Rating the Plays

 

by Pa Rock

Traveling Fool

We managed to take in four plays during our three-day visit to New York City, and I was also in the audience for a performance of a 45-minute except from "The Brass Teapot," a Musial adaptation of a work that was originally written by may son,Tim, and with which he is currently involved.  That, of course, was the impetus for me coming to Gotham and the highlight of my trip.

"The Great Gatsby" was, in my jaundiced opinion, far and away the best of the four full-length plays that we managed to see.   It was a faithful adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel of life among America's nouveau riche in the during the "roaring" 1920's, just before the world stumbled into the Great Depression.   The story was Fitzgerald's, but it was the lighting, set designs, music, and acting that brought his timeless tale to life in all of its glorious noise and excesses.  Everything added to the author's work, and nothing on the stage diminished it.  "The Great Gatsby is a romping, stomping good musical that shows us how the other half lived and played a century ago.

Second on my list of favorites was "Our Town," a classic American play penned by Thornton Wilder in 1938 which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.  It describes three days in a "typical" New England small town (a fictional place called Grovers' Corners, New Hampshire) at the turn of the twentieth century, and goes on to explain quite a bit about human nature and the essence of life and society.  This particular version of the play was star-studded, which  helped to draw in the crowds for the well known story, and it was promoted as being a contemporary interpretation of the material.  

The contemporary aspect of this version seems to rest on the fact that the cast is bi-racial.   The family of Doctor Gibbs is Black and the newspaper editor's family is White, and the story coalesces around the romance and marriage of the doctor's son and the editor's daughter.  A biracial marriage, of course would have never happened in any portion of early 20th century America, and was, in fact, illegal in most places.   But, it worked well in this adaptation and added an interesting twist to the story.

My third favorite play for the all-too-brief stay in the city was "The Roommate," a dialogue-driven story of two very opposite women who move in together to save money.   The play brings to mind Broadway's most prolific playwright, the late Neil Simon, and in particular his classic "The Odd Couple."   Stars Mia Farrow and Patti Lupone both give incredible performances and manage to stir a great amount of audience empathy for the flawed characters which they inhabit.

Last on my list is "Once Upon a Mattress, an old theatre comedy staple that stars Sutton Foster as Princess Winifred from the swamp.     I have seen the play several times over the last few decades which probably dampened my enthusiasm for this particular production, but it just did not feel as sharp to me as it could have been.  It was a Carol Burnett hit, and she is such an overpowering figure in American comedy that it is difficult to sit through this play without imagining how Carol would have said a particular line or sung a certain song.   But for those who haven't seen the play before or who grew up after the era of Carol Burnett, this show will brighten your day - or evening.

We would have liked to have seen "Suffs" and  "Sunset Boulevard" while we were in the Big 

Apple, but that didn't happen.  Maybe the next time I fly to this cultural Mecca, it will be to see a full Broadway production of "The Brass Teapot"!

I would come back for that - even by plane - but not on Delta!!