The Fortune Teller (Victor Herbert Renaissance Project Live!)

By Harry Forbes

Yes, some music was missing, but what remained of Victor Herbert’s classic score in VHRP Live’s semi-staged concert reading was certainly choice, without a dull number in the bunch. The performing edition was essentially an expansion of Artistic Director Alyce Mott’s version that was first used by the Little Orchestra Society in 1998 where it played the second half of a Herbert Centennial concert.

Performed without intermission, original librettist Harry B. Smith’s convoluted story of gypsies, a ballet student who learns she’s an heiress, an impoverished Count composer, and a band of hussars was neatly condensed by Mott, and Irma, the ballerina, and Musette, the gypsy -- lookalike characters always played by the same soprano -- were conflated into one character, though the basic plot, though perhaps slightly less confusing, certainly remains implausible in the extreme.

Mott’s economic direction was supplemented by Emily Cornelius’ lively choreography, well performed by the cast. The hussars, for example, came galloping on as if on horses.

Under the accomplished musical direction of Michael Thomas, with the excellent William Hicks on piano, the singing was uniformly superlative and the choral numbers – even with a cast of only 12 – registered as satisfyingly robust.

Vocal honors went to bass-baritone Matthew Wages as Sandor, Musette’s gypsy lover. His rousing “Ho! Ye Townsmen,” and the meltingly beautiful “Gypsy Love Song” which deservedly earned the most sustained applause of the evening on Wednesday night, were the standouts.

As Irma/Musette, Sarah Caldwell Smith acted with charm, and sang very prettily in the role originated by Alice Nielsen in 1898. The coloratura demands of the role were well executed in the show’s other take-home tune, “Romany Life” as well as the virtuosic “The Lily and the Nightingale.” Tenor Mitchell Roe sang solidly in the rather colorless role of Irma’s suitor Ladislas.

David Seatter made a congenial narrator and vocalized strongly as Fresco, the dance master, who contrives with the Count to play matchmaker with Irma who, it seems, will inherit a fortune if she marries the Count. Seatter shared an entertaining duet with Daniel Greenwood's Count who, in Mott’s revision, has a propensity for turning out various Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes.

Big voiced Vira Slywotzky made a late entrance as a romantically inclined prima donna and acted amusingly. She and Roe had fun with the amusing “Only in the Play” duet.

“The Serenade of All Nations” was one of several omissions in the concert. To hear the full score, try Comic Opera Guild’s full orchestra CD, available from the Operetta Foundation, or on DVD from COG. The Ohio Light Opera version is available from Albany Records at Amazon and elsewhere.

Though unfortunately it can’t be said in this day and age that anything by Herbert is exactly familiar to the general public, “The Fortune Teller” has always been one of the biggies in the canon. But VHRP Live’s next offering on April 27 and 28 will be an exciting rarity even for the diehards: his 1897 operetta, “The Serenade,” not heard on the East Coast in over 100 years.

(Victor Herbert Renaissance Project Live!, Christ & St. Stephen’s Church, 120 West 69th St.; www.vhrplive.org; March 9 & 10 only)

Photos: Jill LeVine

Prodigal Son (Manhattan Theatre Club)

By Harry Forbes

This quietly affecting autobiographical drama about John Patrick Shanley’s prep school experience in the late 1960s is, I think, one of the playwright's very best.

Transplanted from the rough streets of the Bronx to the elite New Hampshire Catholic school, young John – here called Jim Quinn (Timothée Chalamet) tries the patience of the school’s headmaster Carl Schmitt (Chris McGarry) and the other students (though we only hear about them), including his roommate Austin (David Potters).

But an empathetic teacher (Robert Sean Leonard) and the headmaster’s soft-spoken wife (Annika Boras) become the boy’s champions even as John/Jim continues to be his own worst enemy, alienating nearly everyone around him.

Performances here are excellent. Chalamet makes a perfect anti-hero, belligerent and ever provocative but likably vulnerable despite everything. (Of course, Shanley has written it that way.)

McGarry skillfully conveys the frustration of a man who’s taken a chance on someone against his better judgment trying to hold steady despite Jim’s often confrontational behavior, while Boras is wonderfully sympathetic as his gentle wife, clearly wounded by a past occurrence, the poignant facts of which are not revealed till late in the play. And Leonard is solid as Jim’s unswerving champion, a particularly tricky role as it turns out.

The intermission-less play is leisurely paced but builds in tension as it goes along with Jim’s graduation perilously in doubt.

A long, quiet dinner scene between the headmaster and his wife – as they discuss the theft and mysterious reappearance of some LPs -- is especially nuanced, and delicately played and written. I would even single it out as the finest sequence of the evening. And a climactic face-off between young Jim at his most pugnacious and Schmitt, pushed to the limits of his tolerance, generates plenty of sparks.

