past weekend to catch one of the last performances of Mark St. Germain's The Best of Enemies at the Barrington Stage Company - an amazing tale of friendship overcoming entrenched racial barriers.

I interviewed Mark last fall for a Religion News Service feature on his play Freud's Last Session, which has been running for more than a year off-Broadway. At the same time, I attended a staged reading of The Best of Enemies in Pittsfield and thought "St Germain's done it again" - found a compelling story featuring real people and created a brilliant piece of theater.

This summer, Barrington presented Enemies in a fully staged production and it has lost none of its power.

Producers, bring this play to New York soon!

The book of the same name by Osha Gray Davidson told the story of 1970s Durham, N.C., where schools were still segregated 20 years after Brown vs. the Board of Education and where two unwilling citizens were brought together to address the issue.

"Community organizer" Bill Riddick came to town and convinced black activist Ann Atwater and local Ku Klux Klan leader C.P. Ellis to co-chair a process called a "charrette," where citizens gather and discuss a local problem and search for solutions. There was just one little catch to this plan: Atwater and Ellis virulently despised each other. According to Ellis, "whites and niggers will never get along because they shouldn't!" The play doesn't shy away from the viciously racist language used by some at the time, but always in context.

The play opens with Ellis, played by John Bedford Lloyd, telling his (unseen) Klan meeting that it's too bad that Martin "Lucifer" King got assassinated in Memphis because he would have liked to have done the job in Durham. Atwater, played by Aisha Hinds, for her part, is yelling at a town hall receptionist, asking what the city is going to do to commemorate Dr. King, and threatening to toss her out a window if she calls the police.

As Riddick, Clifton Duncan is smooth and persuasive, convincing the antagonists that they'd better take part in the process if only to keep an eye on what the other group is doing. St. Germain keeps the suspense up, as Atwater and Ellis begin to work together but still don't seem to recognize any kind of common humanity in the other. Gradually, though, they connect as parents (Ellis has three kids, one disabled, and Ann has two) and as members of Durham's working class, realizing that poor whites and poor blacks may occupy similar rungs of society.

In a very affecting scene, Ellis realizes he joined the Klan for a sense of belonging, to connect with the better-off guys in town. But as he works for the betterment of Durham's schools, a process that will inevitably lead to integration, his so-called friends snub him and his gas station business suffers. This shock, coupled with his wife's health crisis, brings him to the point of despair.

Atwater begins to see Ellis as a person who has paid a brutal price for his work with her and the hard knot of hatred and resentment in her heart begins to relax. Astonishingly, Ellis went on to work as an organizer for a labor union whose membership was 90 percent black - and Atwater, referring to him as "my brother," spoke at his funeral. The last line of the play - which I won't reveal - brought tears.

Hinds and Lloyd did marvelous work, but occasionally I felt they could have moderated the anger a bit, that the performances were becoming a little one-note, with most of the richness revealed at the end. (At last year's reading, Dan Butler and Starla Benford modulated the characters a bit better.) Duncan nicely shows us Riddick's discomfort when the charette process jumps his careful plan: Ellis wants to post an exhibit in the school about the KKK and Atwater agrees to it, telling her people that they need to know how people think in order to "fight with your brain." As Ellis' wife Mary, Susan Wands creates a portrait of a woman struggling to love her husband despite his sometimes-unfathomable behavior. In general, however, for all the actors, the North Carolina accent could have been on a firmer footing.

If my recall is accurate, a couple of elements have been added: sound snippets from Sen. Jesse Helms' campaigns that help give context to the events and a speech from Ellis to the black trade union that was originally a voiceover. I didn't mind the voiceover. When Ellis entered to give his speech, it looked as if we were entering a new aspect of the play, whereas the voiceover lowered the emotional temperature, preparing us for the final scene - Atwater's eulogy.

David Barber's scene designs smartly used projections (including historic photos of downtown Durham) and playing areas, although I could have used a pew onstage for the funeral scenes, rather than the table and folding chairs from previous scenes.

This is an important play for our times, as much for what it subtly says about economic status in America as for its illumination of an inspiring story. Beyond the always-emotional story of enemies who become friends, it's important, too, to shine a light on such groups as the KKK and on events and attitudes that aren't so far in the past - just 40 years, in the case of The Best of Enemies. Today, with a black President and a working class devastated by recession, we need to hear this play.