ScheckOnTheater

It’s not surprising that Noel Coward’s Private Lives is so often produced on Broadway. This delicious 1930 comedy, which has been seen here no less than four times in the last three decades, offers absolutely delicious roles for its star players, combining witty one-liners, knockabout physical comedy and, it is to be hoped, sizzling sexual chemistry.

The latest revival, now ensconced in the intimate Music Box, stars Kim Cattrall, no stranger to sex or comedy--thanks to her lengthy run as Samantha in the Sex and the City HBO series and two feature films—and Canadian actor Paul Gross, best known for his starring turns on the acclaimed series Due South and Slings and Arrows. They make a terrific Amanda and Elyot in director Richard Eyre’s stylish production, previously seen in London and Toronto.

Coward’s play about a divorced couple stumbling on each other during their respective honeymoons with their new spouses is by now so familiar to most theatergoers that they can no doubt recite the lines along with the actors. “Don’t quibble, Sybil”; “Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs”; Extraordinary how potent cheap music is”; I think few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives”; the list goes on and on.

Cattrall, looking smashing at age 53 and making her first appearance clad only in a towel, not surprisingly delivers Amanda’s catty barbs with expert comic timing. But she also movingly conveys the character’s vulnerability when confronted with her still passionate feelings for her ex. Those feelings are not surprising, considering that he’s played by the dashing Gross, who combines matinee idol looks with a witty deadpan style that is consistently amusing.

The supporting roles of the abandoned spouses are fairly thankless, but Simon Paisley Day makes the most of his turn as Victor, ratcheting up the character’s hysteria to hilarious effect, and Anna Madeley is uncommonly appealing as Sybil.

The production’s sole misstep is Rob Howell’s set design of a Parisian flat which more closely resembles a modern art museum designed by Salvador Dali, although its inclusion of a large goldfish bowl did provide the opportunity for a funny sight gag.

Music Box, 239 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com.

Thomas Bradshaw’s new play Burning is playing at the New Group’s theater on 42nd Street, but it would have been right at home on the old 42nd Street as well. This sprawling, ambitious tale set in the worlds of art and theater features enough graphic sexual couplings and full-frontal nudity to satisfy any voyeur—even its poster, featuring a close of a derriere, seems tailor-made for the porn crowd.

The playwright, a theatrical provocateur who has won acclaim for such works as Southern Promises and The Bereaved, has previously demonstrated a far more minimalist style than he exhibits here. Running 2 and 3/4 hours and featuring a dozen or so characters, this work set in two distinct eras is practically Tony Kushnerian in its scope.

Unfortunately, Bradshaw doesn’t seem to have Kushner’s ability to juggle so many balls in the air at once. It’s impossible to gauge what he was trying for with this effort, which shifts wildly in tone and seems to border on satire without quite getting there.

The overlong evening features two intertwined storylines. In one set in the present day, Peter (Stephen Tyrone Williams), a black artist, travels to Berlin to participate in a major gallery show, only to run afoul of a neo-Nazi (Drew Hildebrand). In the other, set in the 1980s, Chris, (Evan Johnson), an orphaned teen, travels to New York, where he is taken in by a gay couple (Andrew Garman, Danny Mastrogiorgio) who work in the theater. He soon begins an affair with a playwright (Vladimir Versailles) with whom his caretakers are collaborating, with predictably emotionally messy results.

That brief description doesn’t begin to do justice to the many twists and turns of the labyrinth-like plot, which is positively baroque in its excesses. It mainly seems an excuse for a series of graphic sex scenes--of both the heterosexual and homosexual variety--including Peter’s life-changing encounter with a black prostitute (Barrett Doss) and the neo-Nazi incestuously helping his crippled sister (Reyna de Courcy) achieve a “release.”

Is all of this meant to be funny? It’s hard to say. Certainly it produced a lot of nervous titters from the audience, who were apparently not used to seeing such actors as Hunter Foster (Urinetown, Little Shop of Horrors) on the receiving end of anal intercourse.      

It’s all staged with gusto by director Scott Elliott, the New Group’s artistic director, who clearly doesn’t shy away from this sort of confrontational, in-your-face theater. He’s certainly elicited highly committed, fearless performances from the ensemble, who frequently bare all for the sake of their art.