Shanley has directed the play himself, so one presumes authenticity. As it happens, my cousin’s relations are among those portrayed in the play, and has marveled at the great accuracy of the characterizations.

The ace creative team includes Santo Loquasto (scenic design), Jennifer Von Mayrhauser (costume design), Natasha Katz (lighting design), and Fitz Patton (sound design), resulting in a thoroughly first-class production. Loquasto’s miniature rendering of the school building is an especially picturesque touch.

“Prodigal Son” is the sort of play that stays with you.

(Manhattan Theatre Club, NY City Center Stage 1, 131 W. 55 St.; 212-239-6200 or nycitycenter.org)

Dot (Vineyard Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

Here’s a lively family comedy/drama about a West Philadelphia black family. As the feisty titular matriarch, winningly played by Marjorie Johnson, starts to show ever increasing signs of Alzheimer’s, her three adult children – gathering on Christmas Eve -- struggle to cope.

There’s eldest daughter Shelly (Sharon Washington), a lawyer who’s a bundle of panic as she raises the alarm about Dotty’s worsening condition. Gay son Donnie (Stephen Conrad Moore), a music blogger, whose relationship with his white husband Adam (Colin Hanlon), is seriously strained and exacerbated after enduring the rigors of a juice cleanse, finds it hard to balance his own domestic travails with the revelations about his beloved mom. And younger sister Averie (Libya V. Pugh), an aspiring singer and brief YouTube sensation, comes in like a dynamo at the end of the first act to further stir the pot.

Dour longtime neighbor Jackie (Finnerty Steeves), once Donnie’s childhood sweetheart (who’s never recovered from learning he was gay), and now living in New York pregnant with the child of a married man, is back to witness the family’s rising hysteria, while the family’s caregiver Fidel (Michael Rosen) from Kazakhstan offers Dot unwavering and calm support.

Johnson convincing limns the stages of the disease, one moment cheerfully bright and lucid, the next, utterly forgetful. One moment sweet, one moment ferocious.

Despite its potentially downbeat theme, the play is mostly enjoyable and comic even bordering on sitcom territory, though it grows more bittersweet in the second act. And though it starts to feel overlong, it is nearly always absorbing.

Allen Moyer has designed a pair of lovely sets: the family’s bright yellow kitchen for the first act, and then a beautifully appointed living room with a giant Christmas tree in the second. Kara Harmon’s costumes are likewise bright and sunny. And Tom Morse’s sound design – its evergreen Christmas tunes (from Tony Bennett onwards) giving way to the cacophony of sounds we are made the realize Dotty is experiencing in her head.

That latter comes to light in a so-called “Virtual Dementia Tour” proposed by Dotty and Fidel as a game in the second act, with the ulterior motive of showing the family how the disease truly feels from the inside. That sequence is instructive, to be sure, if a bit obvious in its methods.

The performances are uniformly fine. Domingo writes well with natural sounding dialogue, only sometimes perhaps going too far with the family’s over-the-top reactions to their mother’s condition.

Susan Stroman directs with the same sure hand she applies to her more customary big musicals, as she deftly and sensitively balances the comic and sudden sharply dramatic moments. And though this is a non-musical, she has choreographed a most touching ballroom sequence for Dot and Adam, whom the confused matriarch momentarily takes to be her late husband.

(Vineyard Theater, 108 E. 15th St.; 212-353-0303 or www.vineyardtheatre.org; extended through March 24)

Photo by Carol Rosegg. (L to R) Sharon Washington, Marjorie Johnson, Finnerty Steevens.

Hughie (Booth Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

When film star Forest Whitaker was first announced to star in a Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill’s very brief one-act play first written in 1942 (but not produced in America until 1964 with Jason Robards, Jr.), one had every reason to imagine the play, which runs only a bit shy of 60 minutes, was perhaps one of the actor’s personal favorites or at least one with which he felt a particular affinity.

But after watching the amiable but uncertain performance on view at the Booth, one is simply left with a major “why?”

One need only listen to a few minutes of Robards’ 1964 premiere performance, or a later audio version from the 1990s with his voice considerably older to hear all the character authenticity and innate sense of O’Neill’s rhythms missing in Whitaker’s assumption of the role.

The setting is a gloomy hotel lobby – beautifully realized by designed Christopher Oram (who also crafted the period costumes) – and the time is 1928. Erie Smith (Whitaker), a small time gambler ambles into the lobby after his latest drunken binge, and proceeds to bend the ear of the mild-mannered night clerk (Frank Wood) whose surname Hughes resembles that of the titular Hughie, the late former clerk on whom Erie pins the success of his early days, and sets him bemoaning the turn in his fortune’s since Hughie’s demise.

