Idina Menzel & Anthony Rapp Still Got It! - If/Then Review

Every once in a while a broadway show opens that I have to see ASAP no matter what I have to pay... If/Then was one of those shows!  I've been excited about this since I first read about it last summer.  Well I didn't waste any time and got tickets for the first Saturday night performance of previews.

First of all I think Idina Menzel is one of the most talented broadway performers out there.  She could be in the most boring show and I would still be impressed.   Then there's Anthony Rapp... one of my absolute favorite broadway performers of all time!  I have a thing for nerdy guys and when you combine his nerdy appearance with his amazing voice and his terrible but cute dance moves you've basically made my perfect man (yes yes I know he's gay, but I can still admire him).  To add to the Rent alumni list Michael Greif, former director of Rent, is also directing If/Then.

I have to admit that after Adele Nazeem... I mean Idina's performance at the Oscar's a couple weeks ago I was a little worried that her voice might be fading.  That is 100% not true, she was as funny, inspiring and sassy as she was almost 2 decades ago when she began in Rent and her voice was so strong!  I actually remember her belting out this giant note at the end of a song that felt like it blew me back in my seat.  The note went on for so long I could feel the whole audience gaping in silent admiration.  Of course the audience exploded for her after.  I'm a sucker for those moments in shows.  Idina has still got it!

LaChanze playing Kate and Anthony Rapp playing Lucas

Idina's role in this show is supposedly similar to what is happening in her personal life right now.  (Her and Taye Diggs recently split after 10 years of marriage.  I know... so sad!  I always liked to think they were the perfect super talented couple.)  Idina plays Elizabeth, a recently divorced woman in her late 30's who just moved back to NYC to start her life over again.  When she gets there she meets up with her bi roommate from college Lucas (Anthony Rapp) and makes friends with her apartment neighbor Kate (LaChanze).  Throughout the show you see how choices that Elizabeth makes change her life.

The theme of the show is a brilliant idea.  Everyday we make decisions and each one leads our life in a different direction, sometimes in small ways sometimes in big ways.  You don't think about how something as small as choosing to go out to bar with a new friend or something as big as choosing to switch jobs can change the entire course of your life.  You don't think about it because it would drive you insane, but it was still interesting as a story theme.

Oh and by the way one of Elizabeth's "life paths" has a lot to do with a very sexy man, the character Josh played by James Snyder.  I love Anthony Rapp but I found myself drooling over James throughout the show!

Idina Menzel as Elizabeth and James Snyder as Josh

If/Then is a musical by the Next to Normal creators Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey.  The music was definitely similar, I found myself singing Next to Normal songs during intermission and then remembering it was by the same talented duo.  My favorite song was "What the fuck?" haha not only was it awesomely funny it presented a situation that I think everyone can relate to.  That moment when you've gone further than you planned and you're saying to yourself "what the fuck am I doing???" And you decide to just go for it.  I've been in that situation and the next morning you're either really excited that this might turn into something great or really beating yourself up because you know you shouldn't have done that.  It's the same for Elizabeth in the show.

Overall I really liked If/Then, although if not for the presence of Idina Menzel and Anthony Rapp I don't think it would have the same appeal.  I liked the story of If/Then but the deep emotion of Next to Normal just wasn't there.  Nor was the cool personality and catchy songs of Rent.  In fact other than "What the fuck" I actually have a hard time remembering any of the other songs...  I didn't dislike any of them but none of the other songs had that "stick in your head, I have to download this song!" presence.  I plan to see it again once the popularity dies down a bit in a few months to see how I feel about it the second time.  For right now I don't think it would be in my top 5 shows (which Rent and Next Normal are in!).

True to its Rent origins If/Then has a lottery for tickets.  It comes as no surprise that the lottery has been insanely crowded since it began.  I was happy to shell out the $75 it cost me for rear mezzanine tickets so that I didn't have to go through the crazy lottery just to probably not win tickets at the end.  But if you have more patience and optimism than me and would like to try the lottery, names are pulled 90 minutes before every showtime and tickets are $25 cash only.

After the show I waited stage door to get autographs (which I don't do for very many shows I see), the crowd was insane!  But I did get my playbill signed by Idina and Anthony and got a couple pictures, although they weren't very good thanks to me being so short.

Idina signing autographs after If/Then

PS - I'm absolutely in love with the cover photo of Idina Menzel on Billboard today!  She looks beautiful I can only pray that when I'm in my 40s I look as amazing as she does and my life is half as inspiring.  Enjoy the video of her photo shoot below!






If/Then is playing at the Richard Rogers Theatre on 46th (between 7th & 8th).  It is currently in previews and officially opens on Thursday, March 27th.

