Movie Box Review

Although a great work of art is great forever, the relevance of a given piece to a current moment in time does tend to fluctuate.  It turns out that Arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN, written 63 years ago, is so remarkably attuned to this here and now that despite its period setting, it feels more contemporary than almost any play on Broadway.

It isn't just that the current economy is bad, or that Willy Loman, like so many middle-aged men with houses and families, is losing his job and having trouble making ends meet.  The words "the 1 percent" are never spoken in Miller's text--that catchphrase didn't exist in 1949--but its undercurrent is felt throughout the play.  Salesman captures the peculiar ambivalence Americans have for wealth:  Willy's mix of disdain for and envy of his neighbor's son Bernard, who plays tennis and argues before the Supreme Court, could be echoed by the Republicans who can't bring themselves to vote for Mitt Romney, while Willy's awe of his brother Ben, who walked into the jungle when he was 17 and walked out rich, evokes the admiration of ordinary people today who can't get enough of watching the rich parade the accoutrements of their wealth and tweet their often fatuous opinions.

Perhaps fueled by the affinity between Miller's vision of America and the world around us, the new production of Salesman directed by Mike Nichols (which is still in previews, so subject to change) makes no effort to jazz up the play or make it more "contemporary."  Indeed, the production makes a point of recreating Joe Mielziner's original 1949 set design, and using Alex North's incidental score.  Nichols' choices seem to stand for the proposition that what was disturbing and moving in 1949 can be just as powerful today--and he's right.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as Willy is also suited to our times, with a self-knowledge that breaks his own heart, and ours.  His Willy is a big man, as Lee J. Cobb was in the original show, but sunken in his heft.  Hoffman doesn't have Cobb's bluff, bullying heartiness:  it doesn't come as a surprise that this Willy was never as successful as he wanted his family to believe.  There's a desperation in him that isn't new--he may have reached the end of his rope, but the rope has been fraying all along, and on some level, Willy has always known it.  Hoffman's Willy isn't just now discovering the wreck of his life; he's just starting to acknowledging it.  

The role of Linda, Willy's wife, is a notorious trap for preachy sentiment, but Linda Emond gives a marvelously plain-spoken, crisp reading of the part.  Andrew Garfield, as older son Biff, who can never live up to the dreams with which his father has infected him, is excellent in the flashback sequences  but somewhat problematic in the play's present-day, not because his performance is ever less than fully thought-out or passionately performed, but for simple reasons of logistics:  Garfield is 29, and a very young 29 (as you may have heard, he'll be spinning webs as a high-schooler in just a few months as The Amazing Spider-Man), and he's not able to convey the world-weariness of a 34-year old character who's been traveling a hard road around the country for the past decade.  Supporting roles, including John Glover as Willy's idealized brother and Finn Wittrock as younger son Happy, are ably filled.

Paradoxically, this Death of A Salesman, embracing the form and style of its past, feels remarkably of the moment.  Its history lesson turns out to be a bulletin of Breaking News.

VENUS IN FUR exists, at this point in its Broadway life, as two overlapping but not identical entities:  it's a deft new play by David Ives, but also, and more prominently, it's become the Star-Is-Born vehicle for its lead actress, Nina Arianda, who's currently giving about as dazzling a performance as you're likely to see on a Broadway stage.  

No one had ever heard of Arianda before she starred in the initial 2010 Off-Broadway production of Venus, and fittingly, in the play she's introduced as an unknown aspiring actress.  Her name is Vanda, and at the end of a long day, hopelessly late, she blows into an audition hall like a scatterbrained force of nature, desperate to try out for the lead in the play Venus In Fur--a character coincidentally also named Vanda.  The only one still in the audition room is writer/directorThomas (Hugh Dancy), who's packing up to leave, but Vanda talks herself, in her seemingly bubble-headed, flaky-funny way, into being allowed to read.  Once she begins, everything changes.

