Theater Wit

Grand Hotel – Theater Wit – May 26, 2018

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Help, I’m stuck in 1928! The Front Page, which I blogged about last week, premiered in 1928. Grand Hotel opened on Broadway in 1989, but takes place in 1928. I wonder whether anything significant will happen in 1929.

Tommy Tune won the Tony Award for best choreographer (and best director) of a musical for Grand Hotel, and it was easy to see why when the show’s big dance number rousingly filled the stage with all but one of the 20 cast members, and brought the biggest applause of the night.

The cast was good, across the board (and the boards), with a special shout out to Leryn Turlington as Flaemmchen and Jonathan Schwart as Kringelein, who nailed their juicy roles. It is a testament to either their acting, or my lack of cognitive abilities, that I’ve seen at least four of the show’s actors (including both of the above) in other plays in the last year and a half, and didn’t recognize any of them.

Grand Hotel’s original logo added the words “The Musical.” This got me to wondering when plays first started adding some such designation to their names, presumably so that no one in the audience would be confused when one of the characters started singing. (I have a friend who won’t go to see musicals because he finds it unbelievable that someone would just break into song for no reason. This same friend is an ardent follower of The Avengers. Nothing unbelievable there.)

The oldest Tony-nominated musical I could find with “The Musical” officially listed in its name (not just on the logo) was Cyrano: The Musical, in 1994. In 2018 we have SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical. I’m eagerly anticipating the opening of Musical: The Musical; Drama: The Drama; and, eventually, Drama: The Broadway Musical.

 

Big Red & the Boys – Theater Wit – December 11, 2017

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Meghan Murphy is Big Red. Her website says “If Lucille Ball, Bette Midler, Bonnie Raitt, Rita Hayworth and Etta James had a baby, her name would be Big Red. Now who doesn’t want to see THAT?!” I wanted to.

My friend Karen accompanied me to the Theater Wit to see Big Red and the Boys with the expectation that we would be the only two straight people in the audience. We weren’t. Maybe not even the two oldest. We’re usually either the oldest or the youngest in the crowd. It was, to say the least, an eclectic audience. I turned to Karen when I saw a family enter, one that included a preteen girl, and said “How can they bring a kid to this show?”

The show, Get Your Holiday On, was, as expected, rollicking, bawdy, good fun. Near the end of the show Meghan noticed the young girl in the audience, and, in a moment that seemed to be real, not part of the act, rhetorically said “There were children in the audience?”, before shrugging it off to the delight of the crowd, including the parents.

We both loved the show and may make it yet another holiday tradition (see comment on the Q Brothers), but what really impressed Karen was Meghan’s ability to navigate the show, with all its dance steps, while wearing three-and-a half-inch spiked heels. How is it that women can measure heels from a distance? It’s for insights like this that a partner in crime is invaluable on forays into unchartered territory.

So now we have tickets to see Meghan, along with Danni Smith and Cassie Slater in “We Three: Loud Her. Fast Her. Funny Her.” at Steppenwolf Theater of all places. The title is promising. Stay tuned.