AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

Plant your tongue firmly in your cheek and prepare to be thoroughly entertained during the zany and clever comedy Around the World in 80 Days, which has opened the 2009 Season at Westport Country Playhouse.

Mark Shanahan stars as Victorian-era gentleman Phileas Fogg who bets some of the chaps at his London club that he can make a journey around the world in 80 days in Mark Brown’s adaptation of the Jules Verne classic. Fogg is accompanied by faithful servant Passepartout (Evan Zes). Along the way he's joined by Aouda (Lauren Elise McCord), an Indian princess whose life he saves, and on his tail from the outset is police Detective Fix (Jeff Biehl), who believes Fogg is a notorious thief trying to make an escape with a hefty sum of stolen money.

All of the cast members, except for Shanahan, play anywhere from two to 15 characters. Director Michael Evan Haney deftly guides them through their paces to create a very entertaining production that relies on skilled physical comedy and timing. Actors bounce, sway and move in sync to simulate transportation on trains, ships and even an elephant, all created with minimalist props within scenic designer Joseph P. Tilford’s columned frame. Passpartout’s efforts to serve a formal tea on the bouncing elephant are particularly amusing.

Highlighting the adventure are two foley artists, Mark Parenti and Elizabeth Helitzer, who use numerous musical instruments and devices to perform Parenti’s original music as well as endless sound effects from upstage behind the action. They also bounce in time to the rhythm of a train or boat to nicely give theatergoers a complete sense of locomotion.

Haney’s skillfully and successfully stops the action at times to have one or more of the characters involved in the current scene step out to share thoughts directly with the audience. When they finish, they step back into the action, and often the return to the play is funnier than the aside itself.

Zes displays acumen both with physical clowning and comedic delivery of lines, often embellishing his French accent to tell us the heirloom watch on which he keeps time for the group as they try to beat the 80-day deadline is a perfect “tom piss.”

Shanahan is dashing as the unfeeling bachelor governed by the rules of mathematics and logic who finds his emotions turned upside down by the beautiful and smart Aouda. McCord, bedecked in David Kay Mickelsen’s beautifully detailed and sumptuous costumes, does a nice job of combining Aouda’s feminine charms with intellectual depth.

Depending on the composition of the audience on any given night, theatergoers may find that laughs can be found from those around them: children who cannot stop giggling at the antics. And why not? Such an adventure and production should appeal to the child in us all.

---- Lauren Yarger

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Around the World in 80 Days plays at the Westport Country Playhouse (25 Powers Court, Westport, CT) through May 9. Performance times are Tuesdays at 8pm, Wednesdays at 2pm and 8pm, Thursday and Friday at 8pm, Saturdays at 4pm and 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. Tickets are $30-$55 and can be purchased by calling 203-227-4177 (toll free 1-888-927-7529) or by visiting www.westportplayhouse.org. Student and educator discounts are available.

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Additions, midday, April 30, 2009:

Bloomberg.com

Hyde Pierce Restores Comic Gem of Depression-Era Broadway: Jeremy Gerard
Like you, no doubt, I’d never heard of Samson Raphaelson. Until last night, when his 1934 “Accent on Youth” opened in a sparkling Broadway revival by the Manhattan Theater Club.

New York Daily News

'Accent on Youth' hasn't aged well
Evidence is the flaccid revival of the 75-year-old creaker, starring David Hyde Pierce, which whips up so little laughter it should carry a "lite" label

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AmericanTheaterWeb

Review: Accent on Youth
1930's Showbiz Comedy Mildly Amuses

New York Times

Too Old to Be Hot? Not This Guy
Age has not exactly withered this 1934 comedy about a May-December romance in the theater world. But it has not done it any great favors either.

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of Accent on Youth
What’s it like attending “Accent on Youth”? Well, the posh Manhattan apartment set design and Depression-era costumes are pretty. The cast is pretty charming. Some witty dialogue occasionally pops up. But it’s hard to not feel underwhelmed and bored by the Manhattan Theater Club’s well-meant but unnecessary and uninspired revival of what feels like a third-rate Noel Coward play.

