Playbill.com tells us that Richard Frankel productions has raised enough money and public enthusiasm to bring the Encores! Summer Stars series acclaimed mounting of Gypsy starring Tony and Olivier Award winner Patti LuPone to Broadway in 2008. The transfer will cost a reported nine million smackaroos, but many in the theatre-going community will gladly buy tickets to help offset the cost….

The current Broadway revival of Chicago started out as a sparsely staged Encores! presentation, and eleven years later, it’s doing just fine.

The entire cast will be offered the chance to repeat their roles, although LuPone is the only one officially cast so far.

Nancy Opel, who played Mazeppa and Miss Cratchitt is currently touring in the title role of The Drowsy Chaperone, so her availability might be in question.

Barring any extension, Boyd Gaines, the production’s Herbie, will have finished his run as Col. Pickering in the Roundabout’s Pygmalion by the time rehearsals start.

And Laura Benanti, aka Louise, has signed on to play the mother of an autistic child in Eli Stone, a new series on ABC projected for the mid 2007-2008 television season, which might be a difficult schedule to juggle.

Gypsy co-creator Arthur Laurents, who helmed the City Center run, will direct on Broadway as well.

Even though Joe and I lived in New York City eleven years between the two of us, I guess we’re still technically tourists when we go (although we’re not the type who stop the pedestrian traffic flow to take pictures of the Naked Cowboy in Times Square).

Given our technically touristic status, I present a few pics and anecdotes from a tourists’ eye view.

Funny things we overheard while we were there:
® On line at TKTS by a sassy brassy know-it-all woman in red: “Well she looked like a size one, and had boobs out to here. I don’t even know how she balanced on those skates.” Lets hope she was talking about Xandu’s Kerry Butler.

® On line at Amy’s Breads, (home of the best sticky buns on the planet) by an older man who was there with his wife, when it came time to decide who was paying, “It doesn’t really matter because what’s mine is hers and what’s hers is…hers.”

® As we were filing out of Pygmalion (review coming soon), further proving the need to continue educating audiences, “Oy! There was so much to listen to. I just couldn’t do it. I needed the music.”

Celebrity sightings:
® Annie Golden–of Hair’s original cast and film, currently understudying in Xanadu, singing to herself in the subway station.

® David Schwimmer–pretending to be inconspicuous making a phone call in the middle of an empty lobby at Young Frankenstein.

® Meryl Streep–looking a little stressed, dashing past a gaggle of pedestrians on W. 44th.

Pics of the windows at Macy’s (cell phone pics don’t do them justice):

A 3-D bird’s eye view of Lincoln Center

Mr. Winter

Courtroom scene from Miracle on 34th Street.

“The Verdict” from Miracle on 34th Street.

Natalie Wood pulling Mr. Kringle’s beard from Miracle on 34th Street.

Joe and I are hanging out in the hotel room before heading out to Pygmalion on our last day of NYC magic. I took a little time out to catch up on the [title of show] blog, which I thoroughly enjoy, and have gotten thoroughly behind on.

Omigod! Look what I’ve been missing!!

This is 15 year old Charice Pempengco, known as “the little diva,” singing “And I Am Telling You You’re Not Going” on the South Korean TV show “Star King.” Unbelievable!

When she sings “And you…and you…and you…You’re gonna love me!!” her chutzpa reminds me of the scene in the film Camp when Anna Kendrick is singing “Everybody rise! Everybody rise!” from “The Ladies Who Lunch”, and the whole audience stands up for fear of the consequences.

® I love that she changes the lyric to “you’re my best mom I’ve even known.”
® I love the audience members who wear looks that are a mixture of fear and awe and chatter among themselves as though we can’t hear them.
® I love the bubbles.

So much lightning. So many furrowed brows.

I have been anticipating seeing Off-Broadway’s Frankenstein, the Musical, currently in an open-ended run at 37 Arts, since the second post on Man In Chair last July. Despite not being crazy about the concept CD, and having to sift through the painfully caustic reviews, I have still been rooting for the show and went in tonight with an open mind.

