Strong women take over Broadway
By Lucy Komisar
New York stages are filled with strong women, and while
that might be expected in serious drama, they are asserting themselves
forcefully in musicals and classic comedy – forms that speak to the popular
culture. Broadway is full of self-confident, dynamic, even tough ladies who like
as not show up the men they interact with. Five current hit plays that depict
strong women are “Legally Blonde,” “Avenue Q,” “Xanadu,” George Bernard Shaw’s
classic, “Pygmalion” and “Curtains.” Some of them revolve around women’s
relations with men, but the women in the end put their own selves and careers
first.
Let’s start with the young college girls in “Legally
Blonde,” a stage remake by Heather Hach of a popular 2001 movie. The film was
part of the post-feminist “girl power” movement when young women were fighting a
“men are what matter” backlash that threatened their chances for career and
independence. The girls in Ellie’s college dorm are inane and stupid. Her
self-absorbed future-attorney boyfriend informs her he is “planning a Senate
seat. Three kids like the Kennedys. That’s why we should break up.” He’s going
to Harvard Law and wants “less of a Marilyn [Monroe] and more of a Jackie
[Kennedy].”
 Is
Ellie (the effervescent Laura Bell Bundy) doomed? His brush-off is a boon. She
determines to get into Harvard Law and succeeds. Her rich and nerdy classmates
all have computers; she has a pink heart-shaped writing pad. A law school
professor advises students, “Law School is a waste unless you acquire a taste
for blood in the water.” When the professor tries to kiss her, she slaps him.
She later trades her trademark color pink for blue. But she keeps her values.
She declares to a group of women, “Look how far I have come without anyone
holding my hand.”
At the end, she gets down on bended knee and proposes to a
guy. “Legally Blonde” is clever, funny, hokey and feminist. Welcome to Broadway
musicals in the 21st century.
The 20s is a tough age for women, on the cusp of their
lives, juggling men and their futures. It’s a theme in the comic and clever
puppet and people show “Avenue Q,” written by Jeff Whitty, where actors holding
floppy hand-puppets double as their characters alongside strictly human players.
A bunch of 20-somethings are living in the cheap brownstone
neighborhood of Avenue Q, an imaginary place even further from the center of
Manhattan than the Lower East Side’s “Alphabet City,” which goes only to Avenue
D. They can’t get their lives together. Brian (Evan Harrington) doesn’t have
job. Kate (Mary Faber) has a job but no boyfriend.
 Kate
and Brian become lovers. A long night with Brian causes Kate to miss a teaching
assignment and lose her job. However, Brian gets nervous about Kate’s desire for
a commitment, a word writ large on the theater video screens, and he goes off
with a tacky bar dancer.
When the neighbors, including a recluse with an unusual
source of income, get together to finance her school for minorities (the
minorities are monsters; Kate is a monster), she lets Brian know her priorities
have definitely shifted. She’ll set up the school first, and then she’ll think
about him. So, let’s hear it for independent women!
Men are even less essential to the strong women in “Xanadu,”
writer Douglas Carter Beane’s very funny stage version of a 1980 Hollywood
musical about a Greek goddess, Clio (Kerry Butler), who is a breathless young
‘muse,’ and her gaggle of ancient Greek ladies, “the chorus.” They descend to
Venice, California, (the trendy beach south of Los Angeles), where Clio helps an
incompetent young man make a success of a roller disco, which he considers the
apex of the arts.
 The
women are fabulous, especially compared to the men. Sonny, the disco kid
(Cheyenne Jackson), has a sense of his talents that far outstrips reality. Danny
(Tony Roberts), the local real estate developer who had some memorable moments
with Clio when she visited earth years before, remarks that, “Nothing turns
around a neighborhood better than the arts; then we can kick the artists out.”
Why does Clio keep picking losers on whom to lavish her
powers? Worse, why does she fall for the disco-jerk? Well, there’s always
backsliding. Woosh, and the Greeks go back to Olympus.
Ah, men’s fear of commitment again. No play says that
better than George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” in a smart, sophisticated
Broadway revival that makes flower girl Liza Doolittle (Claire Danes) especially
assertive and shows Professor Henry Higgins (Jefferson Mays) as unusually
infantile.
Higgins, of course, has “discovered” Liza selling flowers
at Covent Garden and offered her a warm bed and food in exchange for
participating in an experiment in which he’ll prove to his buddy Colonel
Pickering (Boyd Gaines) that he can improve her diction to the point where she
passes for minor royalty at a London ball.
 However,
Liza is her own woman from the start. “I’ve as good a right to take a taxi as
anyone else!” she declares. And, “We sold flowers, we didn’t sell ourselves.” In
fact, Higgins appears to want a servant, not a bed-mate. But Liza is supremely
independent, and in this version, directed by David Grindley, unlike the musical
“My Fair Lady,” there is no suggestion that she will accept any offer that
involves staying at the egotist’s house and fetching his slippers.