Breakfast At Tiffany's - Boring, Lifeless Disappointment

After seeing this play I had to watch the movie at home the next day to make sure that I still actually liked it and that it was nothing like the boring, flat show I just saw on stage.  To my relief, I do still love the movie, it has a charm to it that was somehow completely left out of the show.

The Broadway play adaption of Breakfast At Tiffany's is intentionally different from the movie.  Writer, Richard Greenberg sought to base the play more closely on Truman Capote's 1958 novella than the movie had been.  Apparently some of the dialogue has even been directly lifted from the book.  This may explain why the play seemed so lifeless... There's a reason movie and play versions of books often have their own twists.  Each is a different form of art and to be strong in each the story must be adapted for each.  A book can't simply be put into screenplay format and be called a Broadway show.

The story in the play adds in a lot of random gay themes that are not included in the movie.  This would be fine if they weren't randomly and completely nonchalantly mentioned.  In the 1940s being gay was a big deal!  I'm not sure why no one in this play acted like it.

The lead character, Holly Golightly is played by Emilia Clarke of HBO's Game of Thrones.  I don't watch Game of Thrones so I didn't know who she was before seeing the show and the play has certainly not made me a fan now.  Granted, it's extremely difficult to take a role iconically played by Audrey Hepburn and expect to be remembered or even praised for it.  I give her credit for trying and thought she was decent.  Although, her over the top voice for every word that came out of her mouth ended up hurting her performance.  I get what she was going for but her voice just made it seem like she had no real emotions and kept me from establishing any kind of connection to her character.

The male lead, Fred, is played by Cory Michael Smith.  As someone who had my expectations for Fred formed from the movie, I was extremely disappointed with his portrayal of the character.  Instead of the handsome, confident yet sweet character from the movie, who I thought was quite a heart throb, Fred is a whiney, pathetic weirdo who becomes obsessed with Holly after meeting her once.  Cory tries to put feeling into the part but ends up falling short, he also starts the play with an accent that randomly starts and stops throughout.

The biggest reaction from the audience during the show is not from the actors or the lines, but from a real cat that comes on stage to play Holly's cat.  It really serves no purpose and just caused a lot of "awwww" from everyone in the audience before the cat terrifyingly runs off stage because it probably has no idea what's going on.  I suppose when a show is as bad as this one throwing in a real cat can't make it worse, but it definitely didn't make it better either.

Oh and one more thing... for some reason in the middle of the play Emilia and Cory get naked in a bath tub.  The moment is about as unemotional as they come, except for maybe the awkward feeling the audience has as they wonder why they're naked.

Luckily I only payed $32 for this play by doing general rush.  If you're curious I would make sure you get very cheap tickets, it's definitely not worth full price.  You could probably see the second act for free if you walk in during intermission, since many of the people at the show I saw left during intermission.

Scarlett Johansson is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Last weekend my best broadway friend Jen came to visit so of course we had to fit in as many shows as we could!  We ended up getting tickets to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Two very different plays that both had celebrities.  I'm writing my review of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof first since there are only 3 performances left until it closes tomorrow Saturday 3/30!!

This revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is Scarlett Johansson's second time on Broadway after winning a TONY for her Broadway debut in a A View From the Bridge.  I don't think this performance was amazing enough to earn Scarlett her second TONY but I thought she was pretty good.


This was my first time seeing Cat so I had no expectations for how the role of Maggie should be played.  Scarlett definitely got the catty part of Maggie right, throughout most of the play she left me siding with her husband, Brick, played by Benjamin Walker.  There were a few times during the play when I did feel sympathy for Maggie but most of the time her weirdly manly sounding southern accent along with the distant self-righteous attitude she gave off left me she thinking she was a bitch that made her bed and now needed to sleep in it.

Scarlett Johansson as Maggie and Benjamin Walker as Brick

Benjamin Walker gave a good performance as Brick, although after a while his fake southern accent started getting on my nerves as well.  He portrayed Brick's anger scenes with rage that seemed real and unrestrained.  The rage, which was usually caused by Maggie's mention of his dead best friend Skipper who was hinted to have been more of a gay love, seemed to have real emotions behind it.

I'm glad I caught Cat on a Hot Tin Roof before the closing date.  As I always say, my favorite plays are the ones that leave you thinking afterwards.  Cat definitely lived up to this standard with its reoccurring them of "mendacity," Brick uses the word to discuss his disgust with all of the lies and liars in his life.  It makes you think about the fact that a lot of everyone's lives are fake.  How many relationships that we have in our own lives are full of lies?  However, the further you get into the play the more you realize that part of Brick's disgust with the lies and fakeness he sees in other people is the disgust he feels for himself after rejecting his best friend/gay love interest Skipper before his suicide.

