Broadway and Times Square remain the soul of Gotham glitz and excitement, particularly during the holiday season when the world's attention zooms in on that hunk of Waterford crystal. Yet as I discovered during my annual pilgrimage to the Big Apple, times are a-changin' along the Great White Way.
Playwrights, long considered to be heading toward commercial extinction, are back in force. In the case of Mark Twain and Tennessee Williams, they're back from the dead!
The roster of Broadway productions currently includes plays by David Mamet, Tom Stoppard, Aaron Sorkin, Conor McPherson, Tracy Letts, Harold Pinter, along with a surprising Twain exhumation. Williams is just one of the big names waiting in the wings, with revivals of Caryl Churchill, Clifford Odets, and William Inge also on the near horizon.
Of course, with Legally Blonde and Mary Poppins still going strong, Broadway's newest menu items aren't all sugar-free. We'll analyze Broadway, and its upsurge as a protein source, in Part 2 of our "New York, New York" series next week.
This week, we're hanging at Lincoln Center, where seven of the 18 events were staged in this year's CL roundup of Broadway, off-Broadway, classical music and opera. Modernization is sweeping the complex as the Linc gets ready to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2009 with a massive facelift that will transform its outdoor campus and underground facilities.
Live at Lincoln Center has been a PBS fixture for decades, and in recent years, the New York Philharmonic has increased its prominence on the left side -- the longhair side -- of the radio dial. But if Lincoln Center has become revitalized on a global scale, it's because of the worldwide network of movie theaters showing Met Live on HD broadcasts to sellout crowds clamoring for more.
The pioneering opera telecasts, which we spotlighted during last year's New York pilgrimage, have flourished as I predicted. Together with the madly successful Coast of Utopia trilogy by Stoppard, those HD broadcasts have forged a whole new entertainment paradigm. Broadway and highbrow producers now have abundant evidence that there's a mass audience out there whose attention spans extend far beyond two hours.
Lincoln Center was ground zero for both the HD and Utopia booms. So far in the new millennium, these are the best climate changes I've seen. Here's my rundown of Lincoln Center fare that I attended between Dec. 28 and Jan. 7. (Continuing events indicated in parentheses.)
Die Walkure (***3/4 out of 4) -- After a lordly hiatus of 45 years, Lorin Maazel has returned to the Met Opera pit in prime form. But the true glory is onstage. Freed of the Eurotrash trappings of last year's Canadian Opera Company production, Clifton Forbis and Adrianne Pieczonka are even more triumphant as Siegmund and Sieglinde, the incestuous love couple of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle.
The doomed lovers have more than Maazel to inspire them. James Morris is still formidable at age 61 as Wotan, the lawgiving thunder god who sired the sibs during one of his moral lapses. Stephanie Blythe rises to new heights as Fricka, Wotan's vengeful wife, singing with a godly authority I never dreamed possible after seeing her at Santa Fe Opera in Italian in Algiers five years ago.
Only Lisa Gasteen disappoints as Brunnhilde, the Valkyrie who understands her father Wotan's heart but tragically disobeys his command. But even she has powerful moments and cuts a fine war-like figure. Gasteen is at her best in her Act 3 showdown with Morris, particularly in her plaintive final appeal. Maazel is at his most impressive throughout the closing act, launching the action stirringly with the familiar "Ride of the Valkyries" overture. (Through Feb. 9.)
War and Peace (***1/2) -- Moscow burns and Napoleon crosses the vast Met stage on horseback as sheer spectacle matches the epic sweep of Sergei Prokofiev's music. For months, I've been listening diligently to Prokofiev's complete symphonies on the acclaimed set of CDs conducted by Valery Gergiev. Caught up in this glorification of Mother Russia, I couldn't help feeling there was more original, heartfelt Prokofiev here than in all those seven symphonies combined.
Inevitably, the essence of Count Leo Tolstoy's 1,600-page novel -- the acute sketching of his characters, his philosophic ruminations and his historical perspective -- gets lost in a 13-scene reduction. Spider-like, Prokofiev and co-librettist Mira Mendelson leave much of the outer surface intact as they suck out the marrow and infuse the carcass with their own juices.
It's all lovingly done with more than 70 singers in the cast simulating the breadth of Tolstoy's tapestry. Prokofiev doesn't have an outstanding gift for vocal line, but there's enough earnest effort to differentiate the main players musically. With fine believable actors singers in a lavishly budgeted production, propelled by conductor Gianandrea Noseda (replacing Gergiev, who helmed the season premiere), this opera emerges as a masterwork.
Macbeth (***1/4) -- This new Met production transposes Shakespeare's Thane of Cawdor -- and Verdi's massive sisterhood of witches -- to post-World War II Scotland, where the usurping king rides into battle in an army Jeep. For the most part, Mark Thompson's scenic design and costumes avoid jarring eccentricity, preserving the timelessness of Verdi's eternally-suffering peasantry.