The play is basically a monologue, interspersed with characterful responses from the clerk. There have been uncharitable reports of Whitaker’s difficulty memorizing his lines and the presence of an off-stage prompter, and indeed I detected spurts of hesitancy in his delivery, but mainly it’s his failure to create a plausible character that’s the major flaw. The failure is all the more puzzling since he’s very much at the top of his game on the screen. He was superb in last year’s “Southpaw” with Jake Gyllanhall, for instance.

Brian Dennehy, another O’Neill veteran, was said to have been wonderful as Erie. And one can imagine other “Iceman Cometh” alum such as Nathan Lane and Kevin Spacey would do well.

Director Michael Grandage paces the limited action with intelligence, but the central failure can’t help but generate a certain monotony. Oram’s 1920s costumes, Neil Austin’s moody lighting, and Adam Cork’s highly effective sound design, and incidental music are all tops.

(Booth Theatre, 222 West 45 Street; 212-239-6200 or Telecharge.com)

Photo by Marc Brenner.

Fiddler on the Roof (Broadway Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

I missed the last, widely derided Broadway revival (from director David Leveaux) of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s evergreen, but can incontrovertibly report that Bartlett Sher’s new mounting is solidly satisfying.

The framing device that opens and ends the show – a contemporary man (not sure if he’s meant to be a tourist, researcher, or descendant) taking stock of the Russian town that was once the Anatevka shtetl, before he morphs into the Tevye of 1905 – seems a gratuitous addition, but those sequences are brief, and scarcely spoil the traditional whole. And the final tableau of displaced refugees can’t help but conjure powerful contemporary parallels.

Tevye – the iconic impoverished milkman originated on Broadway by the larger-than-life Zero Mostel, and the also larger-than-life Topol in London (and later on film) – is taken here by Danny Burstein, not, one might have thought, a natural-born Tevye. Yet he brilliantly excels in this leading role for which his outstanding succession of supporting parts have clearly prepared him.

The casting is generally well chosen across the board. Jessica Hecht, albeit with a rather peculiar accent, is his gruff but loving wife Golde, Alix Korey the meddling matchmaker Yente, and Adam Dannheisser Lazar the butcher who hopes to marry the eldest of Tevye’s five daughters Tzeitel (Alexandra Silber).

But, as we all remember, Tzeitel loves Motel (Adam Kantor), the poor but ever-optimistic tailor. Daughter Hodel (Samantha Massell) falls for Perchik (Ben Rappaport), the girls’ firebrand tutor, and bookish Chava (Melanie Moore) has the audacity to fall for the Christian Fyedka (Nick Rehberger).

Michael Yeargan’s settings are elegantly spare, sometimes hovering about the stage (like the titular fiddler), while Catherine Zuber’s evocative costumes are all they should be. Donald Holder’s lighting sustains the mood and ambiance.

One is reminded again of the many strengths of Joseph Stein’s book – which deftly mixes the humorous and the profound -- showing the old traditions giving way to the new, with the neat symmetry of the three older daughters exemplifying that cultural shift, all against the backdrop of the ongoing threat from the town’s Russian oppressors.

The paean to “Tradition” is, of course, one of several standards to have emerged from Bock and Harnick’s evergreen score, along with “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” “Anatevka,” and “To Life.” Sher sees to it that they are acted to the hilt. “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” for instance, begins with a tearful Tzeitel – who fears she’ll never be able to marry her dear Motel – being ever so gradually uplifted by her sisters with the upbeat song.

Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter has designed some very fine dancing – inspired, of course, by the classic Jerome Robbins’ originals – with the wedding bottle dance quite spectacular as before, and mining all the requisite laughs from Tevye’s Dream ballet.

Ted Sperling conducts the 23-piece orchestra with seasoned panache, and Scott Lehrer’s sound design is admirably natural.

(Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway; 212-239-6200 or Telecharge.com)

Photo by Joan Marcus

School of Rock (Winter Garden Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

Andrew Lloyd Webber is back at the home of his incredibly long-running “Cats” but though the mostly marquee and block-long billboard are again mostly black, this time, it’s not anthropomorphized felines but rather pint-sized rockers on display in the musical version of the popular Jack Black film “School of Rock.”

Alex Brightman, cast no doubt in part because of his resemblance to Black, gives a wonderfully manic performance as the would-be rocker Dewey who passes himself off as a substitute teacher in a posh grammar school to earn some cash, and utterly ignoring anything resembling a grade-school curriculum, teaches the first skeptical, then adoring, youngsters the fine points of rock, and channels their classical music prowess to something considerably less rarefied.

