Continuing my New York diary, yesterday was another two-show day. In the afternoon – Sunday matinees being a New York institution – I saw a quite wonderfully perceptive and funny new comedy by Douglas Carter Beane called The Little Dog Laughed, which is probably the best original New York play I’ve seen here since here since another off-Broadway play a few years ago, As Bees In Honey Drown, written by the same distinctive playwright. His subject is celebrity in all its guises and disguises: in the earlier play, he observed – with a hilarious detachment — a string of people being taken in by a fake celebrity persona. And now he turns his comic gaze with equally delicious and trenchant good humour on the love triangle that evolves between a closeted gay film actor, the rentboy he orders in, and the rentboy’s girlfriend, and the actor’s agent who brilliantly orchestrates a ‘solution’ to the difficulties that each find themselves in. I long for Beane’s work to be seen in London.
Then in the evening, I caught an early preview of a new Broadway revival of the musical The Pajama Game, disastrously revived at London’s Victoria Palace in 1999 in a production directed by Simon Callow and starring Leslie Ash, but now given a thankfully more traditional treatment at Broadway’s American Airlines Theatre in which it comes up gleaming on its own account, proving once again the old adage about trusting the work – rather than your own directorial interventions.
Being an early preview, this is in no way meant as a review – I even bought my own tickets rather than got press comps, since it was too early to request them – but I was highly impatient to see Harry Connick Jr in his musical theatre debut. He has long been mooted to make this transition, with shows like Pal Joey often suggested for him (he would also make an ideal Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls); but he proves here that he is real leading man. And one that plays a mean jazz piano, as we know he can, during Hernando’s Hideaway that takes the roof off. It also got me wondering if we could lure Jamie Cullum to the musical theatre one day, and if so, what would he play? Suggestions on a postcard, please! (Or at least by clicking on the comment board below).
Connick Jr’s co-star Kelli O’Hara is also someone I’ve been following with delight and pleasure for a few years now; after last year’s The Light in the Piazza, she proves equally adept at light comedy as she did at the darker shadows of that still-running romantic dramatic musical at Lincoln Center.
Jamie Cullum as Oliver? Young Patrick in Mame, Allie in Golden Rainbow, at Christmastime as Aladdin? Gavroche in les Mis? The title role in Fiorello?
It would be interesting to see if Jamie could make the transition to the west end stage although for some reason I can image Harry Connick as Sky but not Jamie.....
I saw the show on Friday 1/20, and came away unhappy with what I saw.
The major source of my disappointment was Connick himself. I'm a big fan, and his presence was the main reason I bought the ticket, but his performance left me cold.
Connick's voice was great, and his piano playing during Hernando's Hideaway was indeed riveting (well-staged, as was Connick's duet with himself on dictaphone duirng Hey There), but it's hard to say whether his acting in the role was more frustrating or off-putting.
His Sid was charmless, troubled and downbeat. Connick gave us James Dean, when the role seemed to call more for a young James Stewart: somebody we could root for.
So it's not that Connick was bad, in the sense of incompetent, so much as his choices in the role seemed to be very wrong.
That said, the script was not great - with big structural problems (the two sets of secondary leads left neither with enough to do, and the love story between Sid and Babe seemed "unearned"...they fell together so quickly that the end conflict wasn't whether or not the boy would get the girl, but whether the company would give its employees a 7 1/2 cent raise - hardly the stuff we go to a musical comedy for).
I would also rethink the addition of the three new songs - they make the show's pacing even more choppy. I know...how can a musical have too many songs? It felt like this one did.
Other than the foregoing, it's a fine show.
Now i have searched for and read some reviews from the pajama game, and the review from "Ross", has appeared 3 times already, the exact same review, including voting and a one star audience review at the New York Times (where anyone can write a review)
Every other review seem to be positive
Spam is not positive
Interesting that "Bob" calls me a spammer. "His" same comment can be found on another board under the name "Jeanna". What's good for the goose?
More to the point, posting similar (check carefully, they're not identical) reviews to a couple of boards is hardly spam.
Nor does it lessen the point of my review. Nobody I've read has sucessfully challenged what I had to say.
So I wonder, "Bob" do you have a vested interest in this show? Why do you care so much what I have to say?
My only purpose in posting any of this is the vain hope that somebody connected with the show might take a look and seriously reconsider the current direction.
I'm also more than annoyed at having shelled out better than $200 for two tickets to this weak effort.