Kinky Boots

A great book by Harvey Fierstein, knock-out music & lyrics by Cindi Lauper and some fresh direction and choreography by Jerry Mitchell will surely turn this out-of-town tryout into an instant Broadway hit.

I caught this one in Chicago after only 2 weeks of live performances and already it's showing it has legs... (it better because those boots are very tall!).   Dreamy and boyish Stark Sands and the devilishly wild and coy Billy Porter take the helm of the movie to musical re-make and left no butts in any seats by the climactic end of the show.

Part La Cage Aux Folles, part Dreamgirls, part Priscilla Queen of the Desert, with a heaping spoonful of the original movie (based on a true story) this show takes a little bit of all that and turns it into an extremely entertaining, energetic, fun, and heart-warming evening in the theatre.

Look out New York - these boots are made for walking - all the way from Chicago to the Great White Way.  All you NYC divas better get ready for some competition.  These red boots are on fire!

Angels in America - Part Two: Perestroika

I believe this two part opus by Tony Kushner is powerful no matter how it is viewed.  I chose to view it sequentially in one day - Saturday - a 3 hour Part One at 2pm and a 4 hour Part Two at 8pm.  While most may consider this a long day in theatre - it could alternatively be viewed as a unique immersive experience.  Taking a break of several days or weeks between the two parts is not a bad thing - but if you can handle it, the rewards of the 7 hour marathon are well worth the sacrifice.  The show is being performed in repertory at the Signature Theater for the entire run with both Wednesdays and Saturdays being the opportunities for the marathons and all other days the single plays alternate with regularity.

Part Two:  Perestroika continues on exactly where Part One:  Millennium Approaches leaves off - New York City 1986.   At the end of the first play, Prior Walter is visited by the angel in an emotional and theatrically compelling scene.  The concept of fantasia is only a flirtation in the first play, but is fully exploited in the second.  As the latter play unfolds, Kushner uses the powerful devices of theatre and the fantasia to lay out his theories of God, heaven, and humanity.   Without going into the specifics, Kushner presents to us the idea that, yes, there is a God who created the universe and there are angels.  But his twist on the idea is that the angels are actually lost.  God left us.  The Angels are waiting for him to come back but humanity is moving ever faster and forward, creating more and more social problems, political schisms, and global conflict.  The angels want us to slow down, stop migrating, and wait for God to return so that harmony can be restored.  Wow.   

The conflict presented in the fantasia and in parallel in real life in politics, religion, and society is that we can't do what the angels in the fantasia want.  As Prior Walter ultimately does reject the angel's proposal in the fantasia - so does he reject the idea in real life too.  He does not accept his boyfriend back, instead he moves forward.  He does not initially accept the AZT medicine for his disease, but he does move forward (whether or not he eventually does, one can only speculate),  Joe's mother rejects her hateful religious beliefs and moves forward a more enlightened human.   Most of all life itself moves forward.

After 7 hours, I was emotionally exhausted and intellectually drained, but not so much that I couldn't walk away hopeful and optimistic.  Kushner's play is a brilliant work of our time and the fine actors on stage at the Signature Theatre provide it the voice he intended it to have.  

The great work has already begun.

Angels in America - Part One: Millennium Approaches

To be precise the full title of the play is Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia On National Themes.  We tend to leave off that last part and I believe with the passage of time, that portion of the title holds an ever more important role in explaining the nature and purpose of the play.

The play is a 7 hour opus divided into two independent plays of equal length often performed in repertory.  Part I:  The Millennium Approaches takes place in 1986 New York City and introduces us to 3 overlapping story-lines - a young gay couple one of whom reveals he has AIDS; a tough as nails, un-stereotypically gay power-attorney diagnosed with AIDS; and a troubled Mormon couple recently relocated to New York City.  As Part I unfolds, it is revealed to us just how entangled these stories are about to become as the Millennium (both lower case m and capital M) approaches.

If the play were merely about these 3 plot-lines, this work would have been turned into a soap opera running on Lifetime Television every night at 9pm.  However, Tony Kushner's opus is contextually much deeper.  It thrusts the visceral socio-political thorns in America's side in 1986 to the forefront - specifically homosexuality, Ronald Reagan, AIDS, racism, conservatism, and the religious right and what it means to be an American in the context of history, religion, and modern day politics.  In some ways, the play is not about the actual characters themselves.  Again, the second part of the show's title:  A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, is truly the point.  This play is a documentary of an era, a sermon, a call to action.  The use of fantasia serves only to enhance the message, provide a rich context, generate conversation and spark dialogue.

The choice of the very intimate setting of the Signature Theatre - Peter Norton Space was a brilliant staging decision.  With some assistance from panoramic video projections and a very vibrant sound and lighting system (Ken Travis and Ben Stanton) they are able to transport the audience to the multitude of locations with the seemingly simple rotation of the box-like sets (Mark Wendland) that were most definitely complex under the hood.  This leaves the power of the show to the spoken words and underlying concepts.  What about the cast, you ask - without a doubt it is simply top notch.  As customary with this work, the cast plays multiple characters - and often those choices of who plays which alternate character are, themselves, a clever social commentary all in themselves.  Kushner's opus fires on all cylinders and attacks on all fronts.

Christian Borle gives a tremendously emotional, and vibrant portrayal of Prior Walker.  In his New York debut, Zachary Quinto plays a superbly analytical, emotionally torn Louis Ironson.  Billy Porter, as Belize, shows us a defiantly gay and deeply loyal Belize.  Frank Wood quite possibly has surpassed all others, including Al Pacino in the HBO mini-series, in his portrayal of Roy Cohn - striking the perfect balance of anger, intellect, hypocrisy, and arrogance.