Monday, February 11, 2008
Applause (Encores! at New York City Center)
APPLAUSE - February 7, 2008 at the Encores! series at New York City Center.
(Expanded notes of a message origianlly posted to Castrec-L)
The evening began with an announcement that Christine Ebersole, despite having missed many rehearsals and still suffering from the flu, had agreed to appear. It's possible that the announcement explained why the performance seemed somewhat disorganized. Certain characters, such as Karen and Buzz Richards (Kate Burton and Chip Zien) did well, no doubt because of their own independence of Margo (not to mention extremely self-reliant actors). Unfortunately Margo's boyfriend, Bill Sampson (played by Michael Park) seemed amorphous. I understand that without a Margo to rehearse, he must have felt lost - but something would have been better than nothing. Park seemed to merely say the words, and look confused, especially during scenes of act 2, where the relationship with Margo is reaching a showdown.
I figure that I must give Ebersole some slack. Having seen her in a number of things over the years, I saw that she was going light. She held herself well if somewhat restrained. At the outset her voice was a little shaky (she never hit any of the uppe notes on the "But Alive" motive that goes through her first song). But by the end of the act she sounded more secure. Frankly, if she was going to go on, she must have been in fairly good shape. Many on the Castrec-L list claimed that she was too nice a person, and therefore was miscast. She's nice, but she also can exude a certain toughness, even meanness when she wants to. That wasn't in evidence here, so maybe its lack was a result of recovering from illness. I felt she could have been a little tougher, but otherwise she presented a different view of the Margo character, one that could elicit sympathy.
The main thing that struck me about the show (as a work) was how lousy it was. A number of people around me left during intermission, and what I heard of the audience's post-curtain talk was not at all flattering.
I think the main problem is the source material. ALL ABOUT EVE is so legendary that any derivative is going to pale in comparison. (How could Charles Strouse/Lee Adams have the hubris to consider the line "Fasten your seatbelts - it's going to be a bumpy night" for a song? Repeat that line once and it looses its effect. Repeat it multiple times and it looses meaning and because a trivial game.)
The film is the story of Eve as told by Margo and Karen. (I wonder if it was Mankiewicz's intention to continue telling the story also from Bill Sampson's and Lloyd Richard's point of view - though considering the love interest, probably not.) As colorful a character as Margo Channing is, she's only the first half of the film. The second half is narrated by Karen, which necessarily demotes Margo to a participatory (rather than narrating) character. Strouse/Adams chose not to do this in the musical but instead to keep Margo as the lead character, unfortunately with not enough material to compensate for what wasn't written.
But the main issue in adapting the film to stage is that the film is really a psychological story about relationships. That doesn't make for good drama, despite the fact that it's externally about the stage. For the musical, Strouse/Adams chose to make it a vehicle for the Margo character. That's a fundamental misreading of what the story is about. Margo is a victim, so automatically she's really secondary to Eve. Eve is the person who really undergoes change. The change is not really a character change -- she always is an extremely self-interested person--but one of how she relates to the audience, who discovers her true character only gradually.
The film is very good in having dual and conflicting threads - is Margo a bitch or is there truth to what she says? Is Eve good or bad? I think the viewer is held in suspense for some time before the answers become clear. It's not an even a consistent progression that gets you to the conclusion. Somehow, with the addition of songs and the reduced ability to intercut scenes, that progression has to be sacrificed in favor of musical theater's typical set pieces (i.e. the songs are a climax to almost each scene). That holds up things and offers a much more choppy progression of scenes and development.
Unlike the movie, in APPLAUSE, I found myself wondering about Eve only by the end of act 1. (In the movie, doubts are voiced much earlier, by Birdie (Thelma Ritter) immediately after Eve's initial recollection, with the syrupy but great music suggesting there's something more going on here -- "Nothing but the dogs lapping at her rear end." And of course, you know something is "about" Eve from the very start of the film, before the flashback.) There is nothing in the musical to clue you in.