If you have no plan for the Easter weekend I would definitely try to catch Cat on a Hot Tin Roof before it closes.  If you have a student ID the show has a student rush that begins 2 hours before the show starts.  However, the tickets will probably be slim pickins this weekend so I would get there early.

War Horse and Grace - Broadway Reviews

It seems like the holidays were so long ago, when I returned to work last week everything went back to being busy right away.  Of course 3 shows that I really wanted to see had to be closing right after the holidays - War Horse, Grace and Chaplin.

The good news is I found time (and money) to squeeze in 2 out of the 3 shows, War Horse and Grace.  I'm sad I wasn't able to make it to Chaplin, I read some great things about Rob McClure. But I'm hoping I can at least find a couple videos of him performing on YouTube to make me feel a little better.

Here are my reviews of War Horse and Grace, both of which unfortunately played their last performances this past weekend on January 6th.

WAR HORSE
I thoroughly enjoyed War Horse.  The best way I can describe the show is it's the first time I've seen a play that made me feel like I was watching a movie.  The background music by the orchestra and the talented singers set a mood throughout the play that was similar to the way music sets your emotions throughout movies.

The show is famous for it's use of puppets and now I see why.  The puppeteers from Handspring Puppet Co. were AMAZING!  Their movements for the horses were extremely realistic and precise, down to even moving the ears and flicking the tail in accordance with the horse's movements.  Although seeing it live is really the only way to see how life like these puppets really were, the below video shows some great tidbits from the show.

I had high expectations for War Horse and it lived up to all of them; large and very talented cast, emotional story that made me cry more than once, great props and scenery and strong music to set the atmosphere that you weren't in a theater watching a play but that you were part of a real story.  Now that I caught the play before it closed I'll have to watch the movie to see how it compares.

GRACE
Grace was back to the type of Broadway play I'm used to seeing, the show depends on the performance of the actors as the main way to tell the story, the scenery is good but not over the top and a couple of celebrities are thrown in to raise ticket sales.

I'll admit my sole reason for seeing Grace was to check out Paul Rudd's first time on broadway.  I've always thought he was a cutie and wanted to see this show in case he never comes to broadway again.

I actually ended up liking the show much more than I originally thought I was going to.  The description on the web site makes it sound like the typical "What is religion and what is god" play.  It was more intriguing than I expected and like all good plays left me with some interesting concepts to think about afterwards.

Interestingly, Grace starts out by showing you the series of murders that take place at the end of the play and then goes into a rewind effect where the last moments of each person's life is replayed in reverse order.  At the end of the play we see the sequence again but in normal order.  Since you know what's ultimately going to happen throughout the play the question then becomes, why did this happen?

The play focuses on the question of if God exists and if so, how do we know?  Each character displays different situations that either are so terrible that God could not possibly exist or so perfect that it's hard to explain them happening without the presence of God.  The play is full of uncomfortable moments, however I don't think any of them were quite as shocking or unsettling as they were meant to be.  The play overall was done well but it left me wanting more.  It would have had to go farther to leave a real lasting effect on me.

The four person cast included Paul Rudd as main character Steve, Kate Arrington as his wife Sara, Michael Shannon in a wonderfully awkward performance as Sam and Ed Asner as the greatly entertaining exterminator Karl.  While the performances of the entire cast were great the outline of each character was not very deep.  Each character's story was very predictable, which kept me from getting too attached to any of them.

Sara (Kate Arrington), Steve (Paul Rudd) and Sam (Michael Shannon)

Michael Shannon's portrayal of Sam, a hurting man who's fiance recently died, was my favorite part of the play.  His hurting comes across without being too forced and throughout the play you want to learn more about him.

As someone who has always been up and down about if God is actually out there, Grace made a lot of points that I could relate to.  I especially liked a remark that Sara made referring to the relationship between her and Sam, "If we're here beside each other, we must be here for each other, right?"

"George & Martha: Sad Sad Sad" - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?

This week I had my first encounter with the well-known play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe," and what an encounter it was.  Not sure what to expect, but knowing the show is a classic that I must see, I got last minute tickets to the show after work.  The show was one of the most suspenseful and intense plays I've seen.  Throughout the three-hour play the audience is in a constant state of discomfort as the honest truth of the relationship between the characters is revealed and an anxious feeling in the pit of your stomach telling you something bigger is coming grows and grows as the tension builds.  You can't help but feel emotionally drained at the end of the play.  

