Turnabout Is Fair Play: On Reviewing and Being Reviewed

Here's the basic formula of reviewing: a bunch of people, frequently talented, sometimes brilliant, strive for weeks, months, or years, often at great sacrifice, and then I show up and judge them. It doesn't seem fair.

And yet I don't plan to stop. I believe that reviewers can make a contribution. Minimally, we offer publicity; maximally, we add something valuable to the conversation. At least we try (many of us, anyway).

The thing is, I know what it feels like to get bad reviews. I know how easy it is to remember the negatives and forget the positives. So, in the interest of full disclosure, I think it's time to share some of the bad reviews my book, The Lesbian Sex Book (later updated as The New Lesbian Sex Book) received.

"Necessary but dull."

"The humor is somewhat simplistic, even embarrassing at times."

"Disappointing."

"If you have ever had lesbian sex, there will be little for you to learn from Wendy Caster's book."

"Unintentionally funny in places [with] a distinct lack of irony."

"Full of . . . useless quirky hints to spice up your love life. It's American--need I say more." (From Dublin.)

(I love that last one--not only can't I write, but I disgraced my entire country.)

The book also received some good reviews and sold pretty well. Yet it's the bad reviews I remember, nearly 20 years later. (And, sigh, I don't think the bad reviews are particularly unfair.)

I would love to hear what other people have to say about the role of reviewers. Comments welcome!

Frankenstein Upstairs

In Frankenstein Upstairs, Mac Rogers once again uses science fiction as his delivery system to present us with his unique combination of insight, humor, wisdom, and compassion. The plot is seemingly simple: Sophie and Marisol, a young couple, become friends with their neighbor upstairs, Dr. Victoria Frankenstein. In their slightly alternate universe, the Frankenstein novel/legend does not exist, so the name has no resonance for them; for the audience, however, the name promises death, rebirth, and all sorts of deliciously dreadful complications.

Kristen Vaughan
Photo: Deborah Alexander

One of Rogers' main themes in Frankenstein Upstairs is "can you choose your family?," and his answer is clearly "yes." In addition to Sophie, Marisol has chosen Taylor, a man she met in a domestic-violence-recovery group, as kin. Taylor loves Marisol deeply and also admires her because she's "the biggest hit in group, right? She’s the only one who tells stories about hitting back."

And Dr. Frankenstein ("Please call me Vic"), clearly isolated and terribly lonely, is touched, thrilled, grateful, and somehow defrosted when Sophie simply invites her to dinner. When Marisol later touches her face, in a moment of easy (for Marisol) intimacy (unprecedented for Vic), Vic falls in love with both women, but not romantically. She chooses them for her family. Whether they will choose her back is another story.

Rogers has a wonderful ability to make the mundane magical and the magical mundane. On one hand, Vic is Dr. Frankenstein, crazy, brilliant, able to change the world--and also charming and funny. On the other, she is the neighbor-friend-relative who doesn't understand boundaries, who doesn't recognize when she's overstayed her welcome, who thinks that the amount she (genuinely!) loves someone means that they have to love her back. This Dr. Frankenstein is easy to sympathize with--it's not her fault she's a mad genius.

Pippin

Sometimes more is less, as clearly shown by the revival of Pippin currently on Broadway. Or perhaps I should write "sometimes more is less for me," since Pippin's multitude of Tony Awards (revival, director, lead actress, featured actress) and SRO audiences prove that my opinion is not a majority one. But:

Andrea Martin
Photo: Joan Marcus

• Pattina Miller as the Leading Player is all muscles and edges, often looking more like she's working out than she's dancing. 

• Chet Walker's choreography, though based on Fosse's more sinuous work, is full of busy-ness and edges and angles. (I'm not sure why shows have choreography "in the style of Fosse"; is there some reason that they can't just use Fosse's choreography in the first place?)
• Most importantly, while the circus acts are amazing, superb, and magical, they too often pull focus from the choreography and the rest of the show--or perhaps the choreography and the rest of the show pull focus from the circus acts--but either way the audience is faced with visual noise and a production that is less than the sum of its parts. As just one example, the brilliant Manson Trio, an oasis of quiet, is not allowed to finish without some of the circus performers back on stage and, yes, pulling focus. (This links to the Manson Trio from the televised Pippin with Ben Vereen--the trio starts around 3:57. Unfortunately, here too they are unwilling to leave the dance alone, throwing in other images, but, man, what choreography!)

There are some lovely moments amid all this stuff.

3 Kinds of Exile

Everyone has the occasional bad bad at work; 3 Kinds of Exile offers us a few of John Guare's.

The first exile, Karel, has a few advantages: (1) his story is genuinely interesting; (2) he is played by the wonderful Martin Moran, who knows the alchemy involved in turning a monologue into a living piece of theatre; and (3) it comes first in the evening, while the audience is still perky. (Note: all of the exiles are real people.)