Thomas' play is based on the real late 19th century novel of the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.  His name became the root of the term "masochism," and that pretty much tells you the subject matter of the work.  It concerns a man named Severin and his obsession with Vanda, before whom he finds sexual satisfaction in abasement and humiliation.  Thomas claims to have written the adaptation out of purely academic fascination, with no personal feelings attached, but when Vanda convinces him to take the role of Severin opposite her, it's no surprise that before long, his real emotions begin to show.

The role of Vanda (the actress) is spectacularly mercurial, presented initially as a sort of savant who doesn't have a thought in her mind when she's being herself, but instantly takes on--embodies--all the necessary characteristics (accent, bearing) as well as the complexities and nuances of Vanda (the character) as soon as she's reading the role.  And there are increasing hints that she may not just be a gifted actress...

Venus In Fur (the play) is ultimately more of a game (and a satire on actor/director politics) than a serious commentary on male/female relationships, as Vanda the actress and Vanda the character constantly shift and begin to merge, and the balance of power between her and Thomas/Severin inevitably comes to resemble the story they're enacting.  But what a game!  The role of Vanda is a gift to a performer in the way that split-personality roles like Sybil and The 3 Faces of Eve have been gifts to actresses in the past:  Arianda gets to become less and more intelligent, submissive and powerful, American and European, seductive and revolted, 21st Century and 19th, all with split-second hairpin turns of body language and voice.  It's the very definition of a tour de force, and she pulls it off gloriously.

Dancy's work is less overwhelming than Arianda's, but shouldn't be underestimated.  He also has to transition between eras, characters-within-characters, and contrasting positions of power, and does so with seeming ease  Ultimately, though, his character's throughline is more clearly preordained, and Thomas is destined to be Vanda's foil.  

Walter Bobbie's direction brings a welcome clarity to what could have been a mess of confusion:  even when we don't know exactly what's going on, or who a character 'is," we always feel comfortable that we know as much as the play wants us to at that given moment, and where we are in Ives' process.  John Lee Beatty's set design and Peter Kaczorowki's lighting design are also notable for squeezing a remarkable variety of changes out of a single fixed set.

Venus In Fur is constantly enjoyable, even if not particularly profound, a satisfying, sexy, funny exercise in theatrical gamesmanship (gameswomanship?).  It's destined to remembered, though, mostly for unleashing Nina Arianda and her powerhouse set of skills onto an audience that finds itself more than willing to yield.

There's an inescapable irony in Theresa Rebeck's play SEMINAR when the bilious novelist (Alan Rickman) who's reluctantly teaching a group of aspiring young writers launches an attack on one of them by predicting that his "whorishness" will make him more suited for a life in Hollywood than one in the finer precincts of the arts.  Rebeck herself has recently acquired a corner of the pop zeitgeist all her own:  she's the creator and head writer (sole writer of the initial 3 episodes) of Smash, a little TV effort of which you may have heard.

Seminar, a small-scale play performed (except for one scene) on a single set and without intermission, is far from the big-budget glitz of Smash.  Both works, though, share a way of looking at the arts that parades world-weariness and cynicism while barely hiding an idealism verging on sentimentality.   In Seminar, the artistic effort of choice is the writing of fiction:  Preppy Kate (Lily Rabe), who may not be rich but has a fabulous rent-controlled apartment in the family, has organized the seminar and is one of the 4 participants paying thousands of dollars each to have Leonard (Rickman) read their work and provide individualized critiques.  Other students include Douglas (Jerry O'Connell), who Has Connections and has already had short pieces published, and Izzy (Hettienne Park), a young woman far more comfortable with her sexuality than Kate is.  Most crucial is Martin (Hamish Linklater), on whom Kate has a crush obvious to everyone except Martin.

Each student submits more-or-less meekly to the eloquent assassinations of talent and character that seem to be Leonard's only mode of communication--except Martin, who refuses to submit his writing to the teacher.  This being a play, that can mean only one of two possibilities:  Martin is a fraud, or he's a genius.  (Warning:  Spoilers Ahead)  As it turns out, the latter is the case--although, as so often happens with narratives depicting fictional genius, the bits and pieces of Martin's work that we hear about certainly don't sound as remarkable as we keep being told they are.  Martin's writing prompts, finally, a show of legitimate emotion from Leonard, who reveals himself underneath it all to be as devoted and self-sacrificing for his art as any of his young charges.

