Romeo + Juliet (c) Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Broadway: Romeo + Juliet
At Circle in the Square Theatre
A big welcome to what I’m dubbing Romeo + Juliet: The Jellicle Ball to Broadway. Unlike many revivals that highlight the playwright’s name (Arthur Miller’s Death of Salesman, Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog), William Shakespeare seems more like a jumping-off point than the author of this energetic, youthful production by the deconstructionist and busy director Sam Gold. Gold’s adaptation feels like a high school senior’s dissertation of the play that focuses on odd moments (the nurse’s monologue about her child) and totally disregards bigger moments (like the fight with Paris at the end of the play) to fix his thesis. This would be fatal if it wasn’t obvious from the start that this production was less about the text and more of the spirit of two households whose feud trickles down to their children, all of high school age, where animosity and hatred are well-worn jackets.
Romeo + Juliet (c) Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Gold has cast his show, like the afore-referenced Cats: The Jellicle Ball with actors across the gender spectrum to wonderful effect and yet his Romeo and Juliet are firmly in the cis realm, which seems to be his only nod to hetero-normalcy. He did cast the roles with exciting up-and-coming actors like Kit Connor (the golden retriever of a bisexual in the hit Netflix series, Heartstopper) as Romeo and Rachel Zegler (who played the analogous role of Maria in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story) as Juliet, which got the youthful audience riled up during those lovey-dovey moments (with a muscular aerobic trick by Connor getting the biggest squeal). But they are almost eclipsed by virtuoso turns from the fierce Gabby Beans, triple-cast as the Prince of Verona (narrator), Romeo’s best mate Mercutio and Romeo’s confidant The Friar; and the commanding and sassy Tommy Dorfman double-cast as Juliet’s cousin Tybalt and The Nurse. The rest of the ensemble bring youthful energy and the occasional rave celebration, almost forgetting that they’re all in a tragedy. Gold has produced memorable and meme-worthy moments (those gigantic teddy bears are also in the lobby for any Instagram influencers) and he provides enough Shakespeare to also be the occasional academic spinach for good measure. This may not be your parents’ Shakespeare, but a Romeo + Juliet, by any other name, does smell as sweet.
Our Town (c) Daniel Radar
Broadway: Our Town
At the Barrymore Theatre
Director Kenny Leon has followed his successful, reimagination of Ossie Davis’s Purlie Victorious with a rather traditional take on Thorton Wilder’s Our Town, the consistently high school-produced play about the inhabitants of the small town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, from 1901 to 1913. Yes, Dede Ayite’s costumes do at times incorporate some contemporary pieces along with the period-appropriate ones, but more as a mood board than anything else. And yes, the Gibbs family is now played by African American actors, but it is more of a colorblind casting situation rather than social commentary. Doc Gibbs (Billy Eugene Jones) is the town doctor, and his son George (Ephraim Sykes) is one half of the play’s love story. Their neighbors are the Webbs, headed by the town paper’s editor (Richard Thomas), and whose daughter Emily (Zoey Deutch) is the other half of the couple. Of course, each of these households are ruled by the matriarchs of Mrs. Gibbs (Michelle Wilson) and Mrs. Webb (Katie Holmes) as they go through their same, indistinguishable daily routines.
Our Town (c) Daniel Radar
These two families may be the main focus of the play, but our omnipresent narrator (Jim Parsons) also gives us tidbits of other goings-on in Our Town, including sign language interactions with the deaf milkman (John McGinty), babies about to be born in the Polish section and, most ominously, the inhabitants of the town cemetery with a population that never stops growing. Parson plays the narrator with the usual detachment of a history professor giving a Grover’s Corners TED talk, periodically interrupting scenes to move the play along. Leon does give the two most emotional moments of the play their due: Emily’s birthday visit in the third act and Doc Gibbs’ guilt-inducing lecture to George in the first act that rivals Mr. Knightly’s famous one to Emma in Jane Austin’s Emma. All the actors are beautifully cast, especially the wonderful Julie Halston in a small but standout role. The set is appropriately sparse but that doesn’t mean there’s not a wonderful touch that set director Beowulf Boritt’s and Allen Lee Hughes’ lighting design give us with floating lanterns. There is nothing revolutionary about this Our Town, except that once again, however many years have gone by, Thornton Wilder’s play still has the power to touch us emotionally as well as intellectually.
The Big Gay Jamboree (c) Matthew Murphy
Theater: The Big Gay Jamboree
At the Orpheum Theatre
When historians look back at the career of Marla Mindelle, the actress and co-creator of the Off-Broadway hit, Titanique, it’s pretty obvious what Mindelle wanted to achieve with her second show: My Big Gay Jamboree. Was her new show to add more feathers in her cap towards her EGLOOT goal (the added L being the Lortel Award and the second O being the Obie Award she has already won)? Maybe, but it’s almost certain that she more or less wanted to cement her status as a gay icon. Sure, playing Celine Dion in Titanique was a good start, but Mindelle’s latest role in the giddy if slight The Big Gay Jamboree, which squarely places her in gay Oz as Stacey, an actress known for being the arm candy of her millionaire boyfriend Keith (SNL’s Alex Moffat), who wakes up one morning after a drunken bender in…1945 Bareback, Idaho. Stacey finds herself mid-plot with her four sisters who are readying her for her upcoming nuptials. Despite the town’s name, not everyone is gay (although there is an unusually high percentage), but does that number include the town choirmaster Clarence (Paris Nix), whom Stacey takes a shining to? In between flashbacks to her old life, Stacey collects an Oz-ian trio of like-minded companions to find the path (yellow-bricked or not) out of Bareback.
The Big Gay Jamboree (c) Matthew Murphy
A lot of comparisons have been rightly made to The Wizard of Oz as well as to the Apple TV show Schmigadoon!, with its contemporary couple transported into a musical comedy, but “The Big Gay Jamboree,” once things are explained, is closer in spirit to the Florence Pugh/Harry Styles film Don’t Worry Darling and Disney’s WandaVision, in which idealized versions of the past may not be all that they’re supposed to be. Mindelle and Jonathan Parks-Ramage’s script is deliciously funny and naughty, although one wonders if it will age well with all the contemporary references. Her songs with Philip Drennen have a fun, pastiche, showtune-with-a-capital-S quality, but none really stay in one’s memory for long. The staging by Connor Gallagher on Dots’s invaluable sets makes lemonade of the cramped lemon-sized playing area, spilling out into the aisles in inventive ways. But holding the show together (as it should be for any self-written work) is of course, Mindelle. She is a variation of every straight girlfriend at a gay bar with her queer best bestie, throwing in the occasionally campy, pop culture references when needed (the Real Housewives franchise gets a surprising amount of stage time) and providing appropriate wingman energy with each round of cocktails. Any gay man would be lucky to have such a friend.
If you want to comment on these reviews, please do so on my Instagram account. All reviews have their own post. And please follow to know when new reviews are released.