Martin Moran
Photo: Kevin Thomas Garcia

The second exile, actress Elzbieta Czyzewska, has a tougher time of it. Although her story is fascinating, with everything but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end, Guare has turned it into a dualogue, which is painfully different from a dialogue. Guare, making his "acting" debut, and Omar Sangare, who had a featured role in Czyzewska's life, take turns telling us about her and what happened to her. Omar occasionally plays one of the people in Czyzewska's life, to little profit. The "play" is a recited essay.

For the third play, Guare gives us an absurdist version of an absurdist's life. Writer Witold Gombrowicz is the exile. Luckily for the audience he is played by David Pittu, who single-handedly improves the piece from tortuous to only extremely painful.

I go to theatre to see people interact--people, not one person. I like to see characters spar and bill and coo and lie and manipulate and give and take. Mostly, I like to see them talk to one another. However, even though two of the 3 Kinds of Exile feature more than one person, they do not rise above the ambiance and disadvantages of the thinnest of one-person shows. (Of course, there are writers and performers who ace one-person shows--see, for example, Moran's brilliant All the Rage.)

On a whole, 3 Kinds of Exile left this reviewer eager to see Six Degrees of Separation.

(midway back, orchestra, press ticket)

Potted Potter

Potted Potter promises to present all seven Harry Potter books in 70 minutes, a promise it only kinda sorta keeps. Its talented, energetic cast of two--Dan Clarkson and Jeff Turner, who are also the playwrights--run around, throw on hats and wigs, and talk very fast. They are frequently quite funny.

Unfortunately, many of the precious 70 minutes aren't actually about Harry Potter. Too much time is given to Dan and Jeff's making fun of each other and themselves, and discussing whether Dan ever did read book 7, and talking about Dan's supposed misuse of their budget. This silliness is sometimes fun, but it's familiar stuff, and we're there because of Harry Potter, not because of Dan and Jeff.

Still, it would be a crabbier person than I who could ultimately resist the frenetic insanity on display, and I did end up having a lot of fun.

And the Quiddich match is pretty wonderful.

(row N, press ticket)

Tony Awards: PS

I was glad to see Cyndi Lauper win best score for a musical, because I love Cyndi Lauper.

But then I happened to turn on the radio and catch the tail end of this interview. Specifically, I caught composer-lyricist Tim Minchin singing "Quiet" from Matilda.

And I'd have to say that he was robbed. There's more brilliance in that one song than in all of Kinky Boots.

Welcome Back, Tony Awards

For the first time in years, I felt that the Tonys were ours again, that the show and the awards focused on theatre and existed to entertain people for whom theatre is so primary that their web passwords are amalgams of Sondheim titles (uh, not anyone I know personally). Even the movie, TV, and music people who were there, were there as theatre people. It was our night.

How nice to see the big stars be Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone. How nice to see the theatre actor Tracey Letts beat movie actor Tom Hanks (no offense, Tom). How nice to see stalwart Billy Porter up there, and Christopher Durang. How nice to see Neal Patrick Harris at his very best.

And two female best directors! (Bringing the Tony total to seven.) And Cyndi Lauper (definitely one of us with her beat-up musical theatre LPs) being the first woman to win for both music and lyrics!

And genuinely good original numbers, from the thrilling opening assembly of everyone (here) to Michael John LaChiusa's wry and smart "I Want to Be in A TV Show" (video and lyrics here) to the impressively-quickly-put-together-and-performed closing summary by Harris and Audra McDonald (here).

And what a lovely, genuinely moving memorial segment, with Cyndi Lauper's moving rendition of her evocative "True Colors."

Things I Learned While Watching the 2013 Tonys

1) The Tonys are the honeybadger of awards shows. They don't give a shit, they have loose skin, and they are absolutely, completely, and totally badass.

2) Neil Patrick Harris should host every awards ceremony, ever, and if he did so, he would somehow manage to end all of the problems in the world.

3) Women are amazing, excellent creatures who work hard, gets things done, and sometimes manage to sweep every major category in the most wonderful and extraordinary of ways.

4) Little Steven has something to do with Broadway, or once did, and it involved the Rascals.

5) Little Steven digs the Rascals so much that they got a montage last night.

6) I realize I still have no fucking idea what the Rascals or Little Steven were doing there, but whatever, the song is certainly a classic. And Little Steven got to make some passing reference to The Sopranos, which is nice, I guess.

7) I really am genuinely concerned for Kenneth Posner and hope he's not too broken up about it all.

8) After Neil Patrick Harris, Alan Cumming is my hero.

9) Motown the Musical is either awesome or absolutely atrocious, and if it's possible, maybe both at once.

10) Cicely Tyson is bionic.

11) Audra McDonald is bionic.

