Review - Cinderella Occupies Broadway

"This is like children's theatre for 40-year-old gay people!"

So wisecracked a character in Douglas Carter Beane's Broadway adaptation of the film, Xanadu. As Al Jolson might have observed, we had ain't seen nothing yet.

While there's certainly enough of the traditional story, at least as we know it here in America, to keep the kiddies occupied, Beane's adaptation of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's Cinderella, significantly inspired by the movement started by Zuccotti Park's 99-percenters, is a rollickingly fresh and funny new take on the tale mounted with spirited zest by Mark Brokaw; a little bit campy, a little bit sharp musical satire and a whole lot romantic, but from a different angle.

And it is, in fact, a new musical comedy. Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella premiered as a live television special starring Julie Andrews in 1957 and was presented again in a 1965 revised version as another TV event starring Leslie Ann Warren. There have been previous stage adaptations that used these two broadcasts as their source (plus a Disney-produced revised TV adaptation starring Brandy) but while they all share the same core of songs, Beane's new script takes nothing from them. Unlike last season's rewritten revival of Porgy and Bess, that just softened the impact of material that already existed as a theatre piece, this production uses the television score (plus lifting some unknowns from the Rodgers and Hammerstein trunk) and only the most basic necessities of the teleplay's story to invent something new for the stage.

Prince Topher, played with a genuine nice-guy appeal by Santino Fontana, doesn't slay the dragon or the angry tree-like creature that challenges his soldiers in the opening scene, but rather humanely incapacitates them; perhaps thinking they can be rehabilitated. He's an orphan who has been naively spending his short reign controlled by a Lord Protector (Peter Bartlett, delightfully droll and dry as always) who has been passing laws to protect the wealth of the upper class at the expense of the poor. A brief chance encounter with Cinderella convinces her that he's a compassionate person who may not be aware of what is being done in his name.

The title character's relationship with her step-family is fleshed out a bit more. In fact, her actual name is Ella. The "Cinder" part is a derogatory nickname, though she eventually "takes back the word." Her step-mother (Harriet Harris, grandly resembling a combo of Bette Davis and Dorothy Loudon) married her first husband for love, but when she was widowed with two daughters to raise, she married Cinderella's now deceased father for money. ("He died. I got a house!") Though Ann Harada's Charlotte is a self-centered little dynamo, Marla Mindelle's Gabrielle is shy, bookish and has a crush on Jean-Michel (Greg Hildreth), a local activist who organizes soup kitchens and makes speeches on behalf of those who have lost their homes due to unfair financial practices.

The Lord Protector decides to hold the ball that will find a bride for Topher as a way of distracting the public from the lad's accusations and in a very clever scene, Jean-Michel's attempt to rally the public with "Now Is The Time" (an unused anthem written for South Pacific) is drowned out by the merry song and dance, "The Prince Is Giving A Ball." And while Ella is as excited as any other young lady in town to attend, her main motivation for wanting to go is not to snag a royal husband, but to warn Topher to open his eyes to the way his people are being treated. It's her selfless qualities and her generosity that earn her a visit from the fairy godmother (charmingly ethereal Victoria Clark) and once she arrives at the palace, she wins over both the prince and his subjects simply by being a nice, friendly person. (Costume designer William Ivey Long's gorgeous and often comic creations include a stunner of a quick transformation into Cinderella's ball gown, which seems to be assisted by lighting designer Kenneth Posner.) There's still the pesky matter of the midnight deadline, but when happily ever after eventually arrives it comes with a message of valuing kindness, forgiveness and charity over physical beauty and to work for what you wish to achieve instead of depending on magical solutions to just appear.

In the six years since Laura Osnes won Broadway stardom as a TV game show prize, she's gradually developed into quite the skilled and endearing ingénue lead, primarily though fine performances in Rodgers and Hammerstein vehicles. (She was Kelli O'Hara's replacement in South Pacific and headed concert productions of Pipe Dream and The Sound of Music.) In Cinderella she more than fills the expected requirements of sweet, pretty looks and a soft lovely soprano, but adds to them admirable assertiveness, maturity and a sly sense of humor. Adults wishing to expose young girls to a positive fictional role model should be pleased.

At its best, the contrast between Rodgers and Hammerstein's traditionally romantic, operetta-like score and the satirical jabs of Beane's book balance well, much like the similar contrast found in Finian's Rainbow, but there remain a few awkward moments. The love-at-first-sight waltz "Ten Minutes Ago" and the lush "Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful (Or Are You Beautiful Because I Love You?)" don't quite fit the kind of attraction for each other that the bookwriter establishes and the comical "Stepsister's Lament" (changed from "Stepsisters' Lament" because Gabrielle is too involved with her romantic subplot to feel jealousy) would be better off as a solo for Harada's Charlotte instead of having her funny antics backed up by a chorus of ladies who, ten minutes ago, were admiring Cinderella's kindness and sincerity.

Still, having music director David Chase visibly conducting twenty musicians in Danny Troob's rich orchestrations for these beloved compositions from a real orchestra pit helps teach kiddies whose minds may have been corrupted by Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark another important lesson; Broadway orchestras belong in the same room as the actors.

