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Everyone's the Life of Stylish, Turbulent Jazz Age
'Party'
A musical gathering of '20s show people sets off an explosion
of sharply contrasting performances, evoking the era's madness and
melancholy.
By M. PHILLIPS
ΚΚΚΚNEW YORK--Some musicals are acts of compression--slabs
of history, or history according to novelists, squeezed into an
attractive, internationally exportable package. Others start with
a familiar opera, such as "La Boheme" or "Aida," stripping it down
and speeding it up to suit various pop idioms. ΚΚΚΚΚ
Less frequently, musicals require expansion rather
than compression. Anyone attempting to build a full-length musical
from the tawdry riches of the Joseph Moncure March narrative poem
"The Wild Party" has a few questions to answer up front, crucial
to the amplification process. ΚΚΚΚΚ
Is there enough in the poem to start with? However
detailed and pungent, does March's 1928 source material contain
the narrative fire needed to ignite an impressionistic portrait
of Jazz Age hell? ΚΚΚΚΚ
March's florid archetypes are as hard and cold as
icicles, even though (as the poem says) they're being sucked into
"the soft, hot vortex of desire." Can a show whose main character
is a party find the right temperature setting for such a lowdown
gathering? ΚΚΚΚΚ
Improbably, not one but two musical versions of "The
Wild Party" have tried to come up with answers this spring. ΚΚΚΚΚ
The first, an off-Broadway incarnation at Manhattan
Theatre Club, was produced and designed with Broadway in mind, though
it never got there. (It closed earlier this month.) The second,
infinitely richer show opened recently at Broadway's Virginia Theatre.
ΚΚΚΚΚ
It's unfinished. Like many a party, it doesn't know
when, how or where to call it a bleary-eyed night. Yet for much
of its intermission-less two hours, the Broadway "Wild Party" is
a seductive vortex indeed. ΚΚΚΚΚ
One wonders if director George C. Wolfe's production
would've fared better with some critics if it weren't preceded by
another musical about a troublemaking party girl--Sam Mendes' superb
revival of "Cabaret." You can sense Wolfe asking himself the "Cabaret"
question: How much grunge can I get away with? ΚΚΚΚΚ
A lot, in fact, if it's precise and stylish. Those
adjectives also suit composer-lyricist Michael John LaChiusa, whose
"Medea"-inspired musical tragedy "Marie Christine" came and went
earlier this Broadway season. In "The Wild Party" he harks back
to the nervous jazz rhythms of his earlier score "Hello Again."
ΚΚΚΚΚ
The results aren't going for Hit Parade excerptability.
At their finest, though, they infuse March's party-goers--singers
(one played memorably by Eartha Kitt), songwriters, white, black,
straight, gay, ingredients for an explosive Manhattan cocktail--with
a sharp variety of musical personalities. Mills Brothers three-part
harmonies collide with unsettling Al Jolson-style "mammy" numbers.
LaChiusa's jagged melody lines, brilliantly orchestrated by Bruce
Coughlin and reminiscent of Gershwin in a midnight-bluesy mood,
overlap and interrupt each other, much as the characters do. ΚΚΚΚΚ
The party-givers are Queenie (excellent Toni Collette,
Oscar nominee from "The Sixth Sense"), a vaudeville dancer, and
her abusive live-in lover and fellow vaudevillian, Burrs (a rageful
Mandy Patinkin). March once said that he didn't try to write "anything
'poetical' or 'lyrical' about these characters." They are lust corroded
by violence, personified. Patinkin's Burrs is terrified of losing
the woman he's driving away. When he spits out the lyric "You gotta
make her love ya/No matter what the price," he's setting himself
up for a fall like the '29 market crash. ΚΚΚΚΚ
As an artist, Wolfe is drawn to those dancing at the
edge of history's precipice. In "Jelly's Last Jam," Wolfe bypassed
a straight-up biography of controversial jazz great Jelly Roll Morton
for a dazzling, kinetic dream of a show. More recently, Wolfe's
staging of the Savion Glover project "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring
in 'Da Funk" deployed the legacy of African American tap in much
the same way "Jelly" did. ΚΚΚΚΚ
Everyone's on the move, all the time, in "The Wild
Party," even though Joey McNeeley's choreography isn't up to the
show's overall level of invention. Both material and staging stumble
just past the midpoint, with the matchup of Queenie and her newfound
love, Black (Yancey Arias, walking through it). LaChiusa's jazz
and Tin Pan Alley vocabulary gives way to more ambitious but mundane
balladry ("People Like Us"), as well as consciously operatic flourishes
("After Midnight Dies," sung by a strung-out plaything portrayed
by Sally Murphy). Black's never made a focal point, and Queenie's
final, redemptive "This Is What It Is" isn't what it needs to be.
