Just How Great Was That ‘Comet’? Our Critics Debate the Broadway Season
|
Version 0 of 1. For years, Ben Brantley and Jesse Green covered the same shows from different sides of the aisle, Mr. Brantley for The New York Times and Mr. Green for New York magazine. As of this month, Mr. Green has joined Mr. Brantley as co-chief theater critic for The Times. The announcement of the Tony Award nominations, with the ceremony on June 11, provides a perfect time for them to reflect on their respective experiences of a fascinatingly eclectic season, in a conversation with Scott Heller, the theater editor for The Times. Spoiler alert: disagreements ahead. SCOTT HELLER Some time has passed since the announcements, and you’ve had a little more room to think about it. Did the Tony nominators do a good job? BEN BRANTLEY They covered all the respectable bases. And they reflect a year that’s at least been fun to argue about — far more so than last year, when “Hamilton” was pretty much all anyone could talk about, in universal hosannas. This year is both more divisive and stimulating, considered as a whole. JESSE GREEN Certainly among plays. Among musicals, I would call it a regrouping year, which is apparent in what seemed to me to be the slim pickings on Broadway. With new musicals, especially, what we see in a season is largely the result of decisions made years ago. So if creatives and producers looked at “Hamilton” last year and thought, well, let’s build on the diversity and contemporary energy of that show, they may have gotten only a couple of inches down the pipeline by now. To pick up on contemporary energy: My sense is that you disagree a good bit on probably the most energetic — and certainly the most Tony-nominated — show of the season, “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.” Who’s right? BRANTLEY Now Scott, you know better than to phrase a question in those terms. (The short answer: I am.) I was so utterly seduced by “Comet” when I saw it in a more intimate setting some years ago, by the passion of Dave Malloy’s music and the inventiveness of Rachel Chavkin’s staging. And I think they’ve translated a very idiosyncratic show, by Broadway standards, into a larger space about as well as could be expected. GREEN I find it visually stunning, even more so now at the Imperial than in the tent, but morally bankrupt, and short on craft. That said, I appreciate the way it escapes the workshop clichés of musical writing. So does the other big nomination-grabber, “Dear Evan Hansen.” I want musicals to go in these new directions, but not without a rudder. BRANTLEY There was a lot of feeling coursing through it, and some of the excitement that I felt as a young thing reading the novel for the first time. Malloy broods quite beautifully. Let’s circle back to a phrase you just used, Jesse. “Morally bankrupt” — and I believe you described “Dear Evan Hansen” as “morally complicated” the other day. A lot of readers might say you’re holding musicals to a mighty high standard, no? GREEN Why shouldn’t I want the best? (As Hodel says in “Fiddler on the Roof.”) In particular, in adapting a work of great moral vision, a high standard is called for. I found the take on Tolstoy jejune, exactly what Ben described as the impressions of a young thing. The musical, to my ears, basically inverted Tolstoy’s point by glamorizing and, with the rosy light that musical theater provides, valorizing these prerevolutionary narcissists. BRANTLEY I didn’t really expect to experience the breadth or depth of “War and Peace.” What we have is a riff on a very concentrated section within an immense work. And, yes, Mr. Malloy went with the adolescent aspect of characters who had yet to find themselves. But I don’t think anyone would mistake “Comet” for even a CliffsNotes edition of “War and Peace.” That’s not what it was trying for. “Dear Evan Hansen,” though I quite enjoyed it, felt to me like a marvelous rendering of a Young Adult novel. GREEN If you’re going to adapt a world classic but trash its ideas, you should pick something else to do. I would rather have an excellently rendered Young Adult novel. That said, I didn’t hate “Comet”! It’s pretty thrilling. I just didn’t approve of it. BRANTLEY The musical I keep thinking about — my favorite of the season by far — wasn’t on Broadway. I mean “The Band’s Visit,” by Itamar Moses and David Yazbek, at the Atlantic Theater Company. That, to me, had at least an emotional density and respect for psychological ambiguity that was utterly adult. GREEN I agree. It was my favorite musical of the year, not just for the reasons you say but also because Mr. Yazbek’s songs are so sublime. I hope it comes to Broadway … but maybe not. BRANTLEY It’s a musical that whispers. Broadway likes yelling. I have a feeling we will be talking about it a year from now. Which leads me to ask: This Broadway season, both of you revisited shows that you’d seen in one or more incarnations before. Does it