Newsday

'Accent on Youth' starring David Hyde Pierce

New York Post

'Youth' is wasted
Only hard-core TCM geeks may recognize Samson Raphael son's name these days. A shame, since he wrote or adapted some of the best com edies of the 1930s and '40s for Ernst Lubitsch, including "Trouble in Paradise," "The Shop Around the Corner" and "Heaven Can Wait." Put any of these movies at the top of...

Hartford Courant

New York Stage: David Hyde Pierce Shines In 'Accent On Youth'
...With David Hyde Pierce giving a finely measured display of wit and sophistication as playwright Steven Gaye, Daniel Sullivan's production largely succeeds in restoring Raphaelson's reputation.

Bergen Record

’30s revival pushes nostalgia buttons
“Accent on Youth,” which opened in a revival Wednesday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, has something going for it that it didn’t have when it debuted on Broadway in 1934: It’s exotic.

Associated Press

'Youth' Examines a May-December Romance
Older man. Younger woman. Boy, have playwrights been here before.

Variety

Review: Accent on Youth
David Hyde Pierce's effortless timing makes this antiquated comedy tick by painlessly enough.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: Accent on Youth
Bottom Line: This vintage drawing-room comedy is showing its age.

BackStage

Accent on Youth reviewed by Erik Haagensen
After 19 comedies, his latest play is a "tragedy," as it is all about an affair between an older man and a much younger woman.

TheaterMania

Review: Accent on Youth
David Hyde Pierce leads an adept cast in Samson Raphaelson's mildly entertaining if dated comedy about theater folk.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Accent on Youth
Have you ever feared that someday you’d gain access to a time machine, use it, and discover the past isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? That’s the basic premise behind the Manhattan Theatre Club’s unfortunately faithful revival of Samson Raphaelson’s Accent on Youth, which just opened at the Friedman. .

 

Samson Raphaelson's comedy Accent on Youth enjoyed a healthy run on Broadway when it debuted in 1934. In Daniel Sullivan's graceful, but unremarkable revival that opened last night at Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, the show's discrete pleasures are certainly in evidence, particularly given leading man David Hyde Pierce's elegant performance, but as this show business romantic comedy spins its droll, but not terribly merry way, one can't help but wonder why the company selected this play for revival in the first place.

"Accent" unfolds in the posh drawing room (a gorgeously appointed interior from scenic designer John Lee Beatty) in an apartment belonging to playwright Steve Gaye. He's just finished a new play that he hopes will take Broadway by storm. It's a departure for him – rather than a comedy, he's written a tragedy about an older man who chucks his wife for a younger woman. The actors who have descended on Gaye's home have trouble understanding the departure, but once Gaye's secretary, Linda (Mary Catherine Garrison), has explained it to them, they fawn over the man they will be working with.

Interestingly, Gaye has concerns of his own, and it's not until Linda, much younger than Gaye has professed her undying love for him, that he understands what rewrites need to be done. He also decides that she, and not Genevieve Lang (a formidable Rosie Benton), a former lover of his, should play the central role in this new piece.

When the action flashes forward in the second half of "Accent," Gaye's play has enjoyed a substantial run on Broadway, and is about to go out on tour. Gaye and Linda have become lovers, much to the consternation of Dickie (David Furr), the actor who plays the younger man she jilts in Gaye's play. Soon, life is imitating art as Linda is torn between the older Gaye and the younger Dickie, and Gaye, noble to the end, acts as a kind of Cyrano for his rival.

It's comedy meant to inspire smiles, and perhaps the occasional laugh, but it's hardly uproarious stuff, and given the understated performances in the production, occasional bemusement is what theatergoers can expect from "Accent." Pierce delivers a fine performance as Gaye, one that will certainly please fans of his work on television's "Frasier." Gaye's dry urbane wit and laidback demeanor is certainly reminiscent of Pierce's character on this long-running hit.