My first misgivings came when those of us who were assigned seats in the mezzanine were all ushered down to the orchestra section because there were so few patrons there. Good for us, not a good sign for the show.

The set was about as sleek and high tech as it could get, consisting mostly of silver metallic staircases and platforms, at which six cajillion lighting instruments pointed from every angle. At the top of the largest staircase was a screen upon which various images were projected throughout the evening either to set a mood, to indicate a change of setting, or in the coolest effect, to create the illusion that the staircase extended even further than it did.

Further upstage were two sliding screens through which characters entered, exited or were lit dramatically from every possible angle. It felt as though this might be a rehearsal space for Justin Timberlake’s latest concert venue.

According to the show’s official website, the creators’ intention was to offer a “bold new experience for modern theatre audiences.”

“To do so, they have broken with many of the conventions of musical theater to re-imagine the classic allegory as a ‘memory play’ in which time and space are fluid, and in which people and places come instantly alive in the mind of the story’s protagonist, Victor Frankenstein–and vanish just as quickly.”

While I am all for boldness, convention-breaking and risk-taking in the theatre, the “fluidity of time and space” in this Frankenstein ultimately results in a lot of unspecific wandering about the stage, and general singing out to the audience, scowling in pools of severe downlighting.

Aaron Serotsky set the melodramatic tone immediately as pseudo narrator, Capt. Robert Walton, explaining the relationships of Victor Frankenstein (Hunter Foster) and his various family and friends, in a breathy singsong delivery reminiscent of Tobias from Sweeney Todd. We know immediately we are in for a high stakes evening.

The first third of the show is focused primarily on Victor Frankenstein’s (Hunter Foster) rise from a prodigious young student of science to a scholar obsessed with the regeneration of dead tissue to the point that he completely alienates his family and childhood sweetheart (Christiane Noll). Mr. Foster has a fantastic voice, and I’m sure the association of his name with the show has helped to keep it afloat, but he is entirely miscast in this role.

With his baby face and youthful frame I’m afraid I just didn’t buy him as the workaholic doctor who has spent a lifetime obsessed with his science. The point is driven home in the final moments of the show when Foster sings to The Creature as a father singing to his son. It’s a tender moment, but just too hard to buy the father/son analogy given Foster’s youthful appearance.

Though partly the fault of Mark Baron’s amped up pop-rock score, I found Foster’s performance to be running in one of two gears for much of the show. He was either in grimacing, scowling, maniacal high gear, or he was singing a tender pop-ballad. Mostly the former, and with very little middle ground.

Christiane Noll also has a beautiful voice, and was also trapped by the “fluidity” of this storytelling, often facing straight out to the house, supposedly singing to her friend/lover/husband, Victor, who was usually somewhere on the other side of the stage in his own pool of downlighting. One of the few times the two actors connected physically during “The Workings of the Heart,” was actually quite moving. Would it had happened more.

Many improvements have been made musically since the concept CD was recorded. Much of the pop rock score is quite exciting to listen to, though it becomes repetitive fairly quickly. Around the fifth electric guitar riff into the first act, that rock concert scenario began to enter my mind again as the show began to feel less like a theatre piece telling a coherent story, and more like a rock concert version based loosely on Shelley’s novel, not unlike the recent British re-imagining of Rent seems to have turned out.

Just as I was tossing around this new way to view the piece, The Creature (Steve Blanchard) appears for the first time, and my new vision becomes even more clear. Mr. Blanchard and the creators of Frankenstein have made some very bold choices in creating the character of Dr. Frankenstein’s Creature. I applaud them for making those bold choices and committing to them fully. Unfortunately, they don’t work more often than they do.

Our first hint of The Creature’s physicality is through his distorted shadow, suggesting a certain Elephant Man-like deformity, in line with the style of the show so far. When the actor appears on stage, however, he seems to have stepped out of of a completely different reality. He wears an artfully tattered coat over his bare, buff torso, and tight pants that look like designer denim. His musical numbers portray a man tortured by his own existence, and their style, paired with Blanchard’s delivery reinforces the rock concert feel even more. Again, the actor has a great voice, but everything about the character took me out of the show I had been watching.

