Theater Reviews: The Tragedy of “Floyd Collins” Arrives on Broadway in a First-Class Production; “John Proctor is the Villain” Is an Exciting Distillation of “The Crucible”; and “All the World’s a Stage” Is an Effective Chamber Musical

Floyd Collins (c) Joan Marcus

Broadway: Floyd Collins 
At Lincoln Center Theater's Vivian Beaumont Theater

One of the shining stars André Bishop discovered during his tenure as Artistic Director of off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons (and there have been many) is then newcomer composer Adam Guettel, who would eventually find big success with A Light in the Piazza, produced at Lincoln Center Theater, headed by…Bishop. It is no surprise that in Bishop’s last season at LCT before retirement he would revive Guettel’s first musical, 1996’s Floyd Collins, written with his collaborator, Tina Landau, now given a lavish production on Broadway. Floyd Collins is the true story of an ambitious young man who, in 1925, gets trapped in a cave he was exploring for a possible tourist stop, and the media circus that resulted surrounding how to rescue him. I saw the original Playwrights Horizons production, which I felt was demanding but ambitious, especially the score, which occasionally veered towards operatic writing. Now, almost thirty years later, audiences may be more attuned to what Guettel and Landau were going for, especially when satirizing how newspapers sensationalizing the story may in part have hindered rescue efforts. Now incorporating the vastness of the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Landau, repeating her role as director as well, is able to fully dramatize the extent of that part of the story. But she is also able to retain the intimacy of the toll it takes on Collins family, which turns out to be the most effective part of this production. 

Film Reviews: Enjoy Four Recent Heartwarming Indies: a Re-Imagined “The Wedding Banquet”; A Quirky Music Lover in “The Ballad of Wallis Island”; Arrested Development Men in “Sacramento”; and How Jonathan Groff Turns Out to Be “A Nice Indian Boy”

The Wedding Banquet (c) Luke Cyprian, Bleecker Street

Film: The Wedding Banquet 
In Cinemas 

I have always loved Ang Lee’s 1993 queer landmark film, The Wedding Banquet, which both announced the Taiwanese director’s talents (it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar) and foreshadowed his highly acclaimed 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, the gay cowboy love story that won Lee his first Best Director Oscar. Now director Andrew Ahn has directed a reimagining of the film by the first film’s co-screenwriter James Schamus, and while it certainly feels updated, its adherence to the original plot points give it a nice symmetry (although the drunk night plot felt as dated today as it did in the 90s). In this version (now in Seattle), there are two gay couples: scientist Angela (Kelly Marie Tran, in her first major leading film role) and her social worker Lee (a down-to-Earth Lily Gladstone), and birdwatching tour guide Chris (Bowen Yang) and artist Min (Han Gi-Chan). It is Min, who’s the heir of a Korean corporate company, run by his grandmother Ja-Young (Minari Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung), but in order to stay in the country he needs to get married. Since he’s not out to his family (his grandfather would disown him), Min hatches a plan with Angela for her to marry him, and in return, he would pay for Lee’s expensive IVF treatments. But when Ja-Young makes a surprise visit, she demands a wedding and, of course, the wedding banquet. Ahn has always been a subtle, human-interaction type of director, even in his biggest hit, the gay comedy Fire Island, and it’s true for The Wedding Banquet as well. As much as the trailer makes it to be a raucous farce (the de-queering the house scene is a bit manic), Ahn gives each of the storylines a dignity and a grace, especially with scenes by the elder cast members. Joan Chen is fun as Angela’s proud PFLAG mother, and Youn Yuh-jung is just plain exquisite as the grandmother, stealing every scene, mostly by sitting still. It's no coincidence that the word for “grandmother” in Korean sounds like the English word “harmony.” But then again, the word for “father” in Korean also sounds like the British word for eggplant. Not sure about the symbolism there. 

Broadway: Two Icons Are Celebrated in Broadway Musicals — Stephen Sondheim Rhapsodized by New and “Old Friends” and Betty “BOOP!” Unleashed Cleverly in 2025 New York City

