The New York chronicles

(Part 2)

In a recent trip to the Big Apple (as chronicled in last week’s column), this Broadway Baby experienced both triumphs and heartbreaks on the Great White Way. Initial triumphs came in the form of habits and the return of an iconic pop-rock band while heartbreaks were dime-a-dozen with modernized wonderlands, singing web-slingers, and yet another Motown fiasco that came a close second to the Tony Award-winning disaster that is Memphis: The Musical. Why it won last year’s Tony’s, I’ll never know.

Having soiled my wallet and thrown quintessential dollars down the drain for a string of Broadway flops, thankfully there were more than enough heavy hitters to make up, namely: the Daniel Radcliffe-starring How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the musical revival of Anything Goes, and the British import War Horse, which proves the best is always saved for last.

The Brotherhood Of Man

Of the many revival shows I caught this year, nothing seemed quite as exciting and delicious to the eye as How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (yes, that is the name of the show) — and for many reasons. Number one: the show starred Daniel Radcliffe a.k.a. Harry Potter who returns to the Broadway theater after his stunning debut as Allan Strang in Equus.

I had my reservations going into this show and watching Harry Potter sing and dance to classic Guys and Dolls-inspired music by Frank Loesser. But boy, was I gleefully surprised by Radcliffe’s commendable efforts alongside his talented cast members, in mastering the turn-for-turn, tech-savvy choreography of Rob Ashford and making it seem effortless onstage. From Coffee Break to the Grand Old Ivy, every musical number in the show was a jaw-dropping showstopper that elicited roars and thunderous applause from the audience.

Joel Grey as Public Enemy No.12 Moonface Martin with Sutton Foster as Reeno Sweeney in Anything Goes

Add to that the heart and charm of Radcliffe, who was prudent and exciting in his star turn as J. Pierrepont Finch, a window washer who works his way up the World Wide Wicket Company by following a corporate manual (as voiced by Anderson Cooper), and the show seems tailor-fit for success. What I also loved were the modernized art deco-inspired sets, the Mad Men-inspired costumes that could give Donald Draper and Peggy Olsen a run for their money, and of course, the flavor of that era that never fails to inspire.

RATING: 4.5 / 5

The Wonderful World Of Cole Porter

Riding the high of How to Succeed…, I continued on this period marathon with Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, a musical revival that starred former Wicked alumnus Joel Grey and the beautiful Sutton Foster. Many of you might not know the latter but she has become something of a Patti LuPone or Bernadette Peters for our generation, owning many roles such as her Tony Award-winning portrayal of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie, Jo in Little Women, Janet Van De Graaff in The Drowsy Chaperone and even Princess Fiona in Shrek the Musical.

Numrich as Albert in War Horse Photo by PAUL KOLNIK

The show is basically a ridiculous cat and mouse game aboard an ocean liner that sails from New York to London so not much really can be said about the plot; however, its strength is three-pronged: in the songs, the production design, and the showstoppers.

Anything Goes has a musical score that includes popular tunes I Get a Kick Out of You, Anything Goes and You’re the Top, a cute duet between Foster and Colin Donnel who plays a dashing Billy Crocker. The actors’ voices were every bit as memorable as the songs themselves, especially when Foster belted hers out with bravado, reminiscent of Broadway diva Ethel Merman. The production design was splendid — a unit set in three levels, essentially recreating a panoramic ocean liner that, like How To Succeed.., morphs when lit. More than anything, the show made me realize that I’m really a huge sucker for the classics. And there’s nothing like a feel-good overture, sappy lyrics, and the suave romance of that generation to take your breath away.

RATING: 4/5

The Most Amazing Show On Broadway

Lifelike horse puppets, a chance encounter with the legendary Grace Coddington at the lobby of the Lincoln Theater, and breathtakingly poignant material which made the piece seem like an epic being performed onstage, I’ll take “Broadway Perfection” for $2,000, Alex! Of all the shows I had seen on this recent trip, nothing to me felt as powerful and life-changing as War Horse, the West-End import that is being turned into a movie later this year by Stephen Spielberg.

Colin Donnel as Billy Crocker and Sutton Foster as Reeno Sweeney in Anything Goes Photo by Joan Marcus a

The tale is genius: World War I, told through the eyes of a horse that in War Horse novelist Michael Morpurgo’s words, “would be reared on a Devon farm, by the forebears of the village people I knew; sold off from the farm to go to the front as a British cavalry horse; captured by Germans and used to pull ambulances and guns, winters on a French farm,” thus giving a gripping commentary on the universal suffering of war and what it meant for the millions of unsung horses that died with it. 

Imagine the tremendous difficulty and perplexity in which the material and the staging were to marry and meet eye-to-eye in order to give audiences maximum visual and emotional impact. The miracle of this material is that its delivery matches its out-of-the-box and purposeful ambition.

The set was hardly there — a war-worn white dagger that hovers above the semi-thrust of the Lincoln Stage, painting a picture of time and place through projections of child-like illustrations that progress the fantasy, horror and irony of World War I. Below the dagger was a rotating stage that was razed with tracks and the inevitable battle scars of war, and minimalist set accents that were moved in to indicate a farm, a bomb shelter, and even a battlefield that were rendered with pillar isolations and minimal yet efficient lighting — the combined scenography perfectly captured the eeriness of World War I and gave audiences all the goose bumps that the show merited. 

And while the ensemble was just as triumphant (with notable credits to Seth Numrich who plays a spirited Albert and Madeleine Rose Yen who plays the boisterous Frenchgirl Emily), the true star of the show was Joey, the puppet horse that galloped and neighed, all the while being maneuvered by three amazing puppeteers. I’d never through I’d see past the humans maneuvering it but as the show progressed, in the tradition of The Lion King and Avenue Q, you start to move away from the theatrics and zero in on the puppet’s essence, or in this case, the animal for what it was intended — a testament to the true genius of the Handspring Puppet Company which the director harnessed for this production.

Peter Hermann stars as Friedrich Muller, a German who becomes somewhat of a secret ally to the horse Photo by Paul Kolnik a

In the two-act show, I saw a War Horse’s fortitude throughout his ordeals when faced with the possibility of death, danger and penultimate sacrifice. And it was essentially the unique power of this warhorse that ignited this astounding production and one that made my New York trip every bit as memorable as it possibly can.

RATING: 5/5

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