So in the musical, what is the character of Margo? The body of the show seems to indicate someone not much different from the film. However, her expository song "But Alive" seems to indicate something else: Someone without cynicism, someone who enjoys life, who is just starting on a journey, who is ready to face all of life's challenging with enthusiasm. It sounds like Maria as she's about to join the Von Trapp family in THE SOUND OF MUSIC. The song has a nice (even catchy) tune but for the wrong character in the wrong musical.
The title song "Applause" is the one song I knew prior to seeing this production. None of the leading characters play a part in it - it is solely reserved for the chorus of theater gypsies. It's not organic. This song has the right sound and right lyrics - but it should be for the leading characters. It would have been more appropriate if this song had more of an expository function, or resolved a difficulty that arose in the course of act 1. But it doesn't, and thus feels like a throwaway number. Intellectually we know it relates to Margo and Eve, but they're never given a chance to hear or relate to it.
In the second half of ALL ABOUT EVEN, the narrative moves away from Margo as a narrating character as it dwells on the growing maturation of relationship between her and Bill, which creates a counterpoint to Eve's abortive attempts to steal away boyfriends and husbands. Even Karen and Lloyd have development, which allows Karen to mature, especially when she realizes the horror of the trick she's played on Margo.
Act 2 of APPLAUSE is a terrible problem. There is no character development of the two couples. Thus it becomes one very long drawn out wait for Eve to be unmasked. When that wait is interrupted by song, it means you have to wait longer and it made me dislike the show all the more. I liked the idea of the song "Inner Thoughts," but it's more appropriate to the original film's idea (where one hears the inner voices of the protagonists Margo and Karen among them). The rest of the songs of the act seemed very uninspired. If the chorus got a nice tune from the title song in act 1, their act 2 song "She's No Long a Gypsy" seemed a clinker.
A few changes to the story I liked - I thought it was a great idea to make the Thelma Ritter character (Margo's dresser) into a gay man (played well by Mario Cantone, but I would have liked more queeniness/bitchiness - that would have led us on to Eve earlier). Of course the danger would have been in upstaging Margo but, I'm all for letting people use the best of their talents.
Unfortunately there was not much to applaud on this Encores! presentation.
(Expanded notes of a message origianlly posted to Castrec-L)
The evening began with an announcement that Christine Ebersole, despite having missed many rehearsals and still suffering from the flu, had agreed to appear. It's possible that the announcement explained why the performance seemed somewhat disorganized. Certain characters, such as Karen and Buzz Richards (Kate Burton and Chip Zien) did well, no doubt because of their own independence of Margo (not to mention extremely self-reliant actors). Unfortunately Margo's boyfriend, Bill Sampson (played by Michael Park) seemed amorphous. I understand that without a Margo to rehearse, he must have felt lost - but something would have been better than nothing. Park seemed to merely say the words, and look confused, especially during scenes of act 2, where the relationship with Margo is reaching a showdown.
I figure that I must give Ebersole some slack. Having seen her in a number of things over the years, I saw that she was going light. She held herself well if somewhat restrained. At the outset her voice was a little shaky (she never hit any of the uppe notes on the "But Alive" motive that goes through her first song). But by the end of the act she sounded more secure. Frankly, if she was going to go on, she must have been in fairly good shape. Many on the Castrec-L list claimed that she was too nice a person, and therefore was miscast. She's nice, but she also can exude a certain toughness, even meanness when she wants to. That wasn't in evidence here, so maybe its lack was a result of recovering from illness. I felt she could have been a little tougher, but otherwise she presented a different view of the Margo character, one that could elicit sympathy.
The main thing that struck me about the show (as a work) was how lousy it was. A number of people around me left during intermission, and what I heard of the audience's post-curtain talk was not at all flattering.
I think the main problem is the source material. ALL ABOUT EVE is so legendary that any derivative is going to pale in comparison. (How could Charles Strouse/Lee Adams have the hubris to consider the line "Fasten your seatbelts - it's going to be a bumpy night" for a song? Repeat that line once and it looses its effect. Repeat it multiple times and it looses meaning and because a trivial game.)