It’s the kind of performance that sets you wondering how he can possibly do it multiple times per week, not to mention on matinee days.

The versatile Sierra Boggess – who starred in Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera’ sequel “Love Never Dies” (written, like “School of Rock,” by Lloyd Webber with lyricist Glenn Slater) plays the school’s uptight principal Rosalie Mullins who loosens up in the second act, much like Sarah Brown in the “Guys and Dolls” Havana sequence, and sings one of the score’s most effective song, “Where Did the Rock Go” most beautifully. She also has a more than respectable go at The Queen of the Night’s aria from “The Magic Flute.” Well, why not?

Spencer Moses and Mamie Parris play the stock characters of Dewey’s goofy best friend Ned and overbearing girlfriend Patty with whom Dewey in crashing, rent free, much to Patty’s annoyance. But the marvel of the show are the wonderful kid performers, many of whom are playing their own instruments.

Of the vocals-only contingent, Bobbi MacKenzie is particularly touching as the painfully shy Tomika, with fine work by Isabella Russo as the take-charge Summer, and Jared Parker as self-esteem-challenged Lawrence.

It’s all highly formulaic but still fun, and by golly, quite touching at the end, with only a few moments that smack of the saccharine. Director Laurence Connor directs with an eye for pushing all the emotional buttons, with JoAnn M. Hunter providing the choreography.

Lloyd Webber's songs supplement about three from the original film, and it’s fun to hear in numbers such as “Stick It to the Man,” the composer returning to the rock mode of his early work like “Jesus Christ Superstar” and those pastiche rock items in “Cats” and “Starlight Express.” It’s also admirable and worth noting that he does his own orchestrations, a rarity among Broadway composers. “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes, in a polar opposite change of pace, has written the tight book based on Mike White’s screenplay for the film.

Anna Louizos’ attractive set (Ned and Patty’s pad, the school hallway & classroom, and concert venue) looks fit to travel – and indeed the show will tour, and schools will be mounting their own amateur productions, too. She also designed the apt costumes, and the whole is expertly lighted by Natasha Katz.

One quibble: Mick Potter’s sound design is rather unpleasantly overamped for the rock numbers; it would be nice to actually hear Slater’s lyrics, but the volume is clearly intentional, as the dialogue and quieter pieces are fine.

(Winter Garden Theatre, 1634 Broadway; Telecharge.com or 212-239-6200)

Photo: Matthew Murphy: Alex Brightman and the kid band from School of Rock - The Musical

Noises Off (Roundabout Theatre Company)

By Harry Forbes

This is an absolutely first-rate revival of Michael Frayn’s riotously funny (when it’s done right, that is) 1982 farce about actors putting on a farce in provincial England wherein everything that can do wrong does.

I first saw “Noises Off” in its original London production with the fabulous Patricia Routledge heading a spot-on cast -- and it straightaway topped my personal list of funniest shows ever seen. Subsequent all-star revivals in London and on Broadway never quite lived up to the peerless original, and certainly Peter Bogdanovich’s Americanized film with the likes of Carol Burnett, Christopher Reeve, and John Ritter fell disappointingly flat.

So I’m happy to report that the Roundabout’s latest revival is a side-splitting winner all the way, with each of the nine principals proving adept farceurs, and British director Jeremy Herrin – last represented on Broadway with the vastly different and decidedly uncomical “Wolf Hall” -- expertly putting them through their well-timed paces.

The first act shows the final dress rehearsal where it’s clear things will go wrong, the second act gives us the backstage view as romantic complications among the staff and other emotional issues threaten to derail the show, and the third act is the by now truly disastrous final performance months later.

Andrea Martin, in top comic form, is the befuddled Dotty who can’t quite to master her props, be it the all-important sardines or the phone, and whose liaison with another member of the company causes second act chaos. Campbell Scott is the weary director whose own romantic escapades threaten to undermine the production; David Furr, the hilariously inarticulate leading man; Jeremy Shamos, the nose-bleed prone Frederick; Megan Hilty the sexy resolutely unflappable novice; Daniel Davis, the old-timer with a worrisome penchant for the bottle; Rob McClure, the physically exhausted stage manager (and sometime understudy); and Tracee Chimo, the lovelorn assistant stage manager. All are terrific, and go for the emotional truth behind the belly laughs. They all play English most convincingly, too.

Derek McLane’s front and backstage sets and Michael Krass’ costumes – expertly lighted by Jane Cox -- conjure just the right provincial atmosphere.

Genuine farce of the British variety has strangely never gone over well here, but Frayn’s evergreen is in a class by itself and proves again a surefire audience pleaser.

(American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd Street; 212-719-1300 or roundabouttheatre.org)