American Idiot (St. James Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

You won’t find a more breathtaking piece of theater this season than Michael Mayer’s gorgeously realized staging of Green Day’s 2004 rock opera, “American Idiot.”

Mayer, who did such a brilliant job with “Spring Awakening,” has collaborated on the book with lyricist Billie Joe Armstrong, and the result is something of an amalgam of “Tommy,” “Passing Strange,” “Hair,” “Rent” and yes, “Spring Awakening” in its themes of coming of age, alienated youth, and social change. The original CD has apparently been augmented by songs from Green Day’s “21st Century Breakdown” album.

Set in the recent past, during the Bush administration, the narrative charts the fortunes of small-town friends John (John Gallagher Jr.), who calls himself the “Jesus of Suburbia,” Will (Michael Esper), and Tunny (Stark Sands).

John falls in love with a gal called Whatsername (Rebecca Naomi Jones), but their relationship is jeopardized by drug dealer St. Jimmy (Tony Vincent). Will learns he’s fathered a child with his girlfriend Heather (Mary Faber), but ends up alienating her. And Tunny, recruited by a military hero (Joshua Henry), goes to war, loses his leg and is tended by a sympathetic nurse (Christine Sajous). John returns home at the end, having learned the error of his ways.

First staged at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in September, the production looks absolutely spectacular with Christine Jones’ floor to ceiling mosaic, studded with video monitors (Darrel Maloney is credited with the video/projection design).

Brian Ronan’s sound is state-of-the-art, but it is quite loud (some may wish to bring earplugs), and many of the lyrics of the heavy rock numbers are unintelligible. But there are some lovely lyrical moments such as “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “We’re Coming Home Again” sung by the three men towards the end, and music director Carmel Dean provides top-notch accompaniment (the musicians positioned around the stage) playing Tom (“Next to Normal” Kitt’s savvy expanded arrangements.

Mayer elicits strong performances from his leads, matched by the superb choreography and movement by Steven Haggett. A mid-air pas de deux for Sands and Sajous emanating from a hospital scene is simply breathtaking.

I honestly can’t say the theme of youthful angst particularly resonated with me, nor is the dramatic arc per se as absorbing as some of the aforementioned rock operas, but the committed performances, frequently striking score, and riveting stagecraft make this show essential viewing.

(St. James Theatre, 246 West 44th Street, 212-239-6200 or telecharge.com)

Fences (Cort Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

Denzel Washington delivers a tremendously satisfying performance in the role created by James Earl Jones in August Wilson’s 1987 Pulitzer winner “Fences,” considerably redeeming himself after his last Broadway outing playing Brutus in a distinctly mediocre “Julius Caesar.” And on this occasion, he has a spectacularly worthy partner in Viola Davis.

The production, expertly directed by Kenny Leon, with his distinguished track record with the playwright’s work, is outstanding across the board.

Washington plays Troy Maxson, a sanitation man living in 1957 Pittsburgh with his wife Rose (Davis) and teenage son Cory (Chris Chalk).

Cory hopes to play football, following in his father’s footsteps as Troy once played in the Negro baseball leagues, though as a black man, he could not cross over to the white major leagues, a source of considerable bitterness. We also learn that Troy served a prison sentence years before for a murder in self-defense.

From a previous marriage, Troy has an older son (Russell Hornsby) with musical aspirations. a mentally challenged (after a war injury) brother Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson) who harbors biblical delusions (and is ergo Wilson’s mouthpiece for the play’s more fanciful imagery), and an easy-going friend Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson) who has known him since they served time in the penitentiary, and who frequently drops by to shoot the breeze with his friend.

Though he has no driver’s license, Troy desperately wants to become a driver at his company, up until then – like major league baseball -- a white man’s prerogative. Troy blocks Cory’s football aspirations, based largely on his own failed baseball career.

