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B R O A D W A Y |
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BROOKLYN
A Bronx cheer
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by Jeannie Lieberman
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The extraordinary PBS documentary, Broadway: The American Musical describes it as “… glamorous, dazzling, makes you feel better, blows the dust off your soul…” While the musical theater has “progressed” far from its original funny, frilly, female idolizing entertainment, the journey of the musical Brooklyn reflects the contrast in the genre’s “evolution” that drives their creators, in their fear of being called “old fashioned”, into a reality that has gone too far.
If this is the “new” Broadway I’ll take an Old-Fashioned, please.
Courting the Rent audiences but skimping on substance, it reflects the current cultural crave by jettisoning production values and going bare bones in which ordinary, unattractive examples of urban decay are strung up, draped and slapped together onstage in the most primitive pre-technical manner dispelling the magic and glamour traditional to musicals in favor of the gritty in-your-face underbelly of society. Its cast of five (a producers dream only bested by solo shows) plays dual roles, literally garbed in garbage, while the orchestra is reduced to just 7, pumped up by three offstage “vocalists”, a new way of cheating on traditional sound and budget.
Any self respecting native of that special borough will die of shame as BROOKLYN is portrayed as one large garbage strewn back alley, the kind grunge not seen on Broadway since CATS (but without its charm and pathos). Set designer Roy Klausen’s energy is visibly spent trying to lift urban decay into an art form (a chain link fence becomes a huge valentine, canvas remnants into curtains), an approach soon bested by costume designer Tobin Ost, who lends literal meaning to trashy "Salvation Armani “ costumes: in a “sing-off” competition between the show’s heroine, Brooklyn ((Eden Espinosa), named by her suicidal Parisian mother (Karen Olivo) for the birthplace of her unknown Vietnam vet father (Kevin Anderson), and the local neighborhood diva, Paradice (Ramona Keller), one is garbed in Hefty Garbage bags, tailored with duct tape, flounced with yellow-and-black construction tape, and a bubble wrap stole, the other in plastic shopping bags, its bodice highlighted by an "I Love New York" bag, with a Cheeto bag headdress. Were this production on a shoestring budget in an off Broadway black box one would find this effort clever and creative…but on Broadway, non!!!
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The Mark Schoenfeld/ Barri McPherson book and score is generic both in concept and musical style. Brooklyn grows up in a Parisian orphanage, inherits her father’s musical talent, gains fame as singer and lands in Brooklyn in search of her father by singing an unfinished lullaby he wrote for her mother. Eventually, she tracks him down with disappointing results. The entire story is narrated by the show’s only real talent, Cleavant Derricks, a street singer who espouses “you can change the world by changing someone” in an ill conceived “sidewalk fairy tale” plot within a plot. As orchestrated by John McDaniel the songs are pleasant but trivial. Much the same could be said for director Jeff Calhoun’s efforts to make a silk purse out of plastic bag.
BROOKLYN deserves a Bronx cheer!
Brooklyn The Musical Tickets at Plymouth Theatre
Plymouth Theater, 236 West 45 St. 212 239-6200
Jeanne Lieberman (hrmjeannie@aol.com) is editor/senior reviewer of Theaterscene.net and can be heard on WFAS AM.
photos provided by Jeannie Lieberman
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