ΚΚΚΚΚ
For all that, "The Wild Party" is the most exciting
mess I've seen in a long time. It's something I want to see and
hear again, soon. Which is more than I can say of the other "Wild
Party."
* * *ΚΚΚΚΚ
The off-Broadway bash at the Manhattan Theatre Club
featured a book, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa. His riff on the
March poem was shrill and silly enough to make you think March's
poem simply couldn't be staged as a musical--or shouldn't be. ΚΚΚΚΚ
LaChiusa's Broadway score lends March's nasty verse
an undertow of sadness. Lippa's off-Broadway effort was all about
pep. His party-centric song list ("What a Party," "A Wild, Wild
Party," "The Life of the Party"--everything but the Donner Party)
ran willy-nilly across the 20th century. One minute it went for
ersatz flapper music; the next, disco-driven thumpa-thumpa. Everything
was forced, pushed, sexualized in ways suggesting adolescents trying
to be grown-ups trying to be swingers. ΚΚΚΚΚ
The La Chiusa/Wolfe "Wild Party" has some of that
strenuousness as well. Staging a climactic orgy is never easy, let
alone a musical orgy. The Broadway "Party" begins at a manic, feverish
pitch; the sight of Patinkin's Burrs in Jolson-like blackface is
wonderfully unsettling, but a briefly topless Collette (more appropriate
to burlesque than to vaudeville) doing her thing amid a thicket
of show-biz sleaze makes it hard for the party itself to suck us
in. Even with this staging, even with this top-flight ensemble,
the relentlessness gets to be, well, unrelenting. ΚΚΚΚΚ
What this "Party" needed was a fully staged tryout
to find itself, either at its originating theater (the Public) or
out of town. It's maddeningly close to terrific. It ends, or at
least unravels, a few scenes before Kitt's lacquered, glorious chanteuse
sings "When It Ends." Even so, there's a line from another March
poem of the era, "The Set-Up," that aptly describes it, especially
in that tantalizing first hour: "Mean as a panther, crafty as a
fox."
Everyone's the Life of Stylish, Turbulent Jazz Age 'Party'
A musical gathering of '20s show people sets off an explosion of sharply contrasting performances, evoking the era's madness and melancholy.
By M. PHILLIPS
ΚΚΚΚNEW YORK--Some musicals are acts of compression--slabs of history, or history according to novelists, squeezed into an attractive, internationally exportable package. Others start with a familiar opera, such as "La Boheme" or "Aida," stripping it down and speeding it up to suit various pop idioms. ΚΚΚΚΚ
Less frequently, musicals require expansion rather than compression. Anyone attempting to build a full-length musical from the tawdry riches of the Joseph Moncure March narrative poem "The Wild Party" has a few questions to answer up front, crucial to the amplification process. ΚΚΚΚΚ
Is there enough in the poem to start with? However detailed and pungent, does March's 1928 source material contain the narrative fire needed to ignite an impressionistic portrait of Jazz Age hell? ΚΚΚΚΚ
March's florid archetypes are as hard and cold as icicles, even though (as the poem says) they're being sucked into "the soft, hot vortex of desire." Can a show whose main character is a party find the right temperature setting for such a lowdown gathering? ΚΚΚΚΚ
Improbably, not one but two musical versions of "The Wild Party" have tried to come up with answers this spring. ΚΚΚΚΚ
The first, an off-Broadway incarnation at Manhattan Theatre Club, was produced and designed with Broadway in mind, though it never got there. (It closed earlier this month.) The second, infinitely richer show opened recently at Broadway's Virginia Theatre. ΚΚΚΚΚ
It's unfinished. Like many a party, it doesn't know when, how or where to call it a bleary-eyed night. Yet for much of its intermission-less two hours, the Broadway "Wild Party" is a seductive vortex indeed. ΚΚΚΚΚ
One wonders if director George C. Wolfe's production would've fared better with some critics if it weren't preceded by another musical about a troublemaking party girl--Sam Mendes' superb revival of "Cabaret." You can sense Wolfe asking himself the "Cabaret" question: How much grunge can I get away with? ΚΚΚΚΚ
A lot, in fact, if it's precise and stylish. Those adjectives also suit composer-lyricist Michael John LaChiusa, whose "Medea"-inspired musical tragedy "Marie Christine" came and went earlier this Broadway season. In "The Wild Party" he harks back to the nervous jazz rhythms of his earlier score "Hello Again." ΚΚΚΚΚ