Though the basic domestic situation seems amiable enough and Troy and Rose seem to have an ideal relationship, Bone has learned that Troy is spending time with a certain woman from Tallahassee, and – in a beautifully nuanced scene, since Bone doesn't dare voice his suspicions outright -- urges Troy not to hurt Rose. The adulterous situation allows for plenty of conflict, especially in the riveting second act when the full extent of Troy’s infidelity revealed.

Washington radiates all that big screen charisma that was so strangely lacking in his Brutus. His character’s immensely likable traits play right into his fans’ expectations at the start. But as Troy’s very real defects begin to emerge -- and Washington doesn’t try to soften the less pleasant aspects – the audience becomes unabashedly vocal and, Denzel fans or not, they shift their loyalty to Rose.

That’s easy to do, given Davis’s immensely sympathetic portrayal of a loving wife who’s lived just as tough a life as her husband, but who had the strength of character to make the marriage last.

The action plays out on Santo Loquasto’s beautifully detailed set, evocatively lit by Brian MacDevitt. Branford Marsalis has composed an appropriately jazzy background score.

Though some of Wilson’s symbolism – like all the baseball imagery, and the fence which Troy is building around his house to keep out both the changing outside world, and death itself – is a bit obvious, the play still holds up as one of the great American dramas, not far removed from Arthur Miller or William Inge.

Flawed though Troy may be, it is to Wilson’s credit, that as with Willy Loman, you can feel pity and empathy for a man who tried to do his best against powerful odds.

(Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street, 212-239-6200 or www.telecharge.com)

Sondheim on Sondheim (Roundabout Theatre Company)

By Harry Forbes

Sondheim anthologies – be it those one-night benefits (like all the recent 80th birthday celebrations), or those conceived for regular theatrical runs (“Marry Me a Little,” “Putting it Together”) – have been plentiful ever since the 1973 AMDA benefit and the 1976 “Side by Side by Sondheim.” But writer/director James Lapine has come up with a clever variant.

"Sondheim on Sondheim" is peppered with clips of Sondheim himself – archival and newly filmed – ruminating on his life and work, a device which gives a uniquely autobiographical feel to the bountiful parade of songs, which include a good many rarities among the familiar hits. “Smile, Girls” from “Gypsy” and “The Wedding is Off” from “Company” are among the lesser known numbers.

The eclectic but well chosen cast is headlined by the great Barbara Cook, Vanessa Williams, Tom Wopat, with A-level support from Euan Morton, Leslie Kritzer and Norm Lewis.

On designer Beowulf Boritt’s handsome set – a revolving staircase and (in deference to Sondheim’s love of puzzles) interlocking crossword squares, under Ken Billington’s expert lighting, the ensemble cast performs numbers that spring organically from Sondheim’s commentary.

So, for instance, he’ll reveal how he was persuaded to turn “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs” from a quartet to an octet, and in short order, the number is done. A confession about falling in love at last at age 60, leads to a humorous take on that paean to love, “Happiness,” from “Passion.” The composer’s assertion that “Opening Doors” is his only truly autobiographical song segues to the number itself. And so on.

Along the way, there are some surprising observations such as his assessment of “Assassins” as his most perfect show. But all clips are exceptionally well chosen. He is candid and forthright in discussing his difficult childhood, his fractious relationship with his mother, and the creative process. He kids himself in a newly written self-deprecating number where the cast pay him the ultimate homage: “Is Stephen Sondheim God?”

Terrific as all the cast members are, including, in smaller parts, Erin Mackey and Matthew Scott, Cook is the class act. Looking trim, her voice is still a marvel – pure and agile -- and no apologies whatsoever need be made for the lady’s age. Her classic “In Buddy’s Eyes” sounds as fresh as when she first sang it in the “Follies” concert at Lincoln Center, and her “Send in the Clowns” is an lovely as any version you’ve ever heard.

But this no grande dame trotted out to deliver the occasional big moment. Cook is an active part of the ensemble, moving about the stage, and interacting with the others in complex medleys, including a delicious sparring version of “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” with Wopat. And she’s allowed to go into character for scenes from “Passion” and “Sunday in the Park with George.” Throughout, Lapine has given her some priceless bits of comic business to undercut any notion of a diva turn. Her entrance, which I shan’t spoil, is very funny.