We're caressed by surreal weirdness when called for, during the witches' scenes and Lady M's climactic sleepwalk. On the Saturday night that Sue and I attended, there was unforeseen drama. Not only did the switchover from the matinee performance of Un Ballo delay the first-act curtain by a full half hour, two of the principal singers had to be replaced. Dmitri Pittas pinch-hit for ailing Roberto Aronica as Macduff, and Maria Guleghina strode forth to fill the queenly role Maria Callas popularized, replacing Andrea Gruber, who also called in sick.
From what my dad told me later, Guleghina may have been ill herself when she sang Lady M earlier in the season. But on Jan. 5, Guleghina was in top form, at times evoking memories of La Divina herself -- or at least Anna Magnani -- with her lusty intensity. Unfortunately, that meant she wiped the floor with Lado Ataneli, the strapping baritone who sang the title role, oblivious to the rudiments of character development and emotional expression. (Through May 17.)
Mendelssohn and Elgar (***) -- Leading orchestral concerts on two consecutive weeks -- with preparations and performance of the marathon Walkure sandwiched in-between -- Maazel looked understandably enervated at this 11 a.m. repeat of a concert he'd presented the previous evening. The sleek-sounding New York Philharmonic were respectable in the "Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream," generating beauty in the soft passages but little kick in the frolicsome bars.
Guest soloist Viviane Hagner did little to lift the occasion at Avery Fisher Hall with a curiously bland, lackluster reading of Felix's E minor Violin Concerto. After intermission, everyone seemed unaccountably refreshed. Phil's principal French hornist, Philip Myers, thoroughly upstaged Hagner with his performance of Mozart's Horn Concerto #2. The ensemble finally showed its mettle in a wondrously pliant, textured rendition of Elgar's Enigma Variations.
Un Ballo in Maschera (**3/4) -- The Met version laudably restores the action to Stockholm, where Verdi intended it to be (under the title of Gustavus III), rather than Boston, where censors forced librettist Antonio Somma to move it. But Piero Faggioni's misguided production design takes its cue from the grandiosity of Aida rather than the boudoir intrigue of Otello.
Perhaps disheartened by the negative Times review, the singing of this marvelous score was surprisingly moribund. Salvatore Licitra failed to live up to his hype as the amorous Gustavo III (better known as Governor Riccardo), and after his charismatic exploits last season in Eugene Onegin, Dmitri Hvorostovsky delivered a shockingly low-voltage version of Gustavo's jilted advisor, Anckarstrom (Renato).
The one saving grace here, beside the irrepressible beauties of the music, is Stephanie Blythe as the sorceress Ulrica. In her single scene, where she predicts Gustavo's assassination at Anckarstrom's hands, the colossal theatrics actually work. (Through April 23.)
Theater
Cymbeline (***3/4) -- After you overcame your initial suspicions (just why isn't this late Shakespeare play presented here more often?), you would have been encouraged to see the familiar names who conspired to bring this sprawling romance back to life. Phylicia Rashad proved once again that she has serious acting chops as Cymbeline's second wife, the scheming queen who plots against worthy Leonatus to further the cause of her own son, Lord Cloten.
With John Cullum kingly and fallible in the title role, Michael Cerveris noble and credulous as Leonatus, and Martha Plimpton the essence of principled purity as Cymbeline's banished daughter, Princess Imogen, you had a galaxy of stars in the principal roles to light your way. What director Mark Lamos and his stellar cast did especially well -- much better than the Globe Theatre production I saw in London -- was to draw the wide arch of this story, spanning the years and half of Europe, without allowing it to shred apart into incoherence.
The extra punch in this thrilling tale came from Jonathan Cake as the Iago-like Iachimo, who in pure unwarranted malice managed to demolish Leonatus' faith in Imogen. Can it really be five years since the hunky Cake last sizzled on Broadway opposite Fiona Shaw in Medea? I can only hope we get our next slice sooner than that. (Closed on Jan. 6.)
The Glorious Ones (***1/4) -- Lincoln Center has brought yet another fine musical to life, as likely to languish in neglect as the worthiest of its predecessors, Marie Christine and Light in the Piazza. Or perhaps not. Chronicling the theater career of Flaminio Scala, inventor of slapstick comedy, and his misadventures across Europe, this adaptation of Francine Prose's historical novel, with music by Stephen Flaherty and book by Lynn Ahrens, has the beguiling simplicity and directness of The Fantasticks -- with a winsomely silly heart.
It's also a superb vehicle for Marc Kudisch, flashing his Rabelaisian side as Scala in his continuing ascent to a Tony Award. Kudisch dominates with a manly baritone that at times recalls the youthful Robert Goulet, but gradually the roles of Isabella and Francesco Andreini insinuate themselves into prominence amid the hijinks. These disciples learn from Scala's teachings and tribulations, eventually usurping his position of leadership in this tight ensemble of barnstorming commedia actors.
Eventually the Andreinis would refine and script Scala's vulgar, improvisatory street art, making it worthy of the royal courts that spurned him. Erin Davie and Jeremy Webb, caught a little earlier in their career ascents than Kudisch, were delightful as the mischievous romantics who dethrone Scala while Natalie Venetia Belcon was a guilty pleasure as Columbina, the whore who loved him. (Closed on Jan. 6.)