The results aren't going for Hit Parade excerptability. At their finest, though, they infuse March's party-goers--singers (one played memorably by Eartha Kitt), songwriters, white, black, straight, gay, ingredients for an explosive Manhattan cocktail--with a sharp variety of musical personalities. Mills Brothers three-part harmonies collide with unsettling Al Jolson-style "mammy" numbers. LaChiusa's jagged melody lines, brilliantly orchestrated by Bruce Coughlin and reminiscent of Gershwin in a midnight-bluesy mood, overlap and interrupt each other, much as the characters do. ΚΚΚΚΚ
The party-givers are Queenie (excellent Toni Collette, Oscar nominee from "The Sixth Sense"), a vaudeville dancer, and her abusive live-in lover and fellow vaudevillian, Burrs (a rageful Mandy Patinkin). March once said that he didn't try to write "anything 'poetical' or 'lyrical' about these characters." They are lust corroded by violence, personified. Patinkin's Burrs is terrified of losing the woman he's driving away. When he spits out the lyric "You gotta make her love ya/No matter what the price," he's setting himself up for a fall like the '29 market crash. ΚΚΚΚΚ
As an artist, Wolfe is drawn to those dancing at the edge of history's precipice. In "Jelly's Last Jam," Wolfe bypassed a straight-up biography of controversial jazz great Jelly Roll Morton for a dazzling, kinetic dream of a show. More recently, Wolfe's staging of the Savion Glover project "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk" deployed the legacy of African American tap in much the same way "Jelly" did. ΚΚΚΚΚ
Everyone's on the move, all the time, in "The Wild Party," even though Joey McNeeley's choreography isn't up to the show's overall level of invention. Both material and staging stumble just past the midpoint, with the matchup of Queenie and her newfound love, Black (Yancey Arias, walking through it). LaChiusa's jazz and Tin Pan Alley vocabulary gives way to more ambitious but mundane balladry ("People Like Us"), as well as consciously operatic flourishes ("After Midnight Dies," sung by a strung-out plaything portrayed by Sally Murphy). Black's never made a focal point, and Queenie's final, redemptive "This Is What It Is" isn't what it needs to be. ΚΚΚΚΚ
For all that, "The Wild Party" is the most exciting mess I've seen in a long time. It's something I want to see and hear again, soon. Which is more than I can say of the other "Wild Party."
* * *ΚΚΚΚΚ
The off-Broadway bash at the Manhattan Theatre Club featured a book, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa. His riff on the March poem was shrill and silly enough to make you think March's poem simply couldn't be staged as a musical--or shouldn't be. ΚΚΚΚΚ
LaChiusa's Broadway score lends March's nasty verse an undertow of sadness. Lippa's off-Broadway effort was all about pep. His party-centric song list ("What a Party," "A Wild, Wild Party," "The Life of the Party"--everything but the Donner Party) ran willy-nilly across the 20th century. One minute it went for ersatz flapper music; the next, disco-driven thumpa-thumpa. Everything was forced, pushed, sexualized in ways suggesting adolescents trying to be grown-ups trying to be swingers. ΚΚΚΚΚ
The La Chiusa/Wolfe "Wild Party" has some of that strenuousness as well. Staging a climactic orgy is never easy, let alone a musical orgy. The Broadway "Party" begins at a manic, feverish pitch; the sight of Patinkin's Burrs in Jolson-like blackface is wonderfully unsettling, but a briefly topless Collette (more appropriate to burlesque than to vaudeville) doing her thing amid a thicket of show-biz sleaze makes it hard for the party itself to suck us in. Even with this staging, even with this top-flight ensemble, the relentlessness gets to be, well, unrelenting. ΚΚΚΚΚ
What this "Party" needed was a fully staged tryout to find itself, either at its originating theater (the Public) or out of town. It's maddeningly close to terrific. It ends, or at least unravels, a few scenes before Kitt's lacquered, glorious chanteuse sings "When It Ends." Even so, there's a line from another March poem of the era, "The Set-Up," that aptly describes it, especially in that tantalizing first hour: "Mean as a panther, crafty as a fox."
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