He makes bold physical choices for The Creature–a tic of the head, a crippled arm, a lurching gait that conveys the difficulty required to move his body in its intended direction. He periodically bursts into fits of pounding on his legs and arms, giving the sense of a man whose is physically and mentally tortured merely by inhabiting his own body.

Often it’s way over the top, but I give the actor credit for fearlessly committing to the choices he and director, Bill Fennelly have made. When it comes down to it, I’d rather watch actors take risks and occasionally fail than skate their way through a safe, uninspired carnival like this show’s uptown cousin.

Some of the music in the second act breaks out of the sameness of the first act. As I mentioned before “The Workings of the Heart” lets us finally see a physical and emotional connection between the good doctor and his wife, and “The Coming of the Dawn” is a showstopper, though it’s the second song from the end of the musical, and for this audience member, the show had stopped long before it.

In the program notes, there is an interesting tidbit saying that “Frankenstein” is an entry in every major dictionary of the English language, and is generally employed to mean “an agency or creation that slips from the control of, and ultimately destroys, its creator.”

Although I’m certain that the creators of this musical began with sincere intentions to create an homage to Mary Shelley’s classic novel, I’m afraid that the temptation to overproduce and over conceptualize their creation may have slipped from their control, and ultimately destroyed them.

Remember when I said how I love to go theatre that I don’t know a lot about in hopes of discovering an unexpected gem?

Well, the gem of this New York trip is Stephen Karam’s Speech and Debate, playing through December 30 at the Roundabout’s “underground” Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre on West 46th. 

You’ve got to see this show.

The play is about three high school outcasts linked by their particular affiliations with a local sex scandal whose introduction results in the school’s first Speech and Debate team.

Diwata, the theatre geek (Sarah Steele) publishes a video blog insinuating that she knows something about the scandal, Howie, the gay one (Gideon Glick) leaves his phone number on her site, insinuating he knows something more, and Solomon, the too-eager school reporter (Jason Fuchs) contacts them both to get the scoop. As more and more of their individual secrets are willingly and unwillingly revealed, the stakes get higher and their bonds grow stronger.

Not once did I feel like I was watching actors performing someone else’s script, so perfectly suited are all three students to their roles. And as a former too-eager gay high school theatre geek, I should know.

Ms. Steele instills Diwata with a wisdom beyond her teenage years, and an insecurity perfectly suited to them. The cheesy intro to her DI (dramatic interpretation) of The Crucible took me right back to being a flighty 16 year old trying to pull off George to my friend Janelle’s Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. (Me: Our son…, Janelle: Our imaginary son…)

Mr. Glick fills Howie’s lithe effeminacy with a proud strength. He reminded me of Chris Crocker, only without the eyeliner and tears. Seriously, though, it’s a truly brilliant performance.

And Mr. Fuchs’ Solomon has so much passionate discourse to convey about political hypocrisy that he can hardly get a complete sentence out before going on to his next thought. Though the text of his initial rant on political scandal may border on preachiness, he manages to fill it with a stammering charm that wins him over to the audience immediately.

Susan Blackwell, formerly of Man In Chair fave [title of show] is great in the dual role of Solomon’s teacher and a misguided reporter. Joe summed it up on the way home chuckling, “She was so NPR…”

The Roundabout created this Underground series to cultivate new work by emerging playwrights and directors. Director Jason Moore has pretty much emerged after Avenue Q’s success, but Speech and Debate should definitely put its playwright, Stephen Karam on the map.

Did I mention you’ve got to see this show? Click for tickets. They’re only 20 bucks!

The apartment we are staying in for part of our New York trip is in Manhattan Plaza, which provides low-cost housing for theatre professionals in Manhattan. The tenants are colorful characters, many of whom have spent their lives in the theatre, some leaving well-known legacies, some retiring into obscurity.

It is that fear of going down the path of obscurity that haunts Flaminio Scala (Marc Kudisch), the central character in Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens’ heartfelt and sincere new musical, The Glorious Ones.