Williams and Wopat get the lion’s share of the other numbers, as befitting their star billing, and they’re both musical veterans with a sure grasp of Sondheim style. Williams duets most beautifully with Cook in a medley that blends “Losing My Mind” with “Not a Day Goes By,” and reprises Diana Rigg’s London “Follies” striptease, “Ah, But Underneath.” And Wopat is particularly good in “Sweeney Todd” and “Assassins” numbers.

Elsewhere, the versatile Morton is outstanding in “Beautiful” from “Sunday in the Park with George” sung with Cook. And he also excels in two extended sequences from “Merrily We Roll Along.”

Leslie Kritzer’s high point is “Now You Know” from the same show, sung with exceptional point and clarity. Indeed, all the numbers sound fresh in this setting, backed by David Loud’s spare but classy arrangements.

The smooth-voiced Lewis earns an enormous hand for “Being Alive.”

Mackey has a bright moment with “Do I Hear a Waltz?” – after Sondheim relates that he had promised a dying Oscar Hammerstein he’d collaborate with Richard Rodgers if the latter ever asked him -- and Scott does his “Multitude of Amys” solo very well indeed.

The ensemble moved beautifully (Dan Knechtges is credited with musical staging).

Some have disparaged the concept – with its copious use of clips -- as more suited to a television special, but I found the structure utterly compelling, and in its juxtaposition of the artist and his work, an extremely moving tribute to one of the, yes, gods of the musical theater.

(Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, 212-719-1300 or www.roundabouttheatre.org; through June 13)

Million Dollar Quartet (Nederlander Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

An actual 1956 impromptu jam session with Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis in the storefront studio of Sam Phillips’ Sun Records serves as the not unreasonable foundation for “Million Dollar Quartet,” a show which strives to mix those artists’ iconic hits with something of the serious underpinning of a “Jersey Boys.”

But despite some dramatic conflict, the show – an import from Chicago -- is, at heart, just itching to be a jukebox musical as the fanciful finale confirms. Suddenly Derek McLane’s ramshackle Memphis studio flies away to allow the soon-to-be megastars to perform some of their hits in a full-out concert, and the audience can presumably exit the theater fully satisfied.

The actual session was not, in fact, a greatest-hits compendium, and consisted of a good many hymns which Presley and Lewis knew in common. But here you have “Folsom Prison Blues,” “That’s All Right,” “Sixteen Tons,” “Great Balls of Fire,” and “Hound Dog.”

The plot, has Phillips, played by a non-singing but solid Hunter Foster, overseeing a Carl Perkins (Robert Britton Lyons) recording session. Lewis (Levi Kreis) has just charmed his way into the Sun Records family, and he’s to play keyboard for Perkins. The former’s extroverted playing seriously irks Perkins, but Phillips keeps the peace.

Before long, Presley (Eddie Clendening) and Cash (Lance Guest) drop by, Elvis with a girlfriend Dyanne in tow. She’s played by Elizabeth Stanley from “Cry-Baby” is a fetching pink outift, one of Jane Greenwood’s nice period creations. With a little dramatic license, Dyanne gets to sing a couple of numbers herself.

Presley has already left Phillips for RCA in New York, but Phillips is being wooed by that label himself, where he’d be able to reunite professionally with Presley. Much of the drama (book by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrix ) involves record deals as, we learn, both Cash and Perkins are entertaining major label offers. Adding a little further tension, Perkins resents Presley for appropriating his hit, “Blue Suede Shoes.”

The flashy wrap-up notwithstanding, “Million Dollar Quartet” still feels small-scale.

Of the four leads, Kreis is, by far, the standout, successfully channeling Lewis and quickly becoming the audience favorite. He’s also credited with additional arrangements. Given Perkins' issues, Lyons has the meatiest role (apart from Foster), and does it well. Guest sounds reasonably like the deadpan Cash, though there’s little physical resemblance. (Cash, incidentally, was inaudible on the actual recording.)