get tiring to re-view a show, even a good show? Is it possible that your enthusiasm for the brand-new — “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” say — comes in part because you were seeing it through truly fresh eyes? BRANTLEY Well, I was seeing “Oslo” for the second time and actually thought it was better (and I liked it originally) on the larger scale that a Broadway-size house afforded. I love revisiting shows, because, hey, it’s live theater; it’s a different animal every night. GREEN I like revisiting shows when they improve; otherwise, to be frank, it can be trying. I wasn’t a big fan of “Indecent” but loved the fact that the music was so beautifully enhanced for Broadway. “Sweat” felt like a carbon copy. Like Ben, I enjoyed “Oslo” even more upstairs at the Beaumont than I did downstairs at the Newhouse: The air opened it up. But the reason I really loved “A Doll’s House, Part 2” was not its unfamiliarity. It’s just great, and a surprisingly good fit for Broadway. BRANTLEY Absolutely. The other thing, and this isn’t exactly on the same track, is that “Doll’s House” plays with our familiarity with a work we’ve known forever, and did so without exploding or subverting the original. It was a smart, respectful (but not deadly respectful) continuation of a burningly important conversation Ibsen began more than a century ago. GREEN It also in a way continued the conversation that “The Humans” began last year. Unlike musicals, plays sometimes grow up fast. A lot of producers were apparently encouraged to copy the model of putting a small-cast play in a big-audience house. As a result, we got an encouragingly high number of new works, most by Americans, on Broadway. They were not just new but newfangled. Yet it’s been hard for any play, even those nominated for Tonys, to find an audience. Do you worry for the future of the straight play on Broadway? BRANTLEY I wish there were not this commercial obligation to bring absolutely everything to Broadway — that a show lacks stature if it ain’t been on the Great White Way. Personally, I prefer a smaller house in most cases (though the idea of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in an intimate setting is my notion of hell on earth). GREEN On the other hand, why shouldn’t we want our best new works, bearing the most important ideas, to reach a wider audience? One of the pleasures of this new crop, even the ones I didn’t enjoy so much, is that they are eminently producible for regional theaters and will offer great roles for a lot of actors. BRANTLEY All that’s encouraging. But 20, 30 years ago, Off Broadway felt like the place you went to encounter vital new work. Broadway is so damn expensive, and there is a feeling among audiences that they need to have a proportionate “Wow” factor onstage — in the form of scale or (gasp!) a really big star — to justify the ticket price. With all the theater you both see, you must be hungry for a “Wow” every now and then, too. What gave it to you this year? GREEN Off Broadway, that sui generis genre-queer spectacular of all time, “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music” by Taylor Mac. But even on Broadway, that happened with some frequency. Just watching Laurie Metcalf storm through the role of Nora in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” was a lifetime high. So were some of the weirder, sexier scenes in “Oslo.” And of course Bette Midler just promenading down the passerelle pretending to reach out to touch the audience: heaven. BRANTLEY Yes, Bette was Beyoncé for the old folks. And I have to say that was truly thrilling, hearing the house go wild for her, and feeling that incredible exchange of affection that doesn’t happen that much between Broadway performers and their audiences. Ben, you talked about “Doll’s House” relying on our familiarity with a classic but not needing to explode it. Last Broadway season, productions of “A View from the Bridge” and “The Crucible” did just that. This year, the closest thing was Sam Gold’s take on “The Glass Menagerie.” And here was a show that the two of you couldn’t have disagreed about more. I won’t ask that forbidden question, but … BRANTLEY In the cases of “View” and “The Crucible,” both Arthur Miller plays, I felt Ivo van Hove, the director, was bringing out essential elements within the works, not imposing another viewpoint altogether on top of them. There was an integrity to his vision that connected to something deep within the originals. I admired the effort Mr. Gold made in “The Glass Menagerie,” but it rewrites the play, in that it makes Laura the unconditional center. She and her brother are not the product of their domineering, fantasist mother in this case; Tom and Amanda (that’s brother and Mom) had been shaped by their concern for her. GREEN That’s exactly why I liked it — not as the “Glass Menagerie” for all time, perhaps, but as a “Glass Menagerie.” I had seen it a dozen times as the story