The show is a bawdy but ultimately touching look into a 16th century commedia dell’arte troupe plucked by Scala from their ordinary lives into a life in the theatre with all of its dramatic ups and downs. If I had a dollar for every phallus, pelvic thrust and crotch grabbed in the show, I could retire peacefully and just write reviews for Man In Chair.

Presented on Dan Ostling’s simple wooden platform proscenium set, the piece gets back to the basics, focusing more on storytelling, and less on spectacle.

Flaherty and Ahrens employ historical characters, like Scala, and Francesco and Isabella Andreini (Jeremy Webb and Erin Davie), who were actual commedia actors, and create fictional actors to fill out some of the stock characters that always appeared in the commedia scenarios: the quack doctor (John Kassir), the miserly old man (David Patrick Kelly), the sexy maid (Natalie Venetia Belcon).

Scala is the captain of this ship, steering the troupe through calm seas and stormy waters alike until faced with what he perceives as a mutiny. Along the way, Kudisch reveals layer by layer the many roles that this swaggering leading man plays in his life: a horny lover, a passionate artist, an aging actor willing to forgo anything for the craft he has spent his life nurturing, living in fear that he will be forgotten when he is gone.

Each member of the small cast is strong. Julyana Soelistyo plays a pint-sized Armanda Ragusa, so in love with Scala that she collects any castoff trinket or worn out sock that may have come in contact with him. Soelistyo’s subtle smirk belies her joy for performing here, and the innuendo-filled “Tarentella,” in which she portrays a young woman determined to learn a new “skill” every day is hilarious.

Jeremy Webb is also a standout as Scala’s apprentice-turned-nemisis, Francesco Andreini. In fact, it was at his entrance, as a street performer juggling two different personalities, that I really became engaged in the show for the duration. As the plot develops, Andreini insists that the improvised, bawdy structure of the commedia scenarios is growing stale and pushes the troupe to experiment with more refined scripted pieces, forcing Scala to defend everything he stands for as an artist and as a man and leading to some of she shows most engaging conflict.

The show’s 100 minutes is packed with a couple dozen songs, There are emotional ballads like Webb’s heartfelt, “Absalom” and “My Body Wasn’t Why” in which a former prostitute compares the oldest profession in the world with being an actress, as well as comedic turns like “The Comedy of Love” and songs that are incorporated into the troupe’s performances within this performance.

Kudish’s defiant reaction to the troupe’s snubbing by the French aristocracy is felt in Ahren’s lyrics:
“They do what they do,
They say what they say.
I’d rather be me
At the end of the play.”

And by the end of the play, Scala has accomplished exactly that.

Despite his character’s fears of ultimate anonymity, Kudisch, the supporting cast, and the creators of The Glorious Ones, have in this show created one more great opportunity to forge a legacy that will live on long after they are gone.

It seems that Thursday’s link to USA Today’s “insiders guide” to Disney’s new film, Enchanted, has disappeared from the net, so I thought I’d publish it here in an easy to digest post. Hat tip to Susan Wloszczyna for doing the research (or copying the press release) originally.

Here are several of the sources from Disney’s animation history that are referenced in Enchanted. I love this kind of stuff and wish I’d read the article before I’d seen the film.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
® Prince Edward (James Marsden) and Giselle (Amy Adams) sing of True Love’s Kiss, which is similar to “love’s first kiss” that awakens Snow White (and Sleeping Beauty). The tune also is reminiscent of I’m Wishing/One Song and Some Day My Prince Will Come.

® Giselle tumbles into a well like the one used by Snow White.

® While in Times Square, Giselle bumps into a scowling little person and cries out, “Grumpy,” thinking it’s one of the dwarfs.

® Giselle tidies up Robert’s messy apartment while singing Happy Working Song, which has echoes of Whistle While You Work.

® Susan Sarandon’s evil Narissa disguises herself as an old hag and offers Giselle a poisoned apple, just like Snow White’s Queen.

® A candy apple offered to Giselle by Narissa’s accomplice Nathaniel (Timothy Spall) bears a skull mark like the one seen in Snow White.

