The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Le Petit through June 4
Comparisons are odious.
That said, after I saw The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time on Broadway in 2014, I described it as “a wondrous coming of age show about an autistic/math genius teenager” and encouraged “everyone” to go see it.
I had a more muted response to the Curious Incident currently running at Le Petit.
An unquestionably challenging show to put on, requiring substantial technical effects among other things, Le Petit’s Incident certainly makes for a worthy community theater effort and I admire them for attempting Simon Stephens’ adaptation of Mark Haddon’s novel. Something was lacking in it, however, to prevent it from being fully successful.
Curious Incident begins as a mystery as to who killed a dog but then blossoms into, not only a family drama, but, even more importantly, an energizing tale of a neurodivergent youth conquering his fears as he goes on a literal and metaphorical journey of discovery.
Director Salvatore Mannino’s production gives us the basics but wants a greater variety of moods; a lightness is missing to counterbalance the story’s darker sides. Unlike Broadway, where just right granular details buoyed things along, here I was all too aware of how much exposition gets ladled out with no real dramatic tension until nearly the two hour mark.
I also question Mannino’s decision to have the actors playing Christopher Boone–the putative teenage detective–his parents and his teacher, perform in a realistic manner and the six-member ensemble, who portray all the other characters, use a broader, at times even caricaturistic, style. It undercuts the importance of these other figures and makes it feel as though there are two separate shows going on at once.
Interestingly, some of the most moving moments at Le Petit are silent ones as when Christopher’s father communicates wordlessly with his son or when Christopher achingly realizes the deception that one of his parents has engineered.
In the role of Christopher, which won Alex Sharp a Tony Award for Best Actor, Fernando Rivera, Jr. potently conveys the young man’s intelligence yet I wish Mannino had guided him to give a more varied performance. As Christopher’s teacher Siobhan, Justice Hues similarly offers a too monochromatic portrait from which a requisite maternal warmth is missing. Hues also has a tendency to barrel through Siobhan’s long passages, occasionally garbling some of the lines.
Diana E.H. Shortes, so wonderful in Le Petit’s recent Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, does well here too as Christopher’s mother, while Nick Strauss, as Christopher’s father, excellently brings out all the colors in the script’s best written, most multidimensional character.
Nightlight Labs, with which Mannino is connected, designed the video projections that fill the back wall of the stage. While impressive, occasionally they are too literal, visually duplicating the words we hear without adding to them.
Despite these reservations, you well might want to go to Le Petit and decide for yourself. Someone I know who hadn’t seen Curious Incident in NYC was wowed by our local production. Curious? No wonder, since theater, like all art forms, is in the eye of the beholder.
[For tickets and more info, go to https://www.lepetittheatre.com/listings/events//the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in.html]
New in New York
Speaking of things being in the eye of the beholder, I appear to be one of the few critics who actually liked Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical Bad Cinderella (Imperial Theatre). Most of my fellow scribes seemed to come at it with knives out and, alas, it has posted a closing notice for June 4. It’s no Cats or Evita or Phantom, but I still found it to be very entertaining.
A modernization of the classic fairy tale, Emerald (Promising Young Woman) Fennell’s book. as adapted by Alexis Scheer, gives Cinderella more agency and adds a variety of twists along the way. You more or less know where things are going, but the show fully holds your attention as it gets there.
Lloyd Webber provides some tuneful melodies, no small feat, to go with David Zippel’s witty lyrics. There are some lovely ballads and fun comic numbers, all of which reflect the individual characters who sing them, not always the case these days (see below). The title number seems to reference In My Own Little Corner, a nice homage to the Rodgers & Hammerstein version.
Linedy Genao, as Cinderella, leads the cast, all of whom do what’s asked of them and do it very well, especially those comic pros Carolee Carmello (Stepmother) and Grace McLean (Queen). Beautiful sets & costumes by Gabriela Tylesova and lighting by Bruno Poet greatly add to the festivities. And the chorus “boys” dubbed “The Hunks” in two numbers, indubitably live up to their appellation. Woof! [https://badcinderellabroadway.com/]
Some Like it Hot (Shubert Theatre) has been showered with 13 Tony Award nominations and deservedly so. Up to a point.
