Oriental Theater

The Play That Goes Wrong – Oriental Theater – December 11, 2018

Posted on by admin

While the comparison to the play Noises Off is obvious, if it weren’t for all the farcical humor of The Play That Goes Wrong (The Play), one might think of Michael Crichton’s original Westworld, “the ultimate resort, where nothing can possibly go wrong, go wrong . . . .”, and yet everything does.

So, to paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as it might apply to the play, The Murder at Faversham Manor (The Murder) within The Play: How does thee go wrong? Let me count the ways.

Forget the occasional forgotten line, The Murder goes into full Brannon Braga, Star Trek; The Next Generation, Cause and Effect episode, time loop mode with the actors becoming increasingly irritated as they can’t find a way to stop repeating the same lines. If it weren’t so funny, I would have thought it was written into the show as filler.

And then there was the set, or what was left of it by the end of the show. The comic timing of The Play is not limited to the actors. So, while the actors in The Murder break the fourth wall, the walls in The Murder almost break the actors, creating the need for some deliciously funny stand-in work by the crew of The Murder. I would love a behind-the-scenes tour of The Play by its crew, not the dangerously inept crew of The Murder, to see how they manipulate everything.

Query, by the way, are the actors in The Play breaking the fourth wall when the actors in The Murder are speaking to their audience, which, of course, happens to be the same as The Play’s audience?

In the end, despite set deconstruction, doors banging into heads, and actors in The Murder engaging in foul play, the only real injuries are to the ribs of The Play’s audience members, who are bent over in laughter.

The Book of Mormon – Oriental Theater – November 24, 2018

Posted on by admin

There’ve been almost 300 tv episodes of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s South Park, and I’ve never seen even one of them, though I understand that some kid named Kenny has had a rough go of it (having died 98 times in the series, 12 in the shorts, 14 in the video games, and twice in the movie).

But now I’ve seen Parker and Stone’s (and the great Robert Lopez’s – Avenue Q, Frozen) The Book of Mormon twice, and, not being a student of religion, everything I know about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I’ve learned from seeing the play. I’m assuming, of course, that everything in the show is accurate.

Interestingly, in terms of religion-related musicals, I’ve never seen Fiddler on the Roof or Jesus Christ Superstar, though I have seen Damn Yankees.

I got lucky with a main floor discounted ticket and even luckier that no one sat next to me on one side in an otherwise full theater. This did, however, lead to a moment of awkwardness when the woman two seats over, who had put her coat on the seat between us, reached over in the dark to try to get something out of her coat pocket, but instead wound up tickling my shoulder, which reminded me of a joke about a woman and a chicken sandwich in her purse on an overnight bus ride.

The stage also went dark when they blacked it out a couple times during the Turn It Off tap dance. I guess tapping in the dark isn’t that hard for a professional, though I know how hard it is for me to stand on one leg with my eyes closed, which, fortunately, I’m not called upon to do all that often, and never on stage.

And, despite the darkness of the humor, Jacob Ben-Shmuel could be seen stealing scenes as Elder Cunningham, while Kayla Pecchioni lit up the stage as Nabulungi.

Hello Dolly – Oriental Theater – November 6, 2018

Posted on by admin

So excited to see Betty Buckley as Dolly. She had a cold on opening night, but the reviews of the show were glowing nonetheless. I waited two weeks to let her recover, which was perfect timing as I could then not be in front of a television watching election pundits drone on for hours about things that either were obvious, irrelevant, undecided, or wrong. I prefer to just see the results the next day.

But, in the immortal words of Robbie Burns, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” And so, upon arriving at the theater, I learned that Buckley would not be appearing, due to illness, replaced by her understudy Jessica Sheridan.

Based upon conversations around me, I wasn’t the only one initially disappointed, but Sheridan won us over with her singing, dancing, and acting. In particular, her performance during the courtroom dining scene brought howls of laughter from the audience, which led me to a website discussing what Carol Channing and Bette Midler were actually eating in that scene in Broadway productions.

The second best ovation may have been when the train between Yonkers and New York City rolled onto the stage. Just one of many impressive costume and set design elements of the show that presented a cornucopia of colors.

The dancing waiters also were a crowd pleaser, though I was struck not so much by their considerable terpsichorean skills, but rather by the grace of one waiter who elegantly reached down in mid-routine to grab something that had been dropped on the stage and toss it into the wings, without missing a beat in his choreographed movements.

All in all an enjoyable evening, capped off by listening to Buckley show off some of her skills in the hysterical Hymm to Her when I got home.