The film is the story of Eve as told by Margo and Karen. (I wonder if it was Mankiewicz's intention to continue telling the story also from Bill Sampson's and Lloyd Richard's point of view - though considering the love interest, probably not.) As colorful a character as Margo Channing is, she's only the first half of the film. The second half is narrated by Karen, which necessarily demotes Margo to a participatory (rather than narrating) character. Strouse/Adams chose not to do this in the musical but instead to keep Margo as the lead character, unfortunately with not enough material to compensate for what wasn't written.
But the main issue in adapting the film to stage is that the film is really a psychological story about relationships. That doesn't make for good drama, despite the fact that it's externally about the stage. For the musical, Strouse/Adams chose to make it a vehicle for the Margo character. That's a fundamental misreading of what the story is about. Margo is a victim, so automatically she's really secondary to Eve. Eve is the person who really undergoes change. The change is not really a character change -- she always is an extremely self-interested person--but one of how she relates to the audience, who discovers her true character only gradually.
The film is very good in having dual and conflicting threads - is Margo a bitch or is there truth to what she says? Is Eve good or bad? I think the viewer is held in suspense for some time before the answers become clear. It's not an even a consistent progression that gets you to the conclusion. Somehow, with the addition of songs and the reduced ability to intercut scenes, that progression has to be sacrificed in favor of musical theater's typical set pieces (i.e. the songs are a climax to almost each scene). That holds up things and offers a much more choppy progression of scenes and development.
Unlike the movie, in APPLAUSE, I found myself wondering about Eve only by the end of act 1. (In the movie, doubts are voiced much earlier, by Birdie (Thelma Ritter) immediately after Eve's initial recollection, with the syrupy but great music suggesting there's something more going on here -- "Nothing but the dogs lapping at her rear end." And of course, you know something is "about" Eve from the very start of the film, before the flashback.) There is nothing in the musical to clue you in.
So in the musical, what is the character of Margo? The body of the show seems to indicate someone not much different from the film. However, her expository song "But Alive" seems to indicate something else: Someone without cynicism, someone who enjoys life, who is just starting on a journey, who is ready to face all of life's challenging with enthusiasm. It sounds like Maria as she's about to join the Von Trapp family in THE SOUND OF MUSIC. The song has a nice (even catchy) tune but for the wrong character in the wrong musical.
The title song "Applause" is the one song I knew prior to seeing this production. None of the leading characters play a part in it - it is solely reserved for the chorus of theater gypsies. It's not organic. This song has the right sound and right lyrics - but it should be for the leading characters. It would have been more appropriate if this song had more of an expository function, or resolved a difficulty that arose in the course of act 1. But it doesn't, and thus feels like a throwaway number. Intellectually we know it relates to Margo and Eve, but they're never given a chance to hear or relate to it.
In the second half of ALL ABOUT EVEN, the narrative moves away from Margo as a narrating character as it dwells on the growing maturation of relationship between her and Bill, which creates a counterpoint to Eve's abortive attempts to steal away boyfriends and husbands. Even Karen and Lloyd have development, which allows Karen to mature, especially when she realizes the horror of the trick she's played on Margo.
Act 2 of APPLAUSE is a terrible problem. There is no character development of the two couples. Thus it becomes one very long drawn out wait for Eve to be unmasked. When that wait is interrupted by song, it means you have to wait longer and it made me dislike the show all the more. I liked the idea of the song "Inner Thoughts," but it's more appropriate to the original film's idea (where one hears the inner voices of the protagonists Margo and Karen among them). The rest of the songs of the act seemed very uninspired. If the chorus got a nice tune from the title song in act 1, their act 2 song "She's No Long a Gypsy" seemed a clinker.
A few changes to the story I liked - I thought it was a great idea to make the Thelma Ritter character (Margo's dresser) into a gay man (played well by Mario Cantone, but I would have liked more queeniness/bitchiness - that would have led us on to Eve earlier). Of course the danger would have been in upstaging Margo but, I'm all for letting people use the best of their talents.
Unfortunately there was not much to applaud on this Encores! presentation.
Labels: Charles Strouse, film adaptations, Lee Adams, musicals