Showier turns come from Benton, who looks particularly smashing in one of Jane Greenwood's many terrific period gowns, and from Charles Kimbrough, playing Gaye's proper British butler, and from Byron Jennings, the actor who plays the older cad in Gaye's play. As the young couple who may prove that the accent for love is truly on youth, Garrison and Furr are both solid, perhaps too much so: rarely do theatergoers feel that there's a rush of heady lustfulness that pulls them together.

"Accent" ends on a decidedly wry and ambiguous note for Gaye and Linda, and although one suspects that perhaps Raphaelson's intent is to inspire theatergoers to contemplate what their future may hold, the question lingers only briefly before the piece evaporates, like a momentary infatuation, into the spring air.

---- Andy Propst

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Accent on Youth plays at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street). Tickets are $56.50 - $96.50 and can be purchased by calling 212-239-6200 or by visiting www.Telecharge.com, where a complete performances schedule is available. Additional information is also available at: www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.

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It’s the longest running show in Broadway history and it has been to Hartford a number of times before, but a lavish tour with an engaging cast in The Phantom of the Opera playing at The Bushnell through May 10 proves that some shows never grow old.

If you aren’t one of the more than 80 million people who have seen the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical since it took the 1988 Tony Award for best musical, it is a tragic love story based on a novel by Gaston Leroux with lyrics by Charles Hart and Robert Stilgoe who collaborated with Lloyd-Weber on the book.

John Cudia stars at the Phantom, a deformed misfit who secretly longs for beauty while hiding himself in labyrinths below the Paris Opera House in 1911. The Phantom is, among other things, a music master who stays in shadows while he trains the voice of beautiful young chorus girl Christine Daae (Trista Moldovan), who is drawn to him, mistaking him for a mysterious angel of music. The Phantom’s plans to make Christine a star of the opera and to marry her are thwarted, however, when she falls in love with the dashing Raoul, Vicomte deChagny (Sean MacLaughlin, who’s really very dashing and whose dreamily haunting voice should be considered the next time there’s an opening for Phantom in the Broadway production).

Mysterious doings upset theater owners Monsieurs Andre and Firmin (D.C. Anderson and Michael McCoy, both a hoot) and the opera company’s diva soprano and starring tenor (played to the hilt by Kim Stengel and John Whitney), so a trap is set to catch him.

There are some weaknesses in this tour, notably the chorus, which doesn’t have the oomph of the original cast (a comparison necessary only because this version has been permanently embedded in the brains of many who have been listening to the CD since 1988). In addition, Musical Director Jonathan Gorst conducts the group numbers at a pace just a tad slower than the original (though to be honest, it is easier to hear some of the sung dialogue this way.)

Those who don’t have the score memorized probably won’t notice, however, and the principals, all with beautiful voices, do justice to the classics “The Phantom of the Opera,” “The Music of the Night,” “All I Ask of You” (I had goose bumps listening to MacLaughlin sing this) and “The Point of No Return.”

Moldovan and MacLaughlin show great chemistry, but the Christine/Phantom interaction feels stiffer, as though the actors are trying hard to recreate Harold Prince’s original stage direction instead of yielding to a force greater than themselves. Cudia proves a compelling Phantom, however, particularly in the scenes where he becomes vulnerable by the unmasking of his deformity and the revelation of the depth of his love for Christine.

All of the sumptuous costumes and sets of Maria Bjornson’s original production design are intact, including the famous candles lighting the boat ride to the labyrinth. No matter how many times you have seen or heard Phantom, you won’t be disappointed.

--Lauren Yarger

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The Phantom of the Opera plays at The Bushnell (166 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT) through May 10. Performance times are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 pm, Friday at 8 pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm and Sunday at 2pm and 7:30pm. Tickets are $28-$82 and can be purchased by calling 860-987-5900 or by visiting www.bushnell.org.

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Additions for April 29, 2009:

ny1

NY1 Theater Review: "Desire Under The Elms"
Director Robert Falls has taken some bold liberties with "Desire Under The Elms," starting, most conspicuously with the elimination of the trees. Instead of elms, we get rocks, tons of them piled high and suspended overhead.