All through Seminar, the soap opera aspects of who ends up sleeping with whom have been fairly glib (when Kate is miserable, she gorges on ice cream), but Rebeck gets away with that, because these callow characters' choices about whom to sleep with are meant to be fairly glib too.  When things turn serious at the end, though, and reverence for Literature is being invoked, the play becomes problematic:  the notion that Leonard, with his decades of anger and profound bitterness, merely has to read a promising manuscript to be transformed into a self-effacing champion of art is one that's more romantic than believable (writing talent is treated almost like a super-power), and Martin for his part becomes a character increasingly unable to bear the narrative burden placed on him. 

Much of Seminar works, though, because Rebeck supplies plenty of snappy dialogue before things get too self-important, and the play. fluidly directed by Sam Gold, has a great cast.  It's not exactly a stretch for Alan Rickman to play an ill-tempered professor who resents his students (he must have to restrain himself from deducting nightly points from Gryffindor), but there are few actors more enjoyable to watch in that part.  Rabe is so strong as Kate that one wishes Rebeck had provided a less dismissive ending for her character.  Linklater almost manages to pull off Martin, although he can't quite make the final scene work.  O'Connell and Park, despite having much less substance to work with, are consistently engaging.

The flaws of Seminar--plot turns for the sake of diversion alone, a point of view less challenging than it initially appears--are associated not so much with serious artistic statement as they are wth popular entertainment... like television.  Perhaps the real happy ending to this story happened off-stage.  (Although given last night's ratings--perhaps not.)

FOLLIES may be the strangest of all Broadway masterpieces; after 40 years, it's still the most avant-garde work of Stephen Sondheim's career.

It's easy enough to make the show sound linear:  set in 1971 (which was present-day when the musical was written), it takes place at a theatre that had, for some decades, housed the Weismann's Follies musical shows, but is now about to be torn down and turned into a parking lot.  A group of Follies performers from the 1930s and 40s, hosted by Dimitri Weismann himself, have come to the darkened, emptied-out theatre to salute their pasts and air out their dissatisfaction with their presents.  Chief among these are 2 couples:  Sally and Buddy Plummer (Bernadette Peters and Danny Burstein) and Phyllis and Benjamin Stone (Jan Maxwell and Ron Raines).  Back in the 1940s when Sally and Phyllis were showgirls and best friends, Ben was Phyllis' boyfriend but secretly courted Sally as well; now Ben is a millionaire and Sally yearns for what she remembers as the love of her life.

That's pretty much the narrative of the musical, but Follies isn't fundamentally about its narrative.  Indeed, much of the first act has little overt storyline, instead following the characters almost formlessly around their reunion, dialogue interspersed with the former performers reenacting some of their old musical numbers.  What makes Follies remarkable and to some extent enigmatic is a theme underlying all this:  the relationship between the Follies performances themselves, content and style, and the crises afflicting the characters.  Visually, the Weismann theatre is inhabited by ghosts, unseen by the modern characters but sharing space with them at all times.  Some of them are the youthful versions of Sally, Buddy, Phyllis, Ben and other characters, while others are observers, outfitted in almost godlike versions of the old-time costumes.  

More essentially, Sondheim's score is an amazing collection of pastiches making use of the grammar used in musical numbers of the era:  operetta, torch song, vaudeville, musical comedy and more.  In the first act, these songs ("Beautiful Girls," "Rain On the Roof," "Ah, Paris!") are somewhat separate from the modern-day numbers, although the latter often comment on the former ("Waiting For the Girls Upstairs," "Broadway Baby," "The Road You Didn't Take").  As the characters' mental states fall apart, however, and they become ever more obsessed by their memories and fantasies, the past and present merge.  This culminates in the extraordinary "Loveland" sequence, in which each of the protagonists sings a pastiche-influenced song ("Losing My Mind," "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues," "The Story of Lucy and Jessie," "Live, Laugh, Love") about their own psychologies.  Perhaps the oddest thing about this sequence, which takes up most of the act, is that it provides no "objective reality," but instead envelops both us and its characters in their increasing madness.  The songs themselves are deeply emotional statements as well as commentary about the source, power and danger of show business and romantic myth.  