The show looks like a million thanks to Scott Pask (sets), Gregg Barnes (costumes) and Natasha Katz (lighting).
Casey Nicolaw provides fizzy direction and eye-popping choreography that has dancers’ limbs flying in various directions in exuberant glee.
The cast, particularly J. Harrison Ghee in the retailored Jack Lemmon role, all give top-notch performances.
But, and it’s a big but, all the songs by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman sound the same. Or rather, they give us two types of numbers, slow and fast, and each category is filled with workmanlike tunes that are basically interchangeable. And utterly forgettable.
Meanwhile, Matthew López and Amber Ruffin’s book imposes 2023 sensibilities on a situation set in 1933. Which would be fine but you can see the mechanics of the plot as things fall into place; there are a few but not enough laughs; and, most significantly, the stakes never get raised high enough. In other words, everything in the far-fetched plot occurs too easily as the authors manipulate events. An audience thus never feels emotionally invested in the show and leaves the theater entertained but not moved in any way. Oh, for the genius of Billy Wilder. [https://somelikeithotmusical.com/ ]
Similarly, everything comes to pass too easily in David West Read’s manipulative book for & Juliet (Stephen Sondheim Theatre) which tells what might’ve happened if Juliet, of Shakespeare fame, had lived.
It’s a worthy idea, but its two-dimensional characters rob it of any enduring emotional resonance.
It has the now requisite queer romance which seems to have become shorthand for “Aren’t we kewl?” Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with portraying queer love but real life is a lot more complicated, and interesting, than anything I saw in & Juliet or Some Like it Hot or Bad Cinderella.
A jukebox musical, & Juliet features the songs of Max Martin (Oops! … I Did It Again, I Kissed a Girl, Since U Been Gone, etc.) and it’s fun to hear his hits reconfigured in new arrangements; his other songs, however, are pretty meh. Hit or not, tho, just about all of them are pitched at the same emotional level, belted out with no nuance or subtlety.
Luke Sheppard’s direction keeps things moving along while Jennifer Weber’s music-video-ish choreography is so “HI NRG” that it’s less art than aerobics.
Lorna Courtney brings a tremendous voice to Juliet but power doesn’t always equal artistry. Stark Sands as Shakespeare (the revised R&J narrative is actually a show within a show) and Melanie La Barrie as Juliet’s nurse are both first-rate pros. The non-binary May, one of Juliet’s friends, is needy, whiny and pushy; the non-binary Justin David Sullivan leans into this, rather than playing against it, and so makes May insufferable.
Ben Jackson Walker layers in self-awareness and finds just the right tone as the douchey Romeo, and, in his Broadway debut, radiates an innate charisma. Betsy Wolfe makes Shakespeare’s wife Anne quirky, headstrong, smart and beguiling.
And then there’s Paulo Szot, the great Brazilian operatic baritone as Juliet’s potential father-in-law. Seeing him capering around on stage in a massive codpiece is, well, something you don’t see him do at the Metropolitan Opera. I couldn’t help wondering if he’s truly having fun or just doing it for the money; probably a little of both. When he finely lets loose with his magnificent voice towards the end of Act Two with Shape of My Heart, he makes the Backstreet Boys ditty worthy of La Scala.
The night I saw & Juliet, after the final applause had subsided, Betsy Wolfe came forward and gave a curtain speech in tribute to Todd Haimes, longtime Artistic Director/CEO of the Roundabout Theatre Company which owns and operates the Sondheim Theatre, who had passed away the day before at a too early age; Wolfe had known and worked with Haimes for many years. It was the loveliest of moments and offered the only genuine feeling that I encountered in any of these three musicals. Sigh… [https://andjulietbroadway.com/]