® Edward mistakes a television set for the Magic Mirror.

® Giselle falls into a comatose state like Snow White (and Sleeping Beauty)

Cinderella (1950)
® The soap bubbles during Happy Working Song show Giselle’s reflection, just as they do when Cinderella cleans.

® Giselle’s knack for turning curtains into dresses is similar to how mice Jaq and Gus make over an old gown for Cinderella.

® The last name of Robert’s fiancee, Nancy (Idina Menzel), is Tremaine, like Cinderella’s stepmother, Lady Tremaine.

® Giselle must receive true love’s kiss by midnight, which is Cinderella’s deadline at the ball.

® Giselle loses a glasslike slipper.

® Edward stays at The Grand Duke Hotel, named for the royal character.

Sleeping Beauty (1959)
® Giselle builds her dream prince with her animal pals, much like Princess Aurora’s forest friends use Prince Phillip’s clothes to pretend to be her imaginary beau.

® Giselle’s ability to sew a dress from curtains is the opposite of the fairies, who fumble about while creating a gown for Aurora.

® Narissa transforms into a fire-breathing dragon, just like the bad fairy Maleficent.

® Prince Edward’s appearance and demeanor are modeled on Prince Phillip.

The Little Mermaid (1989)
® As Giselle studies the fish tank at Robert’s workplace, Part of Your World is heard in the background.

® That’s How You Know features a calypso beat, just like Under the Sea and Kiss the Girl.

Beauty and the Beast (1991)
® A bell jar with a rose sits atop a table in Giselle’s cartoon tree house.

® While Giselle tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood to Robert’s daughter, Morgan, a Belle doll with sunglasses sits in a chair.

® Giselle and Robert waltz at the ball under a chandelier.

® Robert’s ball outfit recalls the Beast.

Rapunzel (2009)
® In a nod to the upcoming computer-animated fairy tale, a group of children in a Central Park band shell perform a stage version of Rapunzel during the song That’s How You Know.

And for the diehard Disney-philes:
® The troll who chases Giselle is modeled on the giant in the 1947 short Mickey and the Beanstalk. His loincloth is patched together with remnants of dresses worn by Snow White, Belle, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, and he’s wearing earring made of Ariel’s shells from The Little Mermaid.

® The restaurant where Giselle and Patrick have a “date” is called Bella Notte, after the song during the spaghetti-eating scene at Tony’s restaurant in Lady and the Tramp.

® The divorcing couple’s last name is Banks, like the family in Mary Poppins. The old lady feeing pigeons in the park is another Poppins reference.

® During some TV soap opera dialogue, the characters mentioned–Angela, Jerry and Ogden–refer to voice actors from Beauty and the Beast: Angela Lansbury (Mrs. Potts), Jerry Orbach (Lumiere) and David Ogden Stiers (Cogsworth).

® The journalist who interviews Giselle on TV is Mary Ilene Caselotti, named for the voice actress who did Sleeping Beauty (Mary Costa), Cinderella (Ilene Woods) and Snow While (Adriana Caselotti).

I’m writing from the fortieth floor of Manhattan Plaza looking out on New York’s incredible skyline. Tina and Andy are both in tech for different shows, so have let us stay in their pad for a couple of nights. We are much obliged.

We had dinner at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant, Meskerem, and then had dessert at a trendy new (to us) place called 44&X, where one dessert and two coffees cost as much as dinner at Meskerem (and yet the chairs were plastic, and much to the horror of one well-to-do patron, the legs break rather easily).

Then it was off to the first offering of our seven-shows-in-five-days theatrefest: Young Frankenstein.

Let me begin by saying the the film of Young Frankenstein is one of my all time-favorite-know-every-single-line-and-still-laugh-out-loud movies, second only to Neil Simon’s Murder by Death. So it was nigh impossible to remove myself from the film as I watched its musical cousin this evening.

The stars of the show are Robin Wagner’s set-that-doesn’t-quit and Peter Kaczorowski’s dazzling lighting design. From the first lightning flash to the gigantic laboratory, to the projections that take us right into the action of the hay ride, it’s the kind of gazillion dollar spectacle that made me feel like I got my money’s worth out of my bazillion dollar tickets.