Not only that, but Liza announces that she might become an
assistant to Higgins’ professional rival or, better yet, go into business on her
own and with Higgins’ own diction method!
The heroines in these plays were in their 20s; so, how
about an older woman? Look to “Curtains,” a wonderfully hokey comedy by Rupert
Holmes about a tough female producer in her 40s, the brilliant Debra Monk, who
has to pull together a Broadway musical in the wake of the murder of the star,
hostility between the formerly married songwriter and lyricist, aggravation
about her daughter who is a performer and the Equity trade union
representative….get the picture?
Monk is smashing as Carmen Bernstein, the loud and
indomitable producer who is determined to go on with the show in spite of the
murder also of her husband, Mr. Bernstein (who we never see except in his death
plunge), who is revealed as a sleazy blackmailer.
 Even
her slightly ditzy daughter, Elaine (Megan Sikora), who insists on being called
Bambi, is a lady with a mind and a goal of her own. The dreamer in the play
turns out to be a guy, Boston Police Lt. Cioffi (David Hyde Pierce), who is
called in to solve the murders and turns out to be stage-struck.
Another paean to strong women on Broadway, 2007.
“Legally Blonde” Music & Lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe & Nell
Benjamin. Book by Heather Hach. Directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell.
Starring Laura Bell Bundy, Christian Borle, Orfeh, Richard H. Blake, Kate
Shindle, Nikki Snelson, Michael Rupert. Sets by David Rockwell. Costumes by
Gregg Barnes.
Palace Theatre. 1564 Broadway, Southeast corner of West
47th Street & 7th Avenue (intersection with Broadway). Wed - Sat at 8pm; Wed,
Sat, Sun at 2pm; Sun at 7pm. Running time: 2:20. $40 - $250. 212-307-4100.
http://www.legallyblondethemusical.com/. Photo Joan Marcus.
“Avenue Q” Music & Lyrics by Robert Lopez & Jeff Marx. Book
by Jeff Whitty. Directed by Jason Moore. Starring Christian Anderson, Jennifer
Barnhart, Mary Faber, Evan Harrington, Ann Sanders, Howie Michael Smith,
Haneefah Wood. Puppets by Rick Lyon. Choreographed by Ken Roberson. Sets by Anna
Louizos. Costumes by Mirena Rada.
John Golden Theatre Mon, Tue, Thu - Sat at 8pm; Sun at 7pm;
Sat & Sun at 2pm. Running Time: 2:15. $46.25 - $101.25; $21.25 rush at box
office. 212-239-6200
http://www.avenueq.com/. Photo Nick Reuchel.
“Xanadu.” Book by Douglas Carter Beane. Music & Lyrics by
John Farrer & Jeff Lynne. Directed by Christopher Ashley. Starring Kerry Butler,
Cheyenne Jackson, Tony Roberts, Mary Testa, Jackie Hoffman, Curtis Holbrook,
Anika Larsen, Kenita R. Miller, Andre Ward, Marty Thomas. Choreography by Dan
Knechtges. Sets by David Gallo. Costumes by David Zinn.
Helen Hayes Theatre, 240 West 44th Street. Tue - Sat at
8pm; Wed & Sat at 2pm; Sun at 3pm. Running Time: 1:30. $51.25 - $111.25.
212-239-6200.
http://www.xanaduonbroadway.com/index2.html. Photo Paul Kolnik.
“Pygmalion.” Written by George Bernard Shaw. Directed by
David Grindley. Starring Claire Danes, Jefferson Mays, Boyd Gaines, Jay O.
Sanders, Helen Carey, Brenda Wehle, Kerry Bishe, Kieran Campion, Sandra Shipley,
Tony Carlin, Jonathan Fielding, Robin Moseley, Doug Stender, Karen Walsh,
Jennifer Armour, Brad Heikes, Curtis Shumaker. Sets and costumes by Jonathan
Fensom.
Roundabout Theatre Company at American Airlines Theatre,
227 West 42nd Street. Tue - Sat at 8pm; Wed, Sat - Sun at 2pm. Through Dec 16,
2007. Running Time: 2:25. $51.25 - $86.25. 212-719-1300.
http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/aa.htm. Photo Joan Marcus.
“Curtains” Book by Rupert Holmes. Music by John Kander.
Lyrics by Fred Ebb. Additional lyrics by John Kander & Rupert Holmes. Directed
by Scott Ellis. Choreographed by Rob Ashford. Starring David Hyde Pierce, Debra
Monk, Karen Ziemba, Jason Danieley, Jill Paice, Edward Hibbert, John Bolton,
Michael X. Martin, Michael McCormick, Noah Racey, Ernie Sabella, Megan Sikora.
Sets by Anna Louizos. Costumes by William Ivey Long.
Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 West 45th Street. Tue at 7pm;
Wed - Sat at 8pm; Wed & Sat at 2pm; Sun at 3pm. Running Time: 2:30. $61.50 -
$111.50, 212-239-6200.
http://www.curtainsthemusical.com/. Photo Joan Marcus. |
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