As you might expect, tackling a project like Follies is not a task to be taken on lightly.  The legendary original production, directed by Hal Prince and Michael Bennett, and with sets by Boris Aronson, won 7 Tonys (although not Best Musical, which went to Two Gentlemen of Verona) and ran more than a year on Broadway, but was a tremendous financial failure.  Subsequent productions and revivals have routinely changed songs and the James Goldman book, trying to find a clarity (and some sense of redemption) in the difficult material.

In the new Eric Schaffer production, which originated at the Kennedy Center in Washington and opens officially in a few days on Broadway, the biggest surprise is that the emotional center has moved from Sally, whose longing for Ben and a different life has usually been the spoke around which the show revolves, to Phyllis.  It's not clear whether that was a conscious decision by Schaffer or simply a function of the magnificent performance Maxwell gives in the role--she's like a Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? who can sing and dance like a demon; her renditions of "Could I Leave You?" and "Lucy and Jessie" are unmatched.  This isn't to take anything away from Peters, who sings beautifully and whose vulnerability in the role is moving, but her Sally is all desperation, her psyche not nearly as complex as Phyllis'.  Maxwell is well-matched with Raines, who is able to make Ben's selfishness comprehensible.  Burstein is a weaker link in the weakest of the main parts; his self-destructiveness is never quite compelling.  (In fairness, the Goldman book has always been sparse, particularly because it barely exists in the second act, where the Loveland sequence takes over what would ordinarily have required dramatic exposition.)

Follies is also a cornucopia of splendid supporting roles--in what other musical do landmark numbers like "Broadway Baby" and "I'm Still Here" go to minor characters?--and they're played wonderfully here.  Most prominent is Elaine Paige as Carlotta, who gets "I'm Still Here," and other notable parts are played by Mary Beth Peil, Rosiland Elias, Susan Watson, Don Correia and Jayne Houdyshell.  The ghostly young people are represented by, among others, Lora Lee Gayer, Kirsten Scott, Christian Delcroix and Nick Verina.

Although no revival of Follies will probably ever be as spectacular as the Aronson original, Derek McLane, Gregg Barnes and Natasha Katz provide sets, costumes and lighting that are atmospheric and evocative of the dim past and troubled present.  Warren Carlyle's choreography, especially in the "Who's That Woman" and "Lucy and Jessie" numbers, is exceptional.

Few things bring audiences as much joy as the sight of a well-known actor or actress revealing a side of their talent that's never been seen before.  (It's not just general audiences, either--those roles become instant favorites for Oscar nominations and wins.)  It can be as simple as Halle Berry, Julia Roberts or Nicole Kidman deglamorizing themselves for Monster's Ball, Erin Brockovich and The Hours, and as immense as Daniel Day-Lewis' paralysis in My Left Foot or Robert DeNiro's weight gain in Raging Bull.  The most reliable type, though, may be the revelation that a dramatic performer can sing or dance:  Amy Adams in Enchanted, Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia!, Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, Rene Zellweger in Chicago... the list goes on.  The same is true on Broadway, of course--think Antonio Banderas in Nine, and practically everyone who's starred in the revival of Chicago;   Right now, the star with unexpected abilities is Daniel Radcliffe, in the new (and not particularly necessary) revival of Frank Loesser's HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING.

Radcliffe is, and probably always will be, known above all for the role that he spent his entire childhood playing, but Harry Potter was never called upon to sing or dance away from evil.  As J. Pierrepont Finch, the outrageously ambitious protagonist of the 50-year old musical, Radcliffe has to do both, and while his singing voice is merely decent, the man can dance.  Numbers like "Grand Old Ivy" and "The Brotherhood of Man" pretty much bring down the house, in large part because of his footwork.  