Hartford Courant

Carla Gugino Extraordinary In 'Desire Under The Elms'

Bergen Record

Family passions burn deep
Robert Feldberg reviews the Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms."

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AmericanTheaterWeb

Review: Desire Under the Elms
Early O'Neill, Played Powerfully

New York Times

A High Freudian Love Triangle With Three Sharp Points
Rarely has sexual passion been depicted with such tense, animalistic ferocity as it is in this gutsy revival of Eugene O¡¯Neill¡¯s ¡°Desire Under the Elms.

New York Daily News

'Elms' leaves much to be desired
No trees. No subtlety. Lots of concepts. And rocks. In a nutshell, that's Broadway's new "Desire Under the Elms," Robert Falls' second baffling revival of the season.

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of Desire Under the Elms
At present, there is no Tony Award for Best Suggestive Sex Scene in a Play. But if there were, this year¡¯s award would surely go to selections from Robert Falls¡¯ powerful but problematic revival of Eugene O¡¯Neill¡¯s hot and steamy melodrama ¡°Desire Under the Elms¡± starring Brian Dennehy, Carla Gugino, and Pablo Schreiber.

Newsday

Theater review: "Desire Under the Elms"
Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms" is a strange, ungainly fist of a drama. It was a hit and a scandal on Broadway in 1924. But until Chicago's Goodman Theatre revived it in Robert Falls' radical version, the big-footed erotic monster of a family tragedy has been considered virtually unstageable. It still is - though you wouldn't know it from the almost-poignant intensity of that production...

New York Post

Rock-solid production
Under the Elms" is the kind of play in which characters wail "Noooooooooo!" upon realizing they've killed the wrong person. At another point, someone actually shakes a fist at the heavens. Robert Falls' production of the Eugene O'Neill drama, imported from Chicago, unfurls at a fever pitch. The set, the...

Associated Press

Intense 'Desire Under the Elms' arrives on B'way
Don't look for elms on stage. There aren't any. But desire is front and center in the blistering revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms" that has barreled its way into Broadway's St. James Theatre.

Bloomberg.com

Brian Dennehy's Menacing Farmer Looms Over O'Neill's `Elms': John Simon
With all his faults, Eugene O’Neill is still America’s foremost playwright. When he was in top form, his writing was unbeatable; when not, it could be anything from tedious to terrible. “Desire Under the Elms” (1924), now imported to Broadway from its Chicago triumph, is a torrid melodrama of murder and adultery, crazed love and mad hate, crude in many ways but undeniably theatrical.

Variety

Review: Desire Under the Elms
Transferring from Chicago's Goodman Theater, where it was the centerpiece of a Eugene O'Neill festival, the staging is grimly overwrought, with an intensity that never quite translates into emotional impact, yet its unyielding harshness is undeniably compelling.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: Desire Under the Elms
Bottom Line: There's a lot of desire, and even Bob Dylan, but no elms and not a lot of sense in this overheated staging of O'Neill's classic.

BackStage

Desire Under the Elms reviewed by David Sheward
As he did with his groundbreaking 1999 revival of 'Death of a Salesman', Robert Falls shatters expectations and forces us to rethink an American classic.

TheaterMania

Review: Desire Under the Elms
Robert Falls serves up a decibel-shattering production of Eugene O'Neill's passion-filled melodrama.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Desire Under the Elms
The appeal of health clubs originates from the simplest of ideas: Bloat isn’t hot. Well, what’s true of the thighs is true of the theatre, and the revival of Desire Under the Elms, which just opened at the St. James after premiering at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre earlier this year, desperately needs liposuction.

CurtainUp

Review: hDesire Under the Elms
Fortunately, this production has enough striking scenes to offset the risks of its excessively high concept staging

 

Chicago Tribune Theater Loop Blog

Goodman's 'Desire Under the Elms' brings its steamy heat to Broadway