AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

With the election behind us, and properly concluded, we now speed into the holidays. I've got a pile of CDs from throughout the year, and a bunch of recently released ones that I've been listening to, and will be listening to, just in time for a holiday gift guide. The same goes for books – biographies and some theater-related titles.

One disc and one book are perfectly tied together and I sort of thought I'd do a bit of a preview with them. The CD is Wicked: The 5th Anniversary Special Edition, a two-disc set that's been released to coincide with the anniversary of this Tony Award-winning show's opening on Broadway in 2003.

This anniversary release from Decca Broadway, features not only one disc with the original cast recording that came out just as the show was opening, it also features a second eight-track bonus CD. It's this disc which will most likely attract the show's fans and collectors. Here, one finds LeAnn Rimes and Delta Goodrem delivering “For Good,” in a track produced by legendary Phil Ramone. There's also a pop version of “I’m Not That Girl,” by current Wicked star Kelly Ellis, this one produced by the iconic Brian May of Queen. This latter track is just one of three that Ellis recorded on a single in the U.K. and will have fans salivating for the other two, with its extraordinary electric guitar riffs and Ellis' nearly pyrotechnic vocals. Also in the rock vein is Idina Menzel's terrific dance remix of "Defying Gravity"

Perhaps most notable on the Wicked bonus disc is a nifty rarity: “Making Good,” a song that was included in early drafts the show, and captured on record here for the first time. This track features Stephanie J. Block, accompanied by composer Stephen Schwartz on piano. The balance of the disc contains four tracks of songs from foreign cast recordings. Two of them are from the German cast recording ("No Good Deed," "As Long as You're Mine") and two come from the Japanese cast recording ("Dancing Through Life," "Popular"). These really are only for rabid fans of the show while the other four really are great for musical fans in general.

The good news on the bonus material is that it's all (with the exception of one track) available on iTunes as individual downloads. This means that listeners will not have the snazzy two-disc set on their shelves, and it is a handsome package, with two booklets which include a new essay by Schwartz, newly released photos and a swell timeline for the show, but in these difficult economic times, the iTunes option could be appealing.

Now as I've been listening to Wicked, I've also been reading Carol de Giere's "Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz from Godspell to Wicked," which comes from Applause Theatre & Cinema Books.

This is a comprehensive biography of the composer-lyricist who's also responsible for such shows as Godspell and Pippin. I've only gotten up to the point where Schwartz is about to begin work on the troubled musical The Baker's Wife, but I have been consistently impressed so far with De Giere's research, and the obvious access she's had to Schwartz. The book is filled with fascinating insights and quotes – even about such things as his collaboration with Leonard Bernstein on "The Mass" which opened the Kennedy Center.

The book weighs in at nearly 550 pages – about half of which are devoted to Wicked, I'll do a fuller review in the not so distant future, but figured this was an apt moment to mention that the book "Defying Gravity" seems well worth checking out.

---- Andy Propst

The richly paneled interior of the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel is the perfect setting for the musical Glimpses of the Moon. The hotel's lobby and the cabaret venue seem to whisk audience members back to the period of the piece, which is based on an Edith Wharton novel, to the days when the Gilded Age was giving way to the Jazz Age. The show, with music by John Mercurio and book and lyrics by Tajlei Levis, also has two extremely appealing leads in Chris Peluso and Autumn Hurlbert, a couple of twentysomethings with tastes for the finer things in life, but without the personal means to attain them. Unfortunately these assets, along with some others, do not mean that theatergoers will strike gold in this amiable, but ultimately never truly satisfying tuner.

Wharton's story follows the travails of struggling classics scholar and would-be novelist Nick (Peluso) and penniless, but effervescent Susy (Hurlbert) as they hang on to the tails of New York's elite while also trying to find love, which they don't realize that they have found in one another. When these two hatch a plan to marry and use the wedding presents they receive from their rich friends as the means to live free of sponging off their betters, their world seems ideal. Fourth-in-line for a title Winthrop Strefford (played in a strangely cartoonish manner by Glenn Peters) provides them a cottage in Maine for their honeymoon. Then, Nick and Susy are off to the Vanderlyns' estate in Newport for the summer. Along the way, vases, dinnerware and silver are all pawned to pay for the things not provided by their hosts.

Unfortunately, Susy has to do a little favor for Ellie Vanderlyn (a mugging and overly broad Jane Blass) in return for the older woman's hospitality. Susy needs to mail Ellie's husband Nelson (a stalwart Daren Kelly) pre-written letters weekly. These missives will cover Ellie's tracks as she's gone off with a mystery lover. Susy agrees, but doesn't tell Nick. When he realizes what she's done, it's just as Coral (played with awkward aplomb by Laura Jordan), a bookish heiress who's been a patron of his and is romantically interested in the virile classicist, returns to the scene. Coral's arrival and Winthop's sudden and unexpected inheritance convince Nick and Susy it's time to dissolve their marriage that's supposed to have been a business relationship, but of course, they really have fallen in love during their time together. Can true love triumph over commerce in the heady 1920s?

The plot is the stuff of musicals of the era, and Levis' book tells Wharton's tale with marvelous efficiency and a good deal of wit. (A Lehman Brothers reference early on works beautifully). Unfortunately Mercurio's score proves to be problematic. Though he provides some wonderful jazz riffs, the composer often complicates things unduly, using awkward minor shifts and deliberate dissonances in his melodies. The devices, while signals of talent, often prove problematic for both the performers and theatergoers' ears, and do not necessarily serve the piece which, though dark, has a certain champagne-like quality to it. Even "Right Here, Right Now," the show's 11 o'clock number (performed by a different guest star each week) fails to capture audiences' ears or hearts; given that Tony nominee Liz Larsen belted it out of the park at a recent press performance, this is particularly surprising.

Within the close confines of the Oak Room, director Marc Bruni has given "Glimpses" a surprisingly smooth staging that somehow captures the buoyancy of the era, a quality that one wishes were more consistently prevalent in "Glimpses," which though winning never quite reaches the gold-standard in musical comedy.

---- Andy Propst

Glimpses of the Moon plays Mondays at 8pm at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel (59 West 44th Street). Tickets are $65.00, plus a $30.00 food/drink minimum, and can be purchased by calling 866-468-7619. Further information is available online at: www.GlimpsesOfTheMoon.com.