For those unfamiliar with How to Succeed, the title itself refers to a handbook used by Finch as he rapidly climbs the ranks at Worldwide Wickets, moving from window washer, to the mailroom, to a junior executive office, to the notice of boss J.B. Biggley (John Larroquette), and so forth.  Along the way, secretary Rosemary (Rose Hemingway) falls madly in love with him, and he struggles between the pulls of ambition and love, not to mention the competition posed by Biggley's evil nephew Bud Frump (Christopher J. Hanke).  The book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert provides the mildest sort of corporate satire, although it has an off-hand structural skill, effectively conveying the story as needed between Loesser's songs, that seems impressive today.

Rob Ashford's production is pleasant enough entertainment--he's a better fit for this material than he was for last year's revival of Promises, Promises, which was more character-and dialogue-based.--and Loesser's songs are always a pleasure to hear, but there's nothing revelatory going on at the Hirschfeld Theatre.  Ashford seems to have approached the material with the viewpoint that it should be played entirely as it would have been in 1961, with no allowance made or irony taken to acknowledge changes in society since then.  So there are no italics around the worship of corporate success, or the sexism the show takes for granted (the song title "Happy To Keep His Dinner Warm" says it all), and no interest in Mad Men-like commentary about the social revolutions that were just a few years away.  Radcliffe's performance is similarly straightforward, even more so than Robert Morse's somewhat maniacal one in the original version (at least as preserved in the 1967 film) and Matthew Broderick's in the 1995 Broadway revival, both of whom took a more cartoonish approach.  Given the broad nature of the material, a taste of that might have been a good idea, both for Radcliffe and for Hemingway; the actors who broaden their performances, notably Larroquette, Hanke and Tammy Blanchard as the self-explanatory Hedy LaRue, fare better.

Haven't all the jokes been made?  In the history of Broadway, there may never have been a show as relentlessly ridiculed as SPIDER-MAN:  TURN OFF THE DARK.  At this point, it may be that the only interesting thing that could be said about the show would be if it weren't as bad as you'd expect.  Sadly, though, that isn't the case.

The long and miserable history of this misbegotten project is well known and has been exhaustively detailed elsewhere.  Very briefly:  the celebrated director Julie Taymor (Broadway's smash hit, hugely profitable version of The Lion King) teamed with no less than U2's Bono and The Edge to create a stage extravaganza based on the comic-book series.  They planned and worked on the musical for years, and as its ambitions mounted, so did the cost.  Investors fell in and out, the scheduled start of production slipped, the biggest names in the original cast (which was to feature Evan Rachel Wood and Alan Cumming) left, and finally, at a cost of $65M--by far the most expensive show in Broadway history--a version of the show began "preview" performances in late November 2010.

This should have been the beginning of the end of the show's troubles, but it turned out only to be the end of the beginning.  Word of mouth was deadly, and the performances themselves were, if not deadly, certainly dangerous, with repeated injuries to cast members who had to fly around the theatre on wires and harnesses.  Even when people weren't hurt, often the flying system balked, and performances had to be delayed while the actors hung in mid-air and waited to be rescued.  However, tickets continued to be sold at a brisk pace, and the producers apparently decided they were in no hurry to spoil the fun by inviting the press.  Thus began the longest "preview" period in the history of Broadway, with successive "opening nights" postponed.  Finally critics decided they'd had enough, and began to review the "unfinished" version of the show.  Their reviews were as catastrophic as everyone expected they'd be, and the producers decided to dump Taymor and a great deal of her original, myth-laden conception, and bring in a new creative team, including "Creative Consultant" Philip Wm McKinley as director, and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa as a new book writer.   This new, streamlined, and reportedly less bizarre version of the show finally opened to the critics in June 2011 (drawing a tepid, but less vitriolic response), and is now officially playing on Broadway.

And after all that... it's for the most part a dull, tuneless waste of time, and certainly a waste of $150 for a weeknight orchestra ticket.  Even Spider-Man 3, by far the worst of the Sam Raimi film series, is far superior to this formless, atonal bore.  