of crazy Amanda and her schizophrenogenic ways; I’m tired of that narrative. Positing her as less of a harridan, and Tom as less of a victim, and both kids as somewhat spoiled, felt like a reasonable inference, certainly if one knows Williams’s biography. Anyway, I respect that other people didn’t like it, but it did speak to me, and I’m owning it. I’m curious. You publish your review, and then you read what the other had to say, and you couldn’t be more opposed. Ben, you called the play “a sustained scene study class.” Jesse, when you were the critic for New York magazine, you called it “nakedly, bracingly theatrical.” Are you persuaded by each other’s points? GREEN I am always persuaded by everyone’s points! Especially in great plays, there are many truths to go around. But after reading, I find I have rarely been pushed off my own interpretive square. BRANTLEY Well, that’s the way it should be, isn’t it? All a critic can do — all any audience member can do — is try to convey what she or he felt in the moment of the performance. And while it’s important to revisit those feelings, I think it’s also crucial to hold onto them and figure out why you felt that way. We all like to think that our interpretations are the correct ones — and in art, they are to the extent that they are shaped by our very particular personalities and what we bring to the dialogue a play begins in our minds. So Jesse, is it because you’re a cynical New Yorker that you just didn’t get what so many audience members — and not just Canadians — appreciate about “Come From Away”? GREEN I am not in fact very cynical by New York standards. I drink tea! But it’s because I’m not cynical that I don’t like being pushed around by unearned sentimentality. For the record, let me say that I treasure Canada, have often thought I might have to move there, and am grateful for what the fine people of Gander did for all the passengers who landed there on Sept. 11. I just didn’t think the musical earned the right to borrow its energy from the disasters of that day in order to make a commercial for Newfoundland. BRANTLEY For the first 10 or even 20 minutes of the show, that was the way I felt, too. And then at a certain point, heaven help me, I dissolved. I felt there was genuine good will at work in the telling, and in the energy of the cast in bringing the narrative together. I also found it surprisingly restrained in exploiting the push-button 9/11 images. But as we’ve noted earlier, we all have our individual soft spots. Is it possible that neither of you particularly took to “Sweat,” about working-class struggles in Pennsylvania, because you live and work in the New York bubble? GREEN Ben, did you see or read “Skeleton Crew”? That’s a play, by Dominique Morisseau, that treats a similar subject (the effects of deindustrialization on workers) in what felt to me like a much more theatrical way. Lynn Nottage, the playwright of “Sweat,” and Kate Whoriskey, its director, did a great deal of research in Reading, Pa., before the play was written, but the research is what I felt coming off the stage, not the play. It’s a very, very laudable work, just not a very, very good one. But that opinion has nothing to do with where I live or where it is set. “Skeleton Crew” is set in Detroit. BRANTLEY I felt exactly the same way. It felt less effortful — more organic. The opinions were implicit; they were woven into the character. GREEN That said, I would be delighted if “Sweat” prospered, because it is a serious attempt to explain to the “bubble” what has happened outside it over the last decade. I’m just not a huge fan of explainy plays myself. That’s really my bubble, if anything is: a taste bubble. Edward Albee died in September, just as the theater season was starting. In appraising his career, Ben, you wrote that “rage and bewilderment” and “pity and terror” were appropriate responses to his work. A high bar to meet, yes, but did anything on Broadway (or even Off) come close? Or was it a “Hello, Dolly!” year after all? BRANTLEY Is anyone else taking on those big, big existential questions as nakedly as Albee did? No, but it requires a particular intellectual fierceness to do so. I don’t fault anyone for not being Edward Albee — or Harold Pinter or August Wilson. GREEN Taylor Mac did. That is, he came close to both. He’s Dolly Albee. BRANTLEY I love that: Dolly Albee. The closest examples for me occurred in two utterly different theatrical languages, precisely because they were so true to their creators’ original perspectives. That would be Caryl Churchill’s “Escaped Alone” and Peter Brook’s “Battlefield” — both much shorter and considerably less verbose than anything by Albee, but comparably bold in taking on the absolute. GREEN “Escaped Alone,” I agree, was like a time bomb in a makeup compact. So compressed and dangerous. On its much smaller scale so was “The Wolves,” which was about a suburban girls’ soccer team. Those girls could kick. |