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.
Floyd Collins (c) Joan Marcus
Floyd Collins is blessed by the trio of performers playing the Collins siblings. There’s Floyd himself, played by the wonderful Jeremy Jordan, who gets to show off his physical and vocal dexterity in what feels like a fifteen-minute one-man play before ultimately being sidelined to a small corner of the stage as the cave Floyd is exploring collapses around him. His younger brother and best friend, Homer, is played by the expressive and fine-voiced Jason Gotay. He is only one of two people who can shimmy their way down a tunnel to talk to Floyd and their chemistry is palpable and heartbreaking. (The other person, reporter Skeet, played with energy to spare by Taylor Trensch, also has some fine moments with Jordan.) The love of Floyd’s life is his sister, Nellie, who has just come home from a stay at a mental hospital and is stopped from seeing her brother as the rescue site is no place for a woman. She is played with an assured veracity by the pop singer Lizzy McAlpine in an impressive Broadway debut, singing Nellie’s songs with an immediacy and a no-nonsense energy. There are other standouts in the huge cast, including Jessica Molasky and Marc Kudisch as Floyd’s parents, and the production values by dots (sets), Anita Yavich (costumes), Scott Zielinski (lights) and especially Dan Moses Schreier, whose sound designs is exemplary. And while Floyd Collins himself seems to get lost in the busyness of the world above him in the second act, Jordan does get to sing the powerful song, “How Glory Goes” (made famous by Audra McDonald), and it thankfully brings the story back to Collins—an emotional and triumphant finale for both him and the production.
John Proctor is the Villain (c) Julieta Cervantes
Broadway: John Proctor is the Villain
At the Booth Theatre
To paraphrase Lizzo, it’s bitch o’clock on Broadway, and it’s about damn time! Kimberly Belflower’s powerhouse of a play, John Proctor is the Villain, is given a spectacular production by Danya Taymour, who made a hit out of last season’s male-centric The Outsiders and appears to repeat her success now with a female-led drama. It’s 2018 and #metoo has reached a one-stoplight town outside of Atlanta as a group of female students hope to start a feminist club at their high school. They find a faculty sponsor in Mr. Smith (the reliable Gabriel Ebert), the popular English teacher who is assigning Arthur Miller’s The Crucible as his semester’s reading project. If you know the plot of the theater classic, it takes place during the 1700s Salem witch trials, which is Miller’s metaphor for the McCarthy-era witch hunt for communists that was happening when he wrote the play. Scholars have asserted that the main character, John Proctor, an upstanding community member, is a heroic martyr, trying to save his wife from accusations of witchcraft. But, for the girls in his class, they believe he is the villain since it was his affair with his 17-year-old servant Abigail that set everything in motion. Meanwhile, a couple of real-life scandals rock this small community, one including Shelby Holcomb (Sadie Sink, playing a strong variation of her character Max from TV’s Stranger Things), who has returned to school after being away for a couple of months (where is up for debate), after sleeping with the boyfriend of her best friend Raelynn (a sympathetic Amalia Yoo). The other is the infidelity of the father of another student, Ivy, the rich girl (Maggie Kuntz). These events keep the play humming along, but if you know the Miller play, it was sort of obvious where the real meat of the play lay (so to speak), and the second half of the play is the repercussion of that revelation.
John Proctor is the Villain (c) Julieta Cervantes
The cast is first rate with Sink’s itchy and combative Shelby anchoring the play. Other standouts include Fina Strazza as the smartest but socially awkward Beth and the cool new girl Nell (Morgan Scott), who has just moved there from Atlanta. Belflower’s play is light on complexity as each character only seem to have one overarching personality trait that doesn’t deviate. However, her ear for teen vernacular and use of pop culture references to make their points are spot-on. Not only is Lizzo mentioned, but so is Beyoncé and, most humorously, Taylor Swift (Sink famously played the younger version of Swift in All Too Well: The Short Film). It’s a little odd that the Lorde song used in the finale is not a reference to The Crucible, but The Great Gatsby, for its symbolism. Feels sort of like a cheat, but it’s such a wonderfully acted and directed moment that the (thankfully skewing young) audience leaves the theater on a high. John Proctor is the Villain may not have totally convinced me of its thesis statement (the real villain is the patriarchy, no?), but it sure was great to see this cast make its case, and they definitely showed their work.
All the World's a Stage (c) Richard Termine
Theater: All the World’s a Stage
Keen Company at Theatre Row
In a musical that is unmistakably set in 1996 (a lot of the heavy lifting achieved by the talented costume designer Jennifer Parr), Adam Gwon’s All the World’s a Stage feels way too contemporary, especially as rural, religious prejudices have overtaken the national discourse. Ricky Alleman (Matt Rodin) is the new math teacher at a small town in Pennsylvania. And like any self-respecting gay man does when he moves to a new town, he finds a community theater show in the beautifully realized opening number, “Saturday Night in a Small Auditorium.” As school starts, Ricky, who’s a “don’t rock the boat” kind of guy, decides to stay in the closet. He befriends Dede (Elizabeth Stanley), the school secretary, who tries to steer the new math teacher in the right direction (bless her heart), especially when it comes to outsider student Sam (Eliza Pagelle). She had seen him at the theater and asks this fellow theater lover to help her audition for a college theater scholarship competition. While he suggests a Shakespeare sonnet, Sam wants to do Angels in America. You can guess the school’s reaction to this decision. Gwon’s show is most successful when it sticks to Rickey’s hope that by “working within the system,” justice will win the day, but Gwon also includes a more politically minded, gay bookstore owner with whom Rickey starts a relationship, and despite being performed by the dynamic and funny Jon-Michael Reese, it feels more editorializing than organic. Even though there’s a rather predictable nature to these kinds of stories, the cast of four sells it so believably that even when things start to go south, the journey still feels fresh. And despite Rodin’s best efforts, Rickey feels a bit unknowable, as we don’t find out about his past life and why he acts the way he does. Pagelle has the meatier role as Sam, and she keeps us invested in her situation and future. And, of course, the glorious Elizabeth Stanley gives Dede extra dimensions that make her eventual hypocrisy even more devastating. Jonathan Silverman’s clean production and the quartet playing Gwon’s music really bring out the beauty of his songs, especially in “Other Lives” and “Mirrors.” All the World’s a Stage is certainly worth a visit especially for the men and women who are more than just merely players.
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.