Surely with all the Elvis impersonators in the world, a better match might have been found than Clendening, which is not to say that he, like the others, isn’t a fine musician, but a dead ringer for Elvis he’s not.

Eric Schaeffer directs capably, and the audience indeed cheers at curtain time. But this is thin material indeed.

(Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st Street, www.TicketMaster.com or 212-307-4100)

La Cage aux Folles (Longacre Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

With “A Little Night Music” still going strong, London’s enterprising fringe theater, the Menier Chocolate Factory, presents its second Broadway import of the season: Jerry Herman’s 1983 musical adaptation of Jean Poiret’s durable French stage farce which spawned a memorable film and two sequels, not to mention Mike Nichols’ “The Birdcage.” And, even more so than the Sondheim mounting, this is revival worth importing.

Apart from the many felicitous and clever touches from director Terry Johnson, and an appealing intimacy, the raison d’etre for the transfer is Douglas Hodge’s acclaimed and endearing portrayal of Albin, the flamboyant drag star of a St. Tropez revue.

PBS viewers may remember Hodge as the star of “Middlemarch” on PBS’s “Masterpiece Theatre some years ago. A decade or so ago, I caught him in a memorable production of “The Caretaker” with Michael Gambon. And he made an excellent Nathan Detroit in the fine 2005 “Guys & Dolls” revival with Ewan McGregor and Jane Krakowski which, by all rights, should have transferred to Broadway.

On this occasion, Hodge is wonderfully campy and neurotic, though his interpretation seems a bit more studied than in London. His transformation from dowdy backstage frump to glamorous diva while singing “A Little More Mascara” is wondrous to behold. And when he gets to play it “straight” as a real woman in the second act, he’s better still. Elsewhere, he manages to work in brief but sharp impressions of Dietrich, Piaf, and Monroe.

In London, when the production transferred to the Playhouse West End, he played opposite Denis Lawson (star of the West End “Pal Joey” and “Mr. Cinders”) as Georges, his partner of 20 years and owner of the titular club. Lawson gave a very fine performance.

Here it’s Kelsey Grammer who is wonderfully urbane and sympathetic, and sings the lovely “Song of the Sand” most movingly. (Hodge’s fluttery reactions are priceless here.) They make a superb team, and you can well believe they are a long time couple.

You recall the set-up. Georges’ 24-year-old son Jean-Michel (A.J. Shively) returns home to inform his father he will marry Anne (Elena Shaddow, “Fanny” in the recent Encores mounting), daughter of the Tradition, Family & Morality politico Daudin (Fred Applegate) who is determined to shut down La Cage.

Jean-Michel has invited Anne and her parents for dinner, and wants the flamboyant Albin out of the way, imploring his father to invite his birth mother for the occasion. All gay decorations in the apartment are to be excised. The callow youth is oblivious to the fact that Albin has raised him while the mother has been conspicuously absent.

Farcical complications arise when it is decided to pass off Albin as “Uncle Al,” and he must learn how to act masculine. When the real mother fails to show, Albin impersonates her instead.

Despite the streamlining, the results are far happier than the last Broadway revival five years ago. And paradoxically, I found the reduced orchestrations, stripped-down sets, and smaller cast much less bothersome than the “Night Music” revival, though one would think those elements would matter here.

I was not totally enamored of the club’s strapping Cagelles (only half a dozen or so here), being so plainly masculine, albeit virtuosic. Surely, that concept is out of period. But Lynne Page’s choreography for them is most enjoyable.

Also on the negative side, Robin De Jesus from “In the Heights” as Albin’s “maid,” scores some laughs, but seems utterly wrong with his anachronistic New York Latino patois.

Fred Applegate, another veteran of “Fanny,” plays both the benign café owner and the humorless politico Dindon; Veanne Cox doubles as the wife of both. They’re both excellent, as is Christine Andreas who brings great vivacity to restaurant owner Jacqueline.

