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This blogger, Richard Gehr, is not an employee of AARP. The opinions expressed in the blog are not necessarily the opinions of AARP and AARP assumes no liability for the content posted by Mr. Gehr or any other participant

February 26, 2007

Richard Gehr | February 26, 2007

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"I'm not going to let [the audience] off the hook by saying this is about people who lived 35 years ago," says director John Doyle of his amazing and thoroughly contemporary Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's musical Company.

Doyle's version, with actors singing and playing instruments amid a sparse stage dominated by a single column, a piano, and several plastic cubes, feels like a bittersweet sequel to the musical's 1970 debut. Plus ça change, etc. While it's now far less unusual for a person to be single on his or her 35th birthday, the bachelor known as Bobby (Raúl Esparza) still epitomizes all the skittishness, fear, and stubbornness that often characterize the emotionally untethered. "You impersonate a person/ Better than any zombie should," a berating female trio squawk. Not that his married friends suffer any less loneliness or loathing in their own lives. As Joanne (Barbara Walsh) sings of married life in "The Little Things You Do Together," just one of the musical's many uncomfortably perfect dissections, it's "The concerts you enjoy together/ Neighbors you annoy together/ Children you destroy together/That keep marriage intact."

The new Company cast album, however, is a far perkier souvenir than the original, which featured Jonathan Tunick's lavish arrangements. The fact that each of the play's 13 cast members acts, sings, dances and plays up to three instruments (adequately) makes Doyle's spectacle a minor miracle of skill, logistics, and nerve. He may have applied the same economic strategy to his 2004 revival of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, but Company, with its endless epiphanies of ambivalence, feels richer, riskier, and a lot more fun.

February 13, 2007

Richard Gehr | February 13, 2007

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Having seen the Broadway musicals Spring Awakening and Company last week with a night off in-between, I felt like the nail hit on the head by the beginning of Ginia Bellafante's piece "Sex, Repressed and Unleashed" in Friday's New York Times:

"Let's say, though, that despite a hypothetical preference for shearing sheep over watching actors sing, you have gone to see 'Spring Awakening' or 'Company' or both, and suppose now that you unexpectedly find yourself re-evaluating the form, perhaps at least in part because both new productions engage with sexual politics in a way rarely seen on the mainstream stage. Taken in tandem, they lay a greater claim to our interest than taken alone, together playing out the debate about the role and relevance of sexual freedom that has consumed us since the 1960s."

I'll have more to say about Company when Nonesuch Records releases its new cast recording of the Stephen Sondheim revival in a couple of weeks. As for Spring Awakening, it may be the less engaging of the two plays for adults, but it's still an earnest yet entertaining blend of crowd-pleasing Andrew Lloyd Webber-isms with the relatively edgy rock attitude introduced by Rent almost exactly a decade ago.

Set in repressive 1891 Germany, Spring Awakening leaps into the present with every song and is basically a poignant musical argument for universal sex education, responsibility, and choice. There are no easy answers here, and while the musical depicts various common forms of sexual activity, it's hardly prurient. At its best, it serves as a timely and frank reminder of the immense difficulty of being a teenager at any time ever. And while my thirteen-year-old daughter has seen both the stage and film versions of Rent more than once, I'd have to say we made the right mutual decision to hold off on this for a year or two, when I'm sure she'll appreciate it.

Steven Slater wrote the book and lyrics to music by singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik. The best moments belong to the failing student Moritz, who, as played by John Gallagher Jr., bears a striking resemblance to Johnny Rotten of punk rock's most theatrical creation, the Sex Pistols. But Spring Awakening is thankfully neither punk lite nor Broadway bland. And it definitely beats sheep shearing as a spectator experience.