Broadway Bridge and Tunnel Test

The Broadway Bridge and Tunnel Test is our personal and highly opinionated Commuter's Guide to New York theater and cultural events, with an emphasis on Broadway and Off-Broadway theatrical productions. The test is simple: is an event worth the always expensive, time consuming, and too often horrendous struggle to commute to New York City from New Jersey, Long Island, Upstate New York or Connecticut? Only truly great or near-great performances and productions may meet this stiff challenge!

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Location: Princeton, New Jersey, United States

James Camner is an antiquarian dealer of autographs, manuscripts and printed music and books of Opera, Classical Music, Theater, Dance, and Film, as well as a published author of more than 10 books on the performing arts including "How to Enjoy Opera" (Simon and Schuster), "The Great Opera Stars in Historic Photographs" (Dover), "Stars of American Musical Theater in Historic Photographs" (Dover - with Stanley Appelbaum); was for over 20 years a reviewer for Fanfare Magazine and has written feature articles and reviews for Opera News.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Damn Yankees, a musical by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, at the New York City Center Encores! Starring Sean Hayes, Jane Krakowski, Randy Graff, and Cheyenne Jackson.
This near ideal, deluxe revival of a beloved vintage, if not quite great, musical of the 1950's begins with a delightful "turn off your cel phones" announcement from the New York Yankees radio announcers John Sterling and Susan Waldman. This is just one of the many production touches that make this revival such a delight. The 1950's sets and costumes are colorful perfection, easily the best we've seen from Encores! The cast is wonderful with Sean Hayes in his New York stage debut a revelation. A triple threat, he can play the piano, he can sing, and he has the dry Devil role to a T! The audience ate him up. As Lola, Jane Krakowski, a favorite of ours, is a warm and engaging presence. She doesn't have the dance moves for the Fosse ballets (which are still very much a joy to see), but she sings well and looks great. Character wise, Krakowski's a little too lovable (it's impossible not to like her from the start). But all in all in all she's a plus in a strongly cast revival which includes the marvelous Randy Graff as Meg Boyd, and P.J. Benjamin as Joe Boyd. Cheyenne Jackson, a hunk who can sing and dance, is a superb Joe Hardy. We had a marvelous time at this fizzy, colorful revival. Broadway Bridge and Tunnel Test mark A-

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Romeo and Juliet, a ballet by Mark Morris, set to a newly discovered first draft of the score by Prokofiev at the Bard Summerscape Festival. The trip to Bard is 2 1/2 hours from Princeton. It wasn't a nice day but traffic was light and we arrived early, about 12pm for a performance at 2pm. This was our first time to the Summerscape Festival which is a fairly edgy one as Summer music festivals go. The theater is a gem, a beautiful Frank Gehry auditorium with superb acoustics. It was sold out for this was the second of a handful of performances of Mark Morris's new setting of Romeo and Juliet to a newly discovered first version of the great score by Serge Prokofiev. This is the first full length ballet we've seen from Morris, and it is a near masterwork. There are so many unforgettable moments not the least of which is the "happy" ending in which Romeo and Juliet spin away into a galaxy of bright stars. I can't wait to see it again when it comes to New York. Will Morris make some changes? With a little tweaking it will stand up to any version ever choreographed including the classic Kenneth Macmillan version. The score is breathtakingly beautiful, perhaps even finer than the more familiar and heavier version that has come to be one of the best loved ballet scores in the world and it was well conducted by Leon Botstein and finely played by his American Symphony Orchestra. We saw the same cast as on opening night. The dancers were brilliant particularly the lovely Juliet, Rita Donahue, the ardent Romeo David Leventhal, the energetic Nurse Lauren Grant and the two feuding cousins Tybalt played marvelously by Julie Worden and Mercutio effervescently danced by Amber Darragh who practically steals the performance. We were less impressed by the lack of warmth and hospitality at the Bard Summerscape Festival. The audience was elderly, and incredibly aggressive and rude. They sniped at the young Bard students who were handling food and working in the auditorium making it very unpleasant even when the lights were out for the performance (loud annoying conversations as the music was playing). It would take another event of this magnitude to bring us back to the Bard Summerscape Festival. We give the Festival itself a C+, but Romeo and Juliet merits an A.