Disaster! (Nederlander Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

This artfully tacky musical spoof of that beloved genre known as the disaster movie has made the improbable move from Off-Broadway to the Great White Way with an all-star cast.

Utilizing songs from the 1970s, the era during which these films reached the zenith of their popularity, creators Seth Rudestsky and Jack Plotnick (who also directed) have crammed every imaginable cliche into this story of a corrupt casino owner (Roger Bart) who builds a floating casino and disco called The Barracuda off a New York pier and scrimps on the safety code requirements, leading to predictable chaos.

On board is a glamorous, second-rate lounge singer (the decidedly first-rate Rachel York) and her twins, Ben and Lisa, played most amusingly by Baylee Littrell, the “disaster expert” (co-creator Rudetsky) warning of impending doom, a cheesy suburban couple (Kevin Chamberlain and Faith Prince, the latter in her most amusing role since Miss Adelaide in the “Guys and Dolls” that made her a star), a waiter (Adam Pascal, back at the same venue as his "Rent" breakthrough, and still sounding great) with a crush on the girl he broke up with years before who’s now an investigative reporter (Kerry Butler who excels as she did in that other movie spoof “Xanadu”), another waiter (Max Crumm) who’s helpless with the ladies, a washed-up soul singer (lovable Lacretta Nicole), and most hilariously, a nun with a gambling addiction (peerless Jennifer Simard).

Before long, the casino is beset with earthquakes, floods, fire, before, inevitably, flipping upside down.

The 70’s hits (e.g. “Hot Stuff,” “I Will Survive,” “Without You,” “When Will I Be Loved” -- come fast and furious -- sometimes sung in full, other times, in snatches. And it must be said they are most skillfully integrated into the script, not true of most other musicals that shoehorn existing hits into a new script. The sound is abrasively loud but, as jukebox musicals, go, this one’s way more fun than most.

The cast is chock full of Broadway savvy pros all cavorting with just the right satiric spirit. Even in such classy company, Simard’s Sister Mary Downy is a rib-tickling standout. Deliciously dour in her dialogue delivery as she tries to warn patrons of the sins awaiting them within, she surprises with a powerful voice as she fails to suppress her passion for a gleaming new slot machine (“Never Can Say Goodbye”).

Rachel York is also outstanding as a sort of Marilyn-esque chanteuse, demonstrating powerful pipes when she cuts loose. Prince, channeling Shelley Winters in “The Poseiden Adventure,” is sweetly endearing and riotous as her terminal illness, with it’s Tourette-like symptoms, comes to full flower.

I didn’t see the Off-Off and Off-Broadway productions of "Disaster!" in 2012 or 2013, but it’s clear from clips on YouTube that Tobin Ost’s sets are far more elaborate, though still intentionally rinky-dink. Some of the visual gags, like a piranha-filled fish tank, are quite witty. William Ivey Long’s costumes -- perfect spoofs of their models -- add to the fun.

The show won’t be everyone’s cup of tea and is certainly slight; the friend who accompanied me, for one, was grumpily not amused. But, generally, I had the sense that everyone around me was having as enjoyably silly a time as I was.

(Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st Street; 877-250-2929 or Ticketmaster.com)

Eclipsed (Golden Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o may be the name above the title, but Danai Gurira’s gripping drama about the subjugated plight of women during the Liberian Civil War of a decade ago displays a brilliant ensemble of not just one but five powerhouse performances.

The play is set in a shack inhabited by two kept women, the “wives” of a rebel commanding officer. So-called wife #1 (Saycon Sengbloh) is the elder of the two (and she’s all of 25), and runs the spartan house with no-nonsense authority. Girlish Wife #3 (Pascale Armand) is the comic relief character, pregnant with a child she’s sure she doesn’t want, and generally obsessed about the current state of her perpetually unruly hair.

The two are protecting a young woman identified only as The Girl (Nyong’o), whom they are attempting to shelter beneath a rubber tub. Before long, though, The Girl’s presence is discovered, and she is duly raped and made part of the rotation of wives pleasing the c.o.

They are eventually visited by Wife #2 (Zainab Jah) who used to share the hut but now sports military gear and a rifle slung around her shoulder. She’s rebelled against the subservient role and become a militant, but far from fighting on behalf of protecting these women, she supports the existing atrocities. In the second act, she recruits The Girl to take up arms.

The fifth character, Rita (Akosua Busia), a peace-keeping delegate of sorts who is able to mingle freely with the women but, as we learn, has her own poignant story.

Though the overall plot is grim, the narrative is ever absorbing, and there is a remarkable amount of levity despite all, such as The Girl entertaining the other wives by reading aloud to them in faltering English from a book about Bill Clinton to which the other ladies listen raptly as if following a soap opera.

Lupita is far from the glamorous lady she appears on the back of the Playbill program, and completely believable as the simple young girl.

Accents make some of the dialogue a little hard to comprehend, but the ear soon adjusts.

Clint Ramos’ squalid shanty setting and African costumes are authentically vivid. Jen Schriever’s lighting and Broken Chord’s music and sound design contribute to a thoroughly immersive experience.

Gurira’s play is about 2 ½ hours including intermission and admittedly, the first act feels a tad long, though probably essential to emphasize the set routine these women endure day in and day out, while the second act certainly provides plenty of action after the claustrophobic confines of the first. The production originated at The Public in October 2015.

Director Liesl Tommy builds the requisite tension, and handles the difficult subject matter with utmost sensitivity.

(Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th Street; Telecharge.com or 212-239-6200)

(L-R). Akosua Busia, Lupita Nyong'o, Saycon Sengbloh, and Pascale Armand in a scene from Danai Gurira's "Eclipsed" directed by Liesl Tommy. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

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