12) The opening number was bionic.

13) The awards were, almost to a one, deserving, thrilling, and well-received. And bionic.

14) Phantom of the Opera is the opposite of bionic, and it needs to join Cats on the Heaviside Layer at this point. Please?

15) The Academy Awards could learn a lot from the Tonys. 

Murder Ballad(s)

Murder Ballad, which is currently running at the Union Square Theater after a critically and commercially successful stint at MTC earlier this fall, is everything everyone says it is: paper thin when it comes to plot and character, but high in energy, trendily immersive, with a catchy enough score and a small but beautiful cast of almost ridiculously sexy people. There; that's my review: it was enormous fun, like everyone says it is. Go check it out.

Meanwhile, know that it's rooted in a larger history, and comes out of a genre that is very old, totally lurid, and really fucking awesome. And also just as paper-thin as the plot of Murder Ballad, which is pretty up-front about the fact that audiences dig sex, blood, and lurid details, but don't necessarily give a shit about nuanced character development. The opening number makes that all clear, really, but just in case you miss what the cast is singing about because you are too distracted by their ridiculous sexiness, Murder Ballad is a musical-length murder ballad.

The Tonys are Coming! The Tonys are Coming!

Howdy, people:

Some of you might know this, and some of you could probably not care less, but anyway, sometimes I write for the Oxford University Press blog, since OUP published Hard Times and has been so kind and wonderful to me. They asked me to write about the Tony Awards, which--I am sure every person reading this blog knows--is to be broadcast this coming Sunday evening.

I promise to post here about my impressions of the Tonys once they are broadcast, but in the meantime, here's the link to the OUP blog, and to my piece for them. I don't mean to toot my own horn or anything, but I think you'll enjoy the post--especially if you are a fan of the old TV series "Sliders."

Kisses!
Liz

Requiem for Smash: Did It Have to Be That Bad?

Smash has had its supporters and detractors, but even its supporters never defended its quality. "Guilty pleasure," they said. "The show you love to hate." And it's not like there hasn't been bad TV before. And it's not like there haven't been unconvincing theatre-behind-the-scenes depictions before. But after two seasons, I just keep thinking: did it have to be that bad?

Of course not! Smash was written and scored and directed and performed by some deeply talented people--and some not-so-talented people too, of course, but there were certainly enough of the former to create a good show. Even mediocre would have been welcome. So what went wrong?

Marc Shaiman wrote

A lot of smart, talented (and in some cases, smart AND talented!) people were brought together to create a television show. Probably too many people. Yes, "too many chefs" is the most succinct way to say what went wrong. But there was not a single soul working on the show who didn't want it to be great. Everyone just had a different idea of what that was.

Matilda

Joan Marcus

This past theater season has been a real roller coaster for me, reception-wise. I saw Kinky Boots begrudgingly, and in a monumentally horrible mood, and seriously out for blood, and I ended up having a terrific time and even getting weepy despite myself. I saw Annie right after the hurricane, hoping that the show would comfort me by bringing back pleasant childhood memories of the original production...and I left  feeling as emotionally numb as I was when I went in. I had pretty low expectations for Macbeth and got a lot more out of it than I thought I would. I had no idea what to expect with Pippin and was absolutely, totally, completely gobsmacked. Same goes for The Other Place: I went with no idea about it at all, and felt like I needed to be scraped up off the floor and sent home in an emotional doggie-bag at the curtain call.

Then there's Matilda, which I fell completely prey to the hype of, and have been eagerly awaiting since I snagged good, reasonably cheap (for Broadway, anyway) tickets last fall. I should've known better than to have gotten so excited, because there's no way my expectations could have possibly been met. Which is not to say I was bitterly disappointed--I wasn't, not consistently, and certainly not bitterly. Matilda is an exceptionally good adaptation of an exceptionally good children's book. I just wish it had been a little more emotionally loaded.

Then again, I don't think that's entirely fair of me, considering the source. As a book, Matilda is, like many Roald Dahl books, strange, dark, and weirdly creative, but about as warm and fuzzy as a frozen head of lettuce. Matilda Wormwood is an exceptionally bright little girl whose tacky, stupid, dishonest parents dislike and neglect her. When Matilda shows up at school--a brutal, scary, gray place called Crunchem Hall, the motto of which is "Children are Maggots"--her meek but dedicated teacher, Jenny Honey, quickly recognizes her brilliance. Miss Honey visits the vile headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, and also Matilda's smugly dimwitted parents, whom she tries to convince of Matilda's intellectual gifts, but they are all too stupid, dishonest, and self-involved to believe Miss Honey, or to care. As the book progresses, Matilda defies her parents whenever she can, bests the evil headmistress, bonds with Miss Honey, and eventually goes to live with her, as happily ever after as anyone can ever be in a Dahl book.