The musicians are conducted by Todd Ellison perched in two boxes on either side of the proscenium stage, and in Jason Carr’s orchestral reduction sound flavorfully Gallic.

(Longacre Theatre, 220 West 48th Street, 212-239-6200 or www.telecharge.com)

The Addams Family (Lunt-Fontanne Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

In light of positively gleeful naysaying about this show’s future prospects during its Chicago tryout – and a puzzling preponderance of lukewarm reviews here in New York – it was more than a little surprising to find “The Addams Family” a funny, tuneful, and consistently pleasurable experience.

So, though it may seem the height of obstinacy to voice an opinion at such odds with the critical consensus, allow me to side firmly with those cheering, happy audience members around me, and heartily endorse the show.

Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth head a marvelous cast, and Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch’s handsome and stylish production design and direction (doctored by Jerry Zaks) is of the Broadway-at-its-best variety.

Though the storyline – as written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice – is, on the face of it, unremarkable, the dialogue is so amusing and the attitude so on target – the plot on which everything hangs scarcely matters.

The much-loved Charles Addams characters – Gomez and Morticia and their children Wednesday (Krysta Rodriguez) and Pugsley (Adam Riegler) – live in a decrepit mansion in the middle of Central Park with their zombie-like butler Lurch (Zachary James), Uncle Feester (Kevin Chamerlain) and 60’s flower child Grandma (Jackie Hoffman), not to mention a host of ghostly resurrected ancestors (shades of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Ruddigore”).

Wednesday has fallen in love with average boy Lucas (Wesley Taylor) from Ohio, and she’s invited him and his straight-laced parents Alice (Carolee Carmello) and Mal (Terrence Mann) to meet the folks whom she’s enjoined to be on their best behavior.

Some have noted a similarity to “La Cage aux Folles” wherein the transvestite performer and his long-time partner feign “normalcy” when their son’s fiancée’s parents come to dinner, but if anything, it’s more akin to Brad and Janet coming to meet Frank ‘N’ Furter in “The Rocky Horror Show.”

This is one of Lane’s very best stage turns, on a par with his most memorable work. He and the perfectly cast Neuwirth play with just the right deadpan sincerity as they espouse the family’s preference for morbidity, tragedy and disaster. At one point, they fret that Wednesday has actually been acting bubbly and (horrors!) optimistic!

Hoffman is a hoot as the Woodstock-loving Grandma and some of the edgiest lines are hers. Chamberlain is an endearing Feester, with an improbable crush on the moon. His second act charmer, “The Moon and Me,” where he rises off the ground floats among the stars, and comes to rest on a giant moon ball is a standout.

The hulking James makes an ideal Lurch. Riegler’s Pugsley – sad that Big Sis won’t be around to torture him if she goes off with Lucas – is right on the mark and socks over his cute number “What If.”

Carmello and Mann are appropriately buttoned-up, though you know a change is in store for both of them. Carmello’s turnabout comes first when she inadvertently drinks one of Grandma’s magical potions during a truth game (“Full Disclosure”) over dinner, and promptly loses all inhibitions, really going to town with her cutting loose number, “Waiting.”

Andrew Lippa's songs are satisfyingly tuneful, starting with the opening number, “When You’re an Addams.” Rodriguez gets the most contemporary sounding ballads amidst a score that otherwise pays homage to old-fashioned Broadway and vaudeville, the bouncy quartet “Let’s Not Talk About Anything Else But Love” and Gomez’s sentimental “Happy/Sad,” being two cases in point.

McDermott and Crouch’s set, wonderfully framed by a versatile red velvet curtain and beautifully lit by Natasha Katz, seamlessly transitions from entrance hall to basement to library to park. And kudos to Acme Sound Partners’ sound design for being so exceptionally clear and natural. There’s a clever use of puppetry, courtesy of Basil Twist – an animated curtain tassel, a giant lizard, a squid’s tail – and so forth which adds to the fun.