Photos by Carol Rosegg: Top: Laura Osnes, Santino Fontana and Company; Center: Marla Mindelle and Greg Hildreth; Bottom: Victoria Clark.

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Guillermo Calderón's comic drama, Neva, begins with a monologue that any actress over 35 with a decent knack for self-effacing humor will want to grab.

It's spoken by Olga Knipper, the widow of Anton Chekhov, as she contemplates how unprepared she feels to soon be starring in a production of her beloved late husband's The Cherry Orchard. ("Rasputin is more truthful than I am.") In her anxiety she imagines audience members praising her to her face, but scorning her publically for not being worthy of the roles written for her. ("Because for me this is a punishment. It humiliates me when people look at me. That said, I like it when they call me and they say, "We'd like you to play this role.")

Those two pages, played by Bianca Amato with the type of tragic self-centeredness that made the Russian dramatist's plays subtly funny, is by far the highlight of The Public Theater's production, as translated by Andrea Thome.

The play is set in Saint Petersburg, through which the Neva River flows, on a Sunday morning in 1905 that has Olga nervously waiting in the theatre for rehearsal to begin. However, it's not only unlikely that the director and much of the cast will arrive, it's also very likely that they are all dead, as this is the 22nd of January -- later to be known as Bloody Sunday - when the Tsar's soldiers fired upon thousands of unarmed protestors and uninvolved passers-by.

The only two who come to join her are the charismatic Aleko (Luke Robertson) and the introverted Masha (Quincy Tyler Bernstine). The trio spends the bulk of the play improvising a scene based on Chekhov's death from tuberculosis (trying to get the cough just right), criticizing Masha's artistic inadequacies (""Do you think I would be a better actress if I enjoyed sex?") and rejecting the value of theatre when there's blood on the streets. The play climaxes with Masha emotionlessly shouting a long speech summarizing the issues addressed in the previous 75 minutes. ("I hate the audience, those simpletons who come to entertain themselves while the world ends. They come to seek culture, to sigh. They should be ashamed. They should give that money to the poor.")

It's to the credit of the three actors involved that Neva can hold attention for even its brief running time. Calderón, who also directs, has costume designer Susan Hilferty dress them all in dark tones. There is no designer credited for the small elevated platform, not nearly large enough for any substantial movement, where the entire play is performed, nor for the one moveable footlight that allows anything to be seen. By the time the evening's clichéd pretentiousness has covered all its artsy bases, the light is forcefully directed into the faces of the audience, symbolizing... Oh, whatever the hell that's supposed to symbolize.

Photo of Bianca Amato, Luke Robertson and Quincy Tyler Bernstine by Carol Rosegg.

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I hadn't yet had the pleasure of being conceived back when Fran Landesman began writing the lyrics and poetry that would earn her the title of the beat generation's "poet laureate of lovers and losers." And I'm quite certain the same can be said for Mary Foster Conklin, but in her tribute to the scribe best known for "Ballad of the Sad Young Men" and "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most" the sly and smoky jazz vocalist creates a mood that one can imagine replicates the feel of low-key cool and coffee house worldliness that accompanied the material when it was a young woman's reaction to the masculine sensitivity of 1950s Greenwich Village and the hipster side of St. Louis.

Titled Life Is A Bitch after a comically fatalistic poem that was a favorite of Bette Davis, Conklin is joined by music director/pianist John di Martino and bassist Greg Ryan for 90 minutes of wisdom, anecdotes and some ravishing words and music presented with knowing dramatics and warm intelligence.

The trickily rhythmic "Nothing Like You" (music by Bob Dorough) opens the program, followed by the creamy "Never Had The Blues" (also Dorough), setting us up for an evening of flippantness and emotional colors. "In A New York Minute" (Simon Wallace) highlights the jumpy, unexpected rhythms of the city, "Scars" (also Wallace) has Conklin at her most beautifully intimate, assuring a new lover that they can freely expose each other to the evidence of their past wounds ("Don't be ashamed, everybody's got scars. / That's the way we keep score on this planet of ours.) and in "Small Day Tomorrow," her "anthem of the unemployed," the singer lounges in a relaxed playfulness.

That last selection, as Conklin explains, was inspired by an evening where Landesman was left alone in a favorite watering hole because all of her friends had a "big day tomorrow." She quips, "Out came a bar napkin and the rest is history." And "Ballad of the Sad Young Men" (Tommy Wolf), best known as a gay anthem, she explains was actually inspired from the lyricist's learning that one of her obsessive artist friends was about to marry a 16-year-old girl and she was thinking how someone so young couldn't possibly be prepared for what she had in store.

The charming between-song patter not only expresses Conklin's personal appreciation of the songs, but gives a rather thorough history lesson of her subject's life and career; her open marriage of 61 years to Jay Landesman (founder of the beat lit magazine Neurotica), their years in St. Louis, mingling with the likes of Lenny Bruce and Barbra Streisand at the Crystal Palace, and writing The Nervous Set with Tommy Wolf, the musical about New York's beatnik culture that was a smash in St. Louis but failed to win over Broadway audiences.

The brief Metropolitan Room run of Life Is A Bitch has sadly concluded, but any future opportunities to hear the perfect match of Landesman's hip observations and Conklin's stylish interpretations is certainly worth a listen.

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