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.
Buena Vista Social Club (c) Matthew Murphy
Broadway: Buena Vista Social Club
At the Schoenfeld Theatre
A unique thing is happening at the curtain call for the new musical Buena Vista Social Club; the band, and not the talented actors, got the biggest ovation. It shouldn’t be that surprising since it’s the Cuban music and the musicians it in the late 1990s when a music producer reunited the pre-Castro Havana nightclub players to record a critically acclaimed album that lead to Wim Wenders making an Oscar-nominated documentary. Twenty-five years later, a whole new audience who has never heard of the album or only knows songs like “Chan Chan” is poised to learn about it in the musical which tells the story of how that music producer, Juan de Marcos (Justin Cunningham), tried to find the original musicians and record them before it was too late. Around this true story, writer Marco Ramirez and director Saheem Ali fashioned a second plot surrounding the female vocalist Omara (Natalie Venetia Belcon), who is reluctant to revisit music that might stir up painful memories. This leads to the flashback involving the young Omara (now played by Isa Antonetti) and her sister Haydee (Ashley De La Rosa), on the verge of signing a recording contract with Capitol Records and moving toAmerica just as Castro is about to plunge Cuba into a dictatorship. But Omara has second thoughts as she has discovered the nightclubs on the wrong side of Havana and the musicians who play not for foreigners but for the Cuban working class. And while this story feels overly familiar (there’s hints of Cabaret and many jukebox bio-musicals that are so popular now), it gets buoyed along whenever the music starts to play by a band that looks and feels as authentic as the band they are inhabiting. The play is performed in English, but the songs are all sung in Spanish, with the cast and band doing an expert job translating their emotions. The highlight is “El Cuarto de Tula,” which opens Act Two (stand in line for the restroom at intermission at your own peril), and is just the band jamming and its infectious and thrilling. Of the cast, Belcon and Antonetti stand out as the older and younger Omara, and they sing their songs with clarity of spirit. But, the whole cast brings an authenticity to the show, especially when dancing the exuberant choreography of Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck. And they all do it in service of the songs that were in danger of being forgotten and are now getting a well-deserved third life.
Love Life (c) Joan Marcus
Theater: Love Life
Encores! at City Center (Closed)
The latest production from Encores!, whose mission statement is to give second life to musical gems from the past, has now landed on Alan Jay Lerner and Kurt Weill’s Love Life from 1948, and while there is a reason the show had never been revived, a lot of the show’s themes and narrative surprised me in its modern sensibility. Meet the Coopers: Susan (Kate Baldwin) and Samuel (Brian Stokes Mitchell). In the first scene of the play, it’s present day and their two children (the talented Christopher Jordan and Andrea Rosa Guzman) are trying to get them back together as they are contemplating divorce. This starts Susan and Samuel down memory lane to their beginnings and so the musical jump back to 1791, when the Coopers move into the small town of Mayville, Connecticut. Samuel is a carpenter and has opened his own store, which the town welcomes. It’s not really their beginning as they are already a couple with their children intact, so what’s going on? My interpretation is that the Coopers are the “Everyfamily” of the newly formed America, and the show tracks how a family of four experiences each time frame the writers picked. The next scene, Samuel is ditching his own business to work in a factory making furniture, while in 1894, he’s a traveling salesman hopping on the new form of transportation (the train) as Susan stays home but also works towards woman suffrage. Act Two all takes place in 1948 (the present day for the original production), and the breaking of the traditional family is now going through a crisis, and like the finale of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, the Coopers’ breakup is explored in very metaphorical and symbolic ways in what is called the Illusion Show. It’s a lot to absorb, and a lot doesn’t work, but I appreciated the writers experimenting with the form. The songs are all fine, with the first act sounding very Lerner and the second act very Weill. Thankfully, in director Victoria Clark’s vision, the Coopers reflect the racial diversity landscape of America, however much the current political leaders want to erase this fact. Baldwin and Mitchell sell the concept of the musical wonderfully. Their chemistry is palpable and to state the obvious, they are heavenly when they sing. They and the cast make this otherwise unwieldy show an enjoyable rediscovery.
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