The performances are pretty uneven. I found Christopher Fitzgerald as Igor and Andrea Martin as Frau Blucher to be the most engaging, consistent and genuinely funny in their roles. And what is interesting to me is that of all the leads, their performances were most like the actors from the film who originated the roles (Marty Feldman and Cloris Leachman).

Roger Bart didn’t get going as Frederick Frankenstein until well into the second act. I can understand his choice to “start small” given the broadness of the material, but in the same vein, given the broadness of the material, “small” doesn’t fill it.

Megan Mullally as his frigid fiance, Elizabeth, has two things going against her. She seems to be working as hard as she can NOT to recreate Madeline Kahn’s brilliant performance from the film, and also NOT to present Karen Walker as Elizabeth. The result is a sort of 1940s society vamp that lingers in generic stereotype.

There was a flyer in the playbill encouraging us to reserve our copy of the original cast recording, due out in 2008. Therein lies the real problem with the show. For the most part, the songs in the show feel like an afterthought. Rarely do the musical numbers advance the plot, but rather they take famous lines from the film (”Roll in the Hay”, “He Vas My Boyfriend”) and stretch them into not funny songs. The two big production numbers, “Transylvania Mania” and “Puttin’ on the Ritz” provide welcome boosts to otherwise lackluster numbers.

The show will be a commercial success, no doubt, but like Boq, the tinman from Wicked up the street, it’s main problem is its lack of heart. It is filled with an incredible cast, who have scores of Tony, Drama Desk and countless other awards among them, but feels hollow. If it looks like a cash cow and moos like a cash cow…. 

Like my fellow blogger, Randy Rainbow, I only laughed out loud a few times, but I know when I get home and pop in the DVD, I’ll be laughing for two hours straight. I’m glad I saw the show, if only for the greater appreciation I now have for its muse.

I’m not ashamed to admit that since moving to within a couple of hours of Orlando, I have spent a good deal of my vacation days at Disneyworld. On one visit there, I bought an “insiders” book that details little secrets that are hidden throughout Disneyworld, including hundreds of three-circled Mickey Mouse motifs that the original designers snuck into the architecture throughout the park.

Last night, I saw Disney’s latest film, Enchanted, and then stumbled upon a similar guide in USA Today that lists all of the little hidden treasures throughout the film, most of which went completely unnoticed by this usually observant moviegoer.

The film, about animated Disney characters running amok in New York City had incredible potential, but in this viewer’s opinion, it failed to rise to its premise. I wanted Disney to spoof itself in a way that didn’t require a insider’s guide to follow. I wanted to see the myriad hilarious situations that could have been created from a Disneyesque Princess and Prince being lost in New York. I wanted a belty Alan Menkin tune with waves that crash behind the mermaid just as the music swells, that I would be singing to myself for the next week or year.

Apparently the music in the film was meant to spoof other Disney film music, but it just didn’t occur to me that the “Happy Working Song” was meant to echo “Whistle While You Work.” And the calypso beat in “That’s How You Know” was not enough to summon “Under the Sea” for me.

And small details like Giselle’s reflection showing up in the cleaning bubbles like they do in Cinderella and the fact that Idina Menzel’s character’s last name is Tremaine, just like Cinderella’s stepmother eluded me.

Without the insider lowdown, the movie I experienced was a tepid version of Sleepless in Seattle with some cartoon characters thrown in to distract me from its formulaic construction. And I REALLY wanted to like it.

The film has all the stock characters of animated films (the evil queen, the wide eyed princess, the broad shouldered, prince with perfect teeth, the bumbling Englishman with bad teeth, and the talking chipmunk) and date films (the single dad, the lonely daughter seeking a surrogate mother, and the sensible career-oriented fiance, whom the dad thinks he loves until the spunky oddball who is immune to big city cynicism drops into his life).