The playwright clearly has a lot of things on his mind, with no shortage of provocative themes on display. The politics of sex, art and race are all dealt with in one way or another, entertainingly if only superficially. But by the time the overlong work reaches its truly absurd conclusion—I won’t even hint at it, it has to be seen to be believed—it’s long become clear that Bradshaw has wildly overreached.

The New Group@Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200. www.telecharge.com

There’s a mass seduction going on nightly at the Broadhurst Theatre. In his one-man show Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway, the Aussie performer has the audience eating out of the palm of his hand. It’s a charm explosion, the sort of dazzling exhibition that would make Al Jolson green with envy and be declared illegal in certain countries. Shamelessly flirting with male and female audience members alike, Jackman offers himself up for our delectation and--judging by the rapturous response--everyone is prepared to take him up on it.

Jackman is not a brilliant actor, singer or dancer. And yet he combines all three elements to fabulous effect in this song-and-dance show that is the sort of old-fashioned star entertainment that has all but become extinct.

From the very first moments, when he sings the opening notes of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” from offstage, he has the audience in his pocket. Casually strolling onstage while still singing, he cuts such a figure of masculine perfection that he almost seems a parody of himself.

But he effectively plays off his ridiculous good looks with ample doses of good-natured humor. He bumps, he grinds, he does pelvic thrusts and, if you’re sitting in one of the box seats, he might even sit in your lap.

The show, previously presented in San Francisco and Toronto, is essentially an autobiographical nightclub act, combining highlights from Jackman’s career with pop standards and songs from movies and Broadway musicals. The performer is certainly not shy about relating his long list of credits, and even accompanies his rendition of “L.O.V.E.” with a clip reel showcasing his film and television appearances.

Accompanied by an 18-piece orchestra and six back-up female singer/dancers, he rockets through a two-hour program that includes medleys devoted to movie music, dance-themed numbers and the songs of Peter Allen, who he portrayed so memorably in The Boy From Oz. Highlights include a gorgeous version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” in which he’s movingly accompanied by aboriginal singers and musicians, and the first act finale, a magnificent rendition of “Soliloquy” from Carousel.

But it’s his uncanny rapport with the crowd that really forms the heart of the show. For the sultry number “Fever,” he selects an audience member for some hilarious up-close and personal interaction. And whether he’s cracking silly jokes about the short-lived Kardashian marriage and the NBA lockout, showing embarrassing childhood photos of himself or describing his training regiment to play Wolverine, he steals hearts with seeming effortlessness.  

He’s only scheduled for a limited run through the end of the year, and tickets will no doubt soon become difficult, if not impossible, to procure. Don’t hesitate—who knows when this sort of show business magic will come our way again?

Broadhurst Theatre, 235 W. 44th St. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com.

Just in case you didn’t you didn’t get your hippy-dippy fix with the recent revival of Hair, there’s now the 40th anniversary production of Godspell to help you get your groove on. Stephen Schwartz’s 1971 musical, conceived and originally directed by John-Michael Tebelak, retells the story of Jesus through a series of musical numbers adapted from the Gospel of St. Matthew. In this new version conveniently playing next door to the same composer’s Wicked, you’ll hear references to, among other things, Steve Jobs, Facebook, the birther controversy, Donald Trump, Occupy Wall Street and Lindsay Lohan.

Don’t remember such things from your Bible studies class? Not to worry. This version is designed to be strictly of the moment, as contemporary as a special episode of Glee, which is it most closely resembles.

Your tolerance for this sort of thing will depend on whether you find the idea of the above gags amusing and the prospect of being invited onstage at intermission to mingle with the cast and partake of some “wine” appealing.

To be fair, the mostly young audience ate it up. But to also be fair to those of us of a certain age, they probably haven’t sat through innumerable previous productions of the show, or seen the lamentable film version.

The relentless jokiness of the proceedings, which is thankfully alleviated in the second act—presumably that’s because it’s hard to have quite as much fun with such matters as Judas’ betrayal and the Crucifixion—becomes tiresome.

Not that the evening is without its pleasures. They are chiefly derived from Schwartz’s tuneful pop/rock score, which contains such memorable numbers as “Day by Day” and “Turn Back, O Man,” and the amazingly high energy of the youthful ensemble, who perform as if their life depends on it. The sole weak link was Hunter Parrish (Weeds) as Jesus, who lacks the voice to put over the ballads or the charisma to be convincing as the leader of a new religion. Of course, his hunky good looks went a long way towards overcoming these deficiencies for the young women in attendance, who seemed to melt every time he flashed his toothy grin. Which was a lot.