The Frankenstein-like cobbled-together nature of this beast is clear from the outset, as its tone is all over the place.  Act I is the origins story familiar from every version of the Spider-Man tale:  Peter Parker (here played by Reeve Carney, who had been in Taymor's movie of The Tempest), a high-school student much-bullied and hopelessly in love with the beautiful Mary Jane Watson (Jennifer Damiano, from Broadway's Next To Normal and Spring Awakening), is bit by a mutated spider, and finds himself spinning webs and leaping up and down the sides of buildings.  (The musical makes little use of his "Spidey sense," or some of his other comic-book powers.)  In order to earn a paycheck, Peter finds a job working as a photographer for the awful J.Jonah Jameson (Michael Mulhearn here) at the Bugle, where his convenient specialty is taking photos of the elusive Spider-Man.  Along the way, Peter learns that With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.  In the Broadway version, all this is recounted ploddingly, with little attempt at style or imagination. (The Greek figure Arachne, turned into a spider by the gods, was apparently a key part of Taymor's conception, but appears only briefly in the current version of the show.) 

Act II is more of an overt mess.  The spider that bit Peter was owned by Norman Osborn (Patrick Page), who becomes the Green Goblin--however, his story as presented here is far more like the Doc Octopus storyline from the Spider-Man 2 movie, crossed with Jack Nicholson's Joker in Tim Burton's first Batman picture.  In an apparent bid to get some laughs, the Goblin speaks in an exaggerated Southern accent, re-enacts a voice-mail comedy routine that's at least a decade old, and ultimately plays a burlesque version of "I'll Take Manhattan" on a green piano on the top of the Chrysler Building.  None of this is scary, exciting or humorous--it's just desperate (similarly, when the strains of an old U2 song are faintly heard at one point, it's a mildly funny bit, but when, after that, "Vertigo" is used in a dance scene, it's a little pathetic). The cast does what it can, but only Damiano emerges with much coherence.  (It should be said, though, that the more Page overacts, the more he pleases the audience.)  Meanwhile, many minor characters wear outsized cartoon heads, an idea that one assumes traces back to Taymor and her fascination for puppetry and masks, while the production design is a mix of giant forced perspective sets and semi-animated projected backdrops.

Even the much-vaunted flying scenes are a disappointment.  Although they've apparently been ramped up since McKinley came in (he's directed as much for the circus as for Broadway), and feature a number where multiple Spider-Men pop up around the theatre using confetti for webs, there's simply no way the sight of men wearing heavy harnesses and thick wires to fly can substitute for what we routinely see in the movies these days, with those details CG'd out.  Even worse, for the most part, the flyers aren't the actual actors who play Spider-Man or the Goblin, they're stuntpeople who circle around while pretaped quips play over the soundsystem, dubbed by the real actors--the effect is so hokey and fake that it's impossible to suspend disbelief, the opposite of what live theatre is supposed to provide.

One of the most heartening developments of the past couple of years has been the spreading popularity in theaters of cultural events presented in HD video.  Operas and ballets have become monthly features in many cities, and stage shows are now joining in:  Britain's National Theatre has been presenting several productions on screen for the past couple of years (most notably Danny Boyle's smash hit production of Frankenstein); last year's Tony-winning musical Memphis was shown several months ago; and last month Brian Bedford's Tony-nominated performance in The Importance of Being Earnest was showcased.  The newest arrival is a taped version of the starry gala concert staging of Stephen Sondheim's Company that was produced at Lincoln Center in April, with the New York Philharmonic serving as house orchestra.  It premiered this week around the country, and will be shown several more times in theaters over the next few days (the show's website, with theater information, is here). 