Sergio Trujillo’s unobtrusively classy choreography climaxes in an elaborate tango for Neuwirth and Lane, “Tango de Amor,” which gives Neuwirth her best musical moment.

The audience – including a good many appreciative youngsters in the mezzanine – was gratifyingly enthusiastic.

“Troubled” as the show may have been out-of-town, I’d say the kinks would appear to have been neatly ironed out. Isn’t that what “out of town” is for?

Leave any preconceptions behind, and you’re sure to have very enjoyable time indeed.

(Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 West 46th Street, Ticketmaster.com or 877-250-2929)

Red (Golden Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

The psychological and physical process by which a painter creates his art becomes a highly theatrical, and for the most part, absorbing 90-something minutes in this acclaimed London import.

Though at times dense, the play by John Logan (an American) is full of intriguing ideas about art and commerce, and is grounded by two terrific performances – Alfred Molina as the pompous and self-absorbed abstract expressionist Mark Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as his (fictional) assistant Ken – while an imaginative staging makes the mechanics of art – the mixing of the paint, the stretching of the canvas, etc. – especially vivid.

Directed by Michael Grandage, last represented on Broadway with the Jude Law “Hamlet,” the play opened at London’s Donmar Warehouse last December.

The action covers more or less a two-year period beginning in 1958 when Rothko was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the posh Four Seasons in restaurant in Philip Johnson’s Seagram Building for the then unprecedented fee of $35,000. Is Rothko – the great exponent of pure art -- selling out? Is he kidding himself that he’ll be able to create a truly rarefied environment around all the high-rollers dining beneath his work?

Rothko, obsessed by tragedy, fears the encroachment of the black on his painting; he’s disturbed by the absence of light and sees it “swallowing” the life-affirming red, which serves as the play’s leitmotif.

The artist is so egocentric he hasn’t bothered to learn anything about the highly proficient and articulate young man assisting him. Ken is, in fact, an artist himself (and in a sense, represents the encroaching new generation that Rothko so deplores). Rothko takes no interest in seeing his Ken’s work. “I’m not your father,” he tells Ken scornfully throughout, but in fact, mentor and pupil is precisely the dynamic at play here.

Rothko badgers him about not knowing Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Freud, Jung, and any number of other literary giants he believes to be an essential foundation, and mocks pop artists like Andy Warhol who paint for the moment.

Inevitably, Ken explodes, and challenges Rothko on his status in the art world, and his vaunted superiority. Rothko only wants intelligent people to view his art. Is there anyone, in fact, smart enough to understand that art, Ken challenges?

It is this confrontation that finally kicks the play into high gear, and thereafter remains spellbinding to the end.

Molina’s American accent is superb, and his portrayal powerfully austere and commanding, a real force of nature, and yet a deeply troubled man. And it’s rather fascinating to observe Rothko coming to the studio dressed like a businessman each day, before changing to his paint clothes.

Redmayne – who won the Supporting Actor Olivier Award for this role – makes a worthy acolyte and sometime adversary, with a convincing Yank accent, too.

Christopher Oram’s set – apparently a replica of Rothko’s actual dimly lit studio which had been converted from a gymnasium – is wonderfully evocative, and it’s well utilized by Grandage who stages the changing of canvasses, and the pulley system used to hoist them, to create visual variety. Neil Austin’s lighting is impeccable in that regard, also.

Adding immeasurably to the overall effect is the astute use of music. Adam Cork has composed a dramatic, haunting score, and has designed the sound for the play’s “natural music,” a phonograph player which gets a good workout from Rothko and Ken are as they change the records to suit their mood, while creating art: Rothko, favoring classical, Ken, Chet Baker.

The climactic musical and dramatic moment is the thrillingly theatrical sequence of the pair furiously priming a canvas with (what else?) red paint, from top to bottom and side to side, while a classical record blares, until the white area is completely obliterated, leaving teacher and apprentice utterly exhausted, and the audience exhilarated.

(Golden Theatre, 252 West 45th Street, 212-239-6200 or www.telecharge.com)