Sondheim's Old Friends (c) Matthew Murphy

Broadway: Sondheim’s Old Friends 
At the Samuel Friedman Theatre 

The new musical revue, Sondheim’s Old Friends, started out as a one-time concert celebration of the life-long friendship between British theater producer Cameron MacIntosh and the legendary musical composer Stephen Sondheim in May 2022. And while there are still remnants of this concert still evident (including the title and some needless photo montages), the new stage show, directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne (Swan Lake), refocuses the evening to a celebration of Sondheim’s genius. (His death in 2021 still feels fresh.) Instead of conceiving an original story to tie together the 40 songs, Bourne has decided to take two approaches: One is to present them as standalone, concert songs and the other is to recreate them as they would have been in a production of the show they are from. The latter presentations are sort of a shock as there have been so many revisionist reworking of so many of Sondheim’s shows that it feels kind of revolutionary that Bobby is once again played by a man and Amy is played by a woman in the Company sequence. While the concert was populated with a who’s who of mostly British luminaries (like Judi Dench and Petula Clark), only two performers have made the leap from that evening to Broadway (with the West End and L.A. productions in-between): the British actress Bonnie Langford and Broadway legend Bernadette Peters (it’s shocking that when the musical opened in London last fall, it was Peters’ West End debut!). Joining Peters as her co-headliner is the luminous Lea Salonga while Langford is joined by a mix of sixteen(!) British, Broadway and one Aussie mainstay performers (some Tony and/or Olivier winners) like Beth Leavel, Kate Jennings Grant, Gavin Lee and Joanna Riding. 

Theater Reviews: Three Books Are Vividly Brought to Life on Stage: The Exceptional “Becoming Eve”; the Comforting “All the Beauty in the World”; and the Experimental “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

Becoming Eve (c) Matthew Murphy

Theater: Becoming Eve 
Presented by New York Theatre Workshop at Abrons Art Center 

Somewhere in the first half hour of Becoming Eve, it dawned on me that although the three people on stage are speaking in English to our ears, they are actually speaking Yiddish. Playwright Emil Weinstein had dropped hints along the way, but I was so absorbed by the action of the play, that of course, two of these characters who lived most of their lives in the Hasidic and insular world of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, would not have been able to communicate in English with the voracity and complexity they have been so far. The three people are all rabbis, and the setting is a progressive synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, led by Rabbi Jonah (the always warm and humorous Brandon Uranowitz). Jonah is brokering a reunion between Chava (the excellent Tommy Dorfman), a trans woman, and her Hasidic father, Tati, (an almost unrecognizable but always powerful Richard Schiff). Tati doesn’t know about Chava’s transness (she is wearing non-gendered clothing) as she wants to appeal to his intellect by referencing the Talmud and Torah as her gateway into the discussion of a female spirit in a male body with a fascinating debate revolving around, of all things, the interpretation of the Biblical story of Abraham being told by God to sacrifice his son, Issac. 

Theater Review: Three Shows Explore the Past Through the Prism of Today: In A Joyous Celebration of Cuban Music of 1959 in “Buena Vista Social Club”; in a Sparse Retelling of 1947’s “A Streetcar Named Desire”, and in 1948’s American History Experiment of “Love Life”

A Streetcar Named Desire (c) Julieta Cervantes

Theater: A Streetcar Named Desire 
At BAM (closing on April 6) 

When the audience first enters the theater, they are greeted with a metallic square on the stage of the Harvey Theater at BAM. It doesn’t take long once the play starts that you get director Rebecca Frecknall’s concept for Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire: It’s a prison. The first two pages of dialogue are yelled in rapid succession and every so often a loud series of bangs and crashes are played by an onstage drummer, giving the illusion that there is never peace in this prison. So, when poor, fragile Blanche DuBois (Patsy Ferran) shows up in her sister’s unadorned apartment, I mean cell (cast members occasionally leave essential props on stage, mainly an overburdened bottle of malted whisky), she is naturally taken aback. Stella (Anjana Vasan) doesn’t know it yet, but her sister had some troubles in their hometown of Laurel and was hoping to find some shelter with her. Unfortunately, caged animals occasionally attack each other, especially when one of the beasts is Stanley Kowalski (Paul Mescal), a Polish brute with much love for Stella, but also a short fuse, especially when he suspects something fishy with Blanche’s explanation of how the family plantation was lost. The prison metaphor has always been touched on in most productions, but it being so literal here sort of dilutes the poetry and the tragedy of Williams’ 1947 masterpiece, even with some creative but severe choreography and a musical underscore punctuating emotional moments. In this century, many Streetcars arrive in Brooklyn via transfers from other countries with celebrity Blanches like Cate Blanchett (my favorite) and Gillian Anderson (in modern dress). This sold-out production was a West End hit, mainly on the star casting of Mescal, a recent Oscar nominee (for Aftersun) and star of All of Us Strangers (with his co-star Andrew Scott, coincidentally also in New York in Vanya) and Gladiator 2 (with his co-star Denzel Washington, coincidentally also in New York in Othello). And while Mescal is fantastic and primal in the role made famous by Marlon Brando, the play has always belonged to Blanche, who gets all the best lines and tragic backstory, and newcomer Ferran is amazing in the role, at some points no-nonsense but at others painfully brittle. One of Blanche’s famous quotes is that she doesn’t want realism, “I want magic!” Frecknell, who directed the recent Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club has ignored Blanche’s wishes and instead locked her in a cell with no possibility of parole.