Few moments in popular culture are as unequivocally epochal as the Broadway opening of Company in 1970; there literally had never been a show like it before, and it changed the face of musical theatre, establishing Sondheim as the reigning genius of the era.  Structured with only a loose overall plot, it tells with revue-style vignettes the story of Bobby (Neil Patrick Harris in this production), a single 35-year old whose friends are all married couples.  Their relationships are mutually codependent; the couples rely on him to smooth over the rough edges of their marriages, and he uses them to ward off his growing loneliness.  The score is one classic song after another, culminating in the great "Being Alive," and George Furth's book is underrated, or perhaps it's just aged well now that it's no longer a topical story of its contemporary moment.

One can't really review the taped Company as a movie, per se; under Lonny Price's direction, it makes little attempt to be cinematic (it certainly doesn't approach the artistry of Spike Lee's filming last year of Passing Strange), and just serves as a record of the concert.  The staging itself suffers from 2 major handicaps:  the makeshift nature of a production with a cast quickly thrown together for a few performances, with just the suggestion of scenery (some couches that can be rolled around the stage) and little choreography; and also, for those lucky enough to have seen it on Broadway, PBS or homevideo, John Doyle's brilliant and fairly recent 2006 production, starring Raul Esparza as Bobby.

Harris, in particular, suffers by comparison with Esparza.  Bobby is a difficult character to play, being passive and reactive for much of the show until his final solo; he can seem sketchy and superficial unless the audience can be made to feel the building desperation beneath his charming surface.  Harris sings well and more than manages the charm, but he can't bring off anything like Esparza's explosive epiphany.  (It's not unlikely that back in 1970, the Warren Beatty of that period was an inspiration for Bobby, and that's not a comparison that works well for Harris.)  The rest of the cast (Stephen Colbert, Martha Plimpton, Craig Bierko, Anika Noni Rose) is workmanlike but not often transcendent, with 2 exceptions:  Christina Hendricks, as April, Bobby's stewardess partner in the song "Barcelona," is just about perfect, hitting every hilarious note of both her dialogue and the song.  And not very shockingly, Patti LuPone knocks it out of the park with her "The Ladies Who Lunch" and the scene that leads up to it.  

Company is a masterpiece, a landmark in theatre history; this production is just a good one, but the chance to see a work like this on the big screen, with full stereo sound and a cast in fine voice, is well worth seeking out.

The Tony Awards aren't quite like any other televised awards show.  They're happily, unapologetically insular (and so are the ratings--thank god for CBS, where "young" audience is a relative term), and there's hardly ever anything like an upset; this year the closest was probably Mark Rylance winning Best Actor In a Play for Jerusalem over Joe Mantello for The Normal Heart, and do you see what I mean by insular?  Here, then, are 10 moments you'd probably only see on the Tonys:

10.  Brooke Shields:  First she was supposed to be a "spontaneous" audience participant in host Neil Patrick Harris' opening number about Broadway not just being for gay people anymore (itself an "Only the Tonys" moment, but a self-conscious one), except that she couldn't read her 3 lines off the teleprompter.  Then, trying to make amends later while presenting an award, all she managed to do was get herself thoroughly bleeped.

9.   Bono and The Edge:  When the two came out to introduce a song from the latest incarnation of Spider-Man The Musical, Bono paid respect to their Broadway infamy by noting that the reason they used to be famous was just because they were in U2.  (The power ballad they introduced didn't do the show's cause any favors.)

8.   Anything Goes:  Even in a cut-down version, the presentation of the Act I finale was a demonstration of what Broadway musicals are all about.  (The production deservedly won Best Musical Revival.)

7.   Best Play  The Tony show producers have never ever figured out how to showcase the nominees for Best Play.  One year they show out-of-context excerpts, the next they have the playwrights make awkward speeches, and this year, they had cast members try to sum up complex works in 60 seconds or less.  (War Horse, more a spectacle than a play, ended up winning, making the happiest Tony watcher in Hollywood Steven Spielberg, whose film version of the novel opens in December.)

6.   In Memorium:  Let the Oscars worry about which giant dead stars should get the opening and closing spots in the montage.  The Tonys led off with Arthur Laurents, book writer of West Side Story and Gypsy, and ended with Joseph Stein, who did the same for Fiddler On the Roof and She Loves Me.  (Elizabeth Taylor was stuck somewhere in the middle.)