Macbeth

Experimental approaches to well-known plays can sometimes pay off in enormous ways. The National Theatre of Scotland's production of Macbeth, currently at the Barrymore, made me think of a whole bunch of productions that have, at some point or another, thrilled me with their wonderful weirdness. There was the production of Ibsen's Ghosts that I saw as a kid at Carnegie-Mellon University, which scared the shit out of me, and which featured life-sized voodoo dolls, a stage filled with dirt, and a huge, creepy, empty auditorium. There was the Mabou Mines production of Ibsen's A Doll's House, cast with men under four feet tall and statuesque blonde women (one of whom got totally naked at the end, and turned out to be bald). There was The Donkey Show, Diane Paulus's hilarious 1970s take on A Midsummer Night's Dream, set in an abandoned dance club in the very westernmost reaches of Chelsea. There was John Doyle's Company, which highlighted Bobby's isolation by having every character but him play their own musical instruments. I recognize that some of you might've hated some of these productions, and it's fine with me if you did, but they all totally bent my brain in really good ways.

Then again, new twists on old favorites can end up feeling gimmicky and pointless, and I've sat through plenty of those productions, too. I still can't figure out the production of Measure for Measure that I saw, also at CMU, which featured a cast of actors clothed in smeary, filthy tatters and wandering blankly through the audience as they delivered their lines in near monotones. A production of Tosca set during World War II was....Tosca with 1940s style suits and dresses. I understand what Baz Luhrmann has been trying to do since, like, he was born, but I've never really connected with his work nonetheless. Last year, I saw a college production of Pippin that re-imagined the title character as a soldier suffering from severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which was way, way more adorable than its overly committed cast of very young adults clearly intended it to be.

And then there's this production of Macbeth, which I'd place somewhere squarely in the middle. The gimmick: it is set in a mental institution, where Alan Cumming--a severely disturbed patient who has experienced (maybe caused?) something horribly traumatic that has resulted in a psychotic break--has been committed. A man and a woman in white coats observe him, and occasionally take part in his delusions, as he portrays every major character in the Shakespeare tragedy.

Macbeth

In his one-man Macbeth, the protean Alan Cumming orates, cries, hits his chest, yells, whispers, throws things, and tries to drown himself. What he doesn't do is define characters or tell a coherent story. Now and then you can catch chunks of Macbeth flying by, and Cumming does well by the famous bits: out, out damn spot; a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage; Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripped; and so on. But when he's acting out a conversation among a variety of characters, good luck figuring out who's saying what to whom.The framing story is sort of interesting, but obscure; for no apparent reason, Macbeth has become the rantings of a man with blood on his hands (neck, torso, arms, etc). Overall, Cumming's performance is impressive, but in the way that running a marathon is impressive.

I'll grant you that it's a cheap shot, but this Macbeth is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Full disclosure: most of the people in the audience jumped to their feet cheering when the show was over. 

(eighth row center, press ticket)

Nice Work If You Can Get It

I had no intention of seeing Nice Work If You Can Get It. I'm not a Matthew Broderick fan, and word-of-mouth made the show sound lame. Then nicely discounted tickets became available, and Jessie Mueller was cast, and I've always adored George Gershwin, and I figured, "What the hell. Even if the show stinks, I'll get to hear the music."

And damned if I didn't have a wonderful time. And damned if I didn't love Broderick's performance, weird voice and all!

Judy Kaye
Photo: Joan Marcus

The storyline is hardly worth summarizing--playboy meets girl bootlegger, playboy loses girl bootlegger, playboy gets girl bootlegger--but Joe DiPietro (the playbill says "Inspired by material by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse) has filled the script with delightfully silly jokes that are nailed by the fabulous cast. When an exchange about someone not being able to count to two is actually funny, you know you're in good hands.

And oh, what hands: Judy Kaye as an anti-alcohol crusader, Michael McGrath as a crook proud to be a good butler, and Chris Sullivan as a lunkhead with a sweet heart bring a divine sublimity to the proceedings. Kaye in particular gives a master class in perfectly calibrated insanity. Is there anyone like her? Fabulous voice, excellent acting, supreme likeability--I luv her.

The scenery by Derek McLane and costumes by Martin Pakledinaz are exactly what they should be, with style. In particular, the striped vice squad suits are a delight. And the orchestrations by Bill Elliot are wonderful--in his capable hands, even the scenes changes are a treat. The choreography by Kathleen Marshall isn't unique or outstanding--and I really wanted a tap number!--but it does what it needs to do, and her direction moves the show along at the perfect snappy pace.

If you too were dissuaded from giving Nice Work If You Can Get It a chance by the lackluster word-of-mouth and highly mixed reviews, and if you like shows that are sheer fun, get thee to the Imperial before the show closes on June 15th.

(4th row mezz; discount ticket)