Director Daniel Goldstein certainly makes excellent use of the intimate Circle in the Square space, having the actors running up and down the aisles while making every effort to directly engage with audience members. The staging even has the band members situated throughout the auditorium, wailing away on their electric guitars. Like everything else about the show, such the overly aggressive musical arrangements, they seemed to be trying too hard.

Circle in the Square, 1633 Broadway. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com.

Santino Fontana continues to emerge as one of the great talents of the New York stage in Sons of the Prophet, the latest confident from Stephen Karam. As some might remember, it was another Karam work, Speech and Debate, that inaugurated the Roundabout Underground four seasons ago. And so Prophet, which runs at the Roundabout main stage space the Laura Pels Theatre, represents the continued growth of two forces attached to the show: its leading actor and its very creator.

Prophet is a cluttered play that never quite moves in the linear ways we expect it to, charting as it does a period of epic change in the life of 29-year-old Joseph Douaihy (Fontana), who, like Karam himself, is a Pennsylvania-bred gay man of Lebanese descent. Hopefully unlike Karam, however, is the series of Job-like trials Joseph finds himself enduring.

An erstwhile runner with the potential to compete at the Olympics, Joseph has begun to experience an inflammation in his knees and additional symptoms that defy easy medical classification. Far worse, his father has passed away due to a heart attack that may or may not have been caused by a car accident when he drove into a deer decoy planted as a prank. This forces a change in his family dynamic once his ailing uncle Bill (Yusef Bulos) decides to move in with Joseph and his younger, also gay, brother Charles (Chris Perfetti).

Other complications ensue when Joseph meets and falls for a handsome news reporter, Timothy (Charles Socarides), covering the fallout from the deer accident. At the same time, the Douaihys are conflicted over the proper way to punish Vin, (Jonathan Louis Dent), the high school football star responsible for it. And Gloria (Joanna Gleason), Joseph’s seemingly absent-minded publishing boss, keeps pressing him to turn his Maronite family’s history into book fodder.

Karam demonstrates a keen understanding of both pain and suffering, and the difference between the two – that as awful as pain may be, whether it be physical or emotional, it’s easier to deal with hurt that can be explained than that which lingers without explanation or even the promise of relief. Prophet’s characters are all woeful in their own way. Even Gloria and Vin are haunted by ghosts of their damaged pasts.  Director Peter DuBois reins in all of these story arcs with the right balance of sensitivity and a humor that borders, but never trespasses, on the absurd. The show recognizes that comedy can emerge in the most serious of moments, and how even the tensest of situations can eventually feel banal. Take, for example, a scene in which Joseph and Charles fight following the former’s spinal tap. Or an ongoing funny-sad gag in which Uncle Bill must leave the door open while using the toilet.

The playwright achieves this by couching Prophet as a reinterpretation of Khalil Gibran’s massive seller, The Prophet. Superscripts create chapters for Joseph’s journey based on the book, such as “On Pain,” “On Friendship,” and “On Reason & Passion.” Karam has a lot on his plate, but the crowded play is never clumsy. He examines every aspect of Joseph’s torment, recognizing that the people in his life who frustrate him the most are also the ones that might offer the most succor. (The character of Gloria, is the only one that times borders on caricature.)

As such, the acting in Prophet is uniformly terrific (Lizbeth Mackay and Dee Nelson offer solid work in a series of supporting roles). What is most curious is how several of these actors – Bulos, Gleason, Socarides – are able to communicate so much about their characters while still keeping secrets about their motivations. Fontana, on the other hand, bares Joseph’s scared, weary soul in a performance that doesn’t have a false note and calls no unnecessary attention to the many small but essential strokes of genius that the performer utilizes to bring this subtle, distinctive character to life.

Unlike the mysterious malady that plagues Joseph, it’s all too easy to trace the source of Prophet’s searing glory: the clever Karam. One is hopeful that it is not long before his symptoms appear yet again in some form on the stage.

----- Doug Strassler

Laura Pels Theatre, 111 West 46th Street, 212-719-1300. www.roundabouttheatre.org