5.   Dueling Hosts:  Neil Patrick Harris was again a sparkling, enthusiastic host, and never more so than when he and Hugh Jackman did a number made almost entirely of theatre in-jokes, both of them seemingly having a terrific time.  (OK, maybe Harris was even more so in his triumphant last couple of minutes, where he rapped/rhymed a closing credits bit summarizing the entire show that must have been written just seconds before he delivered it.)

4.   Frances McDormand:  Other award winners will say that they love what they do.  But winning Best Actress In a Play for Good People (in a slightly perplexing denim jacket over her gown), McDormand roared out the words so we'd know she goddamn well meant it.  I forgive her in advance for co-starring in the new Transformers movie.

3.   Chris Rock:  For sheer honesty.  By the time he presented Best Musical, The Book Of Mormon had (deservedly) won so many preliminary awards that Rock said going to the trouble of reading the other nominees made as much sense as taking a hooker out to dinner.  "Either way, you know you're gonna get laid," he explained.  He was right--about Best Musical, I mean.

2.  Mark Rylance:  He followed up his classic non sequitur accceptance speech for Best Actor In a Play in Boeing Boeing a couple of years ago by winning again for Jerusalem, and delivering an address about walking through doors.  He seems to see acceptance speeches as his chance to audition for David Lynch.

1.  Sutton Foster:  Winning Best Actress In a Musical for her thrilling performance in Anything Goes, she had the ultimate "Only the Tonys" moment when she managed to keep her composure while thanking the cast, the director, even the love of her life--and only broke into crazy tears when she got to her dresser, who's moving to Cape Cod to become the greatest artist in the world. 

Congratulations and good luck to Sutton Foster's (ex) dresser, and to all the other people who make up that special subspecies of the business called Broadway.

Once there was a time when Broadway musicals didn't have to say anything about society, politics, art, literature, or really much of anything.  They were exercises in style, excuses for glamorous people to get up on stage in fancy costumes and sing tuneful, ingenious songs while dancing up a storm.  That's the world of ANYTHING GOES, and it's a lovely place to spend an evening.  The show started life in 1934 with a book by P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, and had a celebrated revival at Lincoln Center in 1987 with its book revised by John Weidman, who again revised it (this time with Timothy Crouse) for the current revival.  In all versions, though, the book is far less important than the score, by the legendary Cole Porter, which features such toe-tapping classics as "You're the Top," "De-Lovely," "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," "I Get A Kick Out of You," and the title song.  The less said about the plot the better, but for those who feel the need for some narrative framework, it's all set largely on an ocean liner on its way from New York to London, populated with British Lords, second-rate gangsters, a financier who's missing his eyeglasses, and the redoubtable nightclub star Reno Sweeney, plus the inevitable young couple in love who are being kept apart by her need for a fortune--and did I mention the Chinese gamblers?  No matter.  What counts are those songs, and the thrilling direction and choreography by Kathleen Marshall.  And the performers, who are led triumphantly by Sutton Foster as Reno Sweeney.  Foster is following in the deepest of Broadway footsteps, taking on a role that was originated by Ethel Merman and seized by the throat in 1987 by Patti LuPone; she may not have the kind of voice that shakes loose the lighting fixtures like her predecessors, but once the dancing starts late in Act I, she taps them both off the figurative stage (and even though the storyline is just a pretext, it's nice that Foster makes more dramatic sense in the part than LuPone and probably Merman did).  The note-perfect supporting cast includes Colin Donnell and Laura Osnes as the ingenues, Jessica Stone as the tough-talking gangster's moll, and an extraordinary collection of old pros in Jessica Walter, John McMartin (co-star of the original Broadway Sweet Charity), and Joel Grey, creator of the M.C. in Cabaret. The lovely ship settings are by Derek McLane; the glittering costumes by Martin Pakledinaz.  Anything Goes is a reminder of just how much fun pure musical craft and skill--and talent--can be.  (Stephen Sondheim Theatre)