The premise is that the evil queen (Susan Sarandon) banishes the potential princess (Amy Adams) from the animated world of Andalasia to New York City, (which is also animated but not in that way), in order to keep her from marrying her son (James Marsden) and inheriting the throne. Animated princess meets single dad (Patrick Dempsey) and both are changed by the interaction.

Of course it makes sense when she begins to doubt that Prince Edward (Marsden), whom she has known for a day, may not actually be her true love, but it was so darn predictable that I saw the end of the movie playing out an hour before it was over.

The cast is chock full of Broadway talent, which delighted the theatre geek in me to no end. Idina Mendel (Rent, Wicked) plays the jilted fiance, though she’s not given a whole lot to work with. Tonya Pinkins (Caroline or Change) even has a small role as one of Dempsey’s divorce clients. I didn’t recognize her until I saw her name in the credits. Marsden, who was fantastic as Corny Collins in the film of Hairspray, makes a charming Prince Charming, and Amy Adams (soon to be in the film version of Doubt) breathes life into what could have been a very two-dimentional character (pun intended).

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Last night was one of the most surreal nights I’ve had in the theatre in a long time.

The show was The Sound of Music.

The performers included Christiane Noll (currently playing in Frankenstein off-Broadway) as Maria; Jonathan Groff (currently waiting for Spring to Awaken again) as Rolf; William Youmans (currently biding his time in the Farnsworth Invention) as Max; and Michael McCarty (currently waiting for Mary to “Poppin” again) as the bad Nazi guys. Other Broadway alums were Jeanne Lehman, Crista Moore, and the list goes on.

The performances were all rather wooden, but that is exactly as it should have been. The aforementioned Broadway mega talents were providing the voices for The Salzburg Marionette Theater’s presentation of Rogers and Hammerstein’s classic musical.

The sound was, as you my have deduced, recorded, but the performances were as live as tiny wooden people attached to fishing line being manipulated by larger people you couldn’t see could be. The whole experience was odd for several reasons:

First of all, being a lifelong theatre geek, I accept certain quirks about live performance that might otherwise seem jarring, or at least odd to the first time theatregoer. People burst into song spontaneously, dining room tables are always set a little askance so that no one is facing upstage, the whole “beating your hands together to make noise after each musical number” might seem an odd tradition if witnessed by someone not familiar with the practice.

So, this being my first marionette show, there were some moments on the more “fantastic” side that kept jarring me out of the performance. For instance, the rules of gravity did not apply in this show. At any moment, Liesl can jump from the ground to the top of the roof because she is excited to be with Rolf, or when the very alive hills in the first number disappear, Maria is left to float gently back down to earth.

I guess if you’re a marionette and your stringholder says it’s ok, why not float around occasionally? It just took some getting used to.

Secondly, the Mother Abbess was played by a live actress. The voice was still recorded, so her mouth didn’t move, but she gestured with the appropriate pseudo sign language to get the point across. The thing was, compared to the puppets, she looked like she was right out of Amazon Women on the Moon. She tenderly let Maria stand in her outstretched palm occasionally, which in that scale, might have been the hands of Michelangelo’s David.

The third universally accepted truth about marionetting seems to be “Mmmm…close enough.” When a puppet is sitting at a piano, he merely waves a hand in the general direction it, and the notes are plunked out. At one point Gretl is fleeing from the Nazi’s on her father’s shoulders (placed there by the giant nun), but she was pretty much just holding on by one Achilles tendon.

The best part was the curtain call, where the marionettes performed “Lonely Goatherd” with marionettes of their own, and the upper curtain was pulled back so that we could see the puppeteers bent at the waist working their magic. I hope they all have good chiropracters

So needless to say, I wasn’t swept away into the world of the marionettes. There remains too much of a learning curve into the world of puppet reality. The singing was lovely, though Mr. Groff had a pop scoop that he couldn’t seem to shake, which placed him in a different musical than the rest. Tomorrow they are doing The Engelbert Humperdinck penned opera of Hansel and Gretel. I will be on a plane to NYC where I know the rules of theatre going, and am looking forward to seeing Christanne Noll live, and possible passing Jonathan Groff on the street.