Not to say that the play is void of humor, on the contrary, mixed in with the brutal verbal battle and heart ache is a lot of hilarious moments.  The playwright, Edward Albee, has really created something unique by telling the story of a drunken night of marital discord by combining tragedy, comedy and creepy uneasiness.

To me strong emotions are the backbone of any good piece of theater and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe" definitely provides more than enough.

Tracy Letts as George, Amy Morton as Martha and Madison Dirks as Nick

Tracy Letts, as the lead male role George is completely amazing.  Mr. Letts' expertise at alternating between vicious, loud and aggressive to an old husband who seems to have endless funny one liners to being a battered victim to being a calm and in control mental manipulator is mesmerizing to watch.  George is the leader of the tension you feel throughout the play and it is he who at the end seems to have been the master of the night all along.

Amy Morton, as the lead female role Martha gives a talented and intriguing performance as well.  Throughout the play you can't decide if she is a bitch that you should hate or a wounded woman that you should feel sorry for.  Ms. Morton does a great job at subtly revealing her internal grief from a life she wanted but never had amid her merciless  and aggressive outbursts.

In the midst of all of the attacks and pain there is a weird feeling of a dependent and deep love that despite everything thrives between George and Martha.

Carrie Coon as Honey

Madison Dirks as Nick and Carrie Coon as Honey round out the strong cast of the show as the audience of George and Martha's battle.  Each is less memorable than Letts or Morton but still gives a strong performance as their more subdued characters.  I particularly loved Coon's portrayal of the drunken Honey, especially her interpretive dance!

"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe" was without a doubt money well spent.  I now see why it is so popular and think it is a show all theater lovers should try to see at least once.  The revival by Steppenwolf Theatre Company now playing at the Booth Theater on West 45th street is scheduled to close on February 24.  The theater was almost packed when I saw it on a Thursday so I would try to get tickets sooner rather than later if you want to catch it before it closes.

If you have a current student ID the show has student rush tickets available for $37 on a first-come, first-serve basis.

"Without a hurt the heart is hollow" - The Fantasticks

One of my favorite things about working in midtown Manhattan is anytime I have a broadway craving after work I can walk a few blocks to the theaters and usually always find last minute tickets to something.  Yesterday when I got this craving I decided to finally check out the off-broadway show, The Fantasticks. I'm a little bit ashamed that it took me this long to go see the world's longest running musical, but unfortunately the big lights of the broadway theaters surrounding the small Snapple Theater tend to superficially outshine it most days.  However, that's definitely all it is, is a superficial outshine.  The Fantasticks originally opened at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village in May 1960, a revival of the show opened at the Snapple Theater Center in June 2008.

The poetic beginning to the show sets the mood perfectly:

Let's go back beyond the smart of you 

Back to the special childlike part of you 

Back where your dreams are fancy free...

I absolutely loved The Fantasticks! The show doesn't depend on big spectacle through large cast dance numbers, special effects and scenery.  It's a small cast, on a small simple set, telling a genuine story full of romance, humor and real life lessons that leave you thinking about the show long after you've left.  Seeing The Fantasticks was like going back in time... I didn't feel like I was seeing the typical 2012 NYC theater production, it felt more like a traveling classic play that sucks in the audience and consumes them simply by having a good story, poetic script, music and quality actors to deliver the whole thing with passion.

I have to say that I was impressed by the entire cast, however my favorite of the night (and probably every other girl's in the audience) was Edward Watts as the narrator and heartthrob bandit El Gallo.  He has one of those old fashioned strong broadway voices that I can't resist.

Edward Watts as El Gallo

Also starring in the show was Aaron Carter, I guess trying to grow up and try new things after his teeny bobber days.  I was never a fan of Aaron Carter, but I went into the show with an open mind.  I was not blown away but I thought he did a good job.  I find that most of the time when celebrities are brought into any broadway show they lack that "bring you to the edge of your seat" voice that in my opinion is the best part of seeing a show. But if Aaron Carter will bring people to the show who otherwise would never have seen it I'm all for it.

Juliette Trafton as Luisa & Aaron Carter as Matt

If you're a theater fan I would recommend The Fantasticks as a MUST SEE!  If you're a tourist who is looking to see a lavish production as a treat on your vacation this is probably not for you.  I'll leave you with the ending poem that delivers the central theme to the show, that pain must be felt before real love can ever be, it has been in my head ever since:

There is a curious paradox that no one can explain. 

Who understands the secret of the reaping of the grain? 

Who understands why Spring is born out of Winter's laboring pain? 

Or why we all must die a bit before we grow again. 

I do not know the answer. 

I merely know it's true. 

I hurt them for that reason and myself a little bit too.