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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 03, 2019
THEATER: "Freestyle Love Supreme" and "Derren
Brown: Secret" -- To Be Or Not To Be On Broadway
FREESTYLE LOVE SUPREME ** 1/2 out of ****
BOOTH THEATER
DERREN BROWN: SECRET *** out of ****
CORT THEATRE
What "belongs" on Broadway? Damn near anything, I say. Hip-hop
improv? Why not? A magic show? Sure! Heck, it's in the grand
tradition to let Broadway encompass everything in the world fromlectures to circus acts to singers to one-person monologues to the mostlavish extravaganza you can imagine. And a satisfying night out hasnothing to do with big budgets or big casts. Give Elaine Stritch a
microphone to talk or Bruce Springsteen a piano and a mic so he can
talk and sing and you're guaranteed a good night.
A steady stream of musical stars are following in Bruce's wake to do
concerts so they can tell the grandkids, "Hey, I played Broadway!" So
I'm looking forward to David Byrne's brilliantly reviewed touring show
American Utopia, the holiday spectacle Slava's Snowshow, Harry
Connick Jr. tackling Cole Porter and whatever else comes this way.
There's one tiny problem: money. Some critics only deal with the art.
Others are dismissed for seeing their job as purely a consumer's guide.
I can't help doing both. I'm lucky to see many shows for free, but I dotry to keep in mind I'm seeing stuff from the best seats in the houseand I didn't pay for them. Did I enjoy seeing a show? Well, if I paid$40, I might have one answer. If I paid $400, I might well have
another. One friend is a serious Springsteen fan and ponied up a lot ofmoney to see the Boss's Broadway run. And yet he just couldn't getover paying that much money for the show, as satisfying on an artisticlevel as it may have been. It just rubbed him the wrong way and kepthim from enjoying himself.MICHAEL GILTZ AT WORK
Michael Giltz is a freelance writer
based in NYC and can be reached atmgiltz@pipeline.com
FAVORITE LINKS
Americablog
Five O'Clock Lightning baseball blogDeep Pop -- Lori Lakin's Blog
The Back Page -- Jason Page on ESPN
Radio
Cine-Blog -- George Robinson's Blog
Documents On Art & Cinema - Daryl
Chin's Blog
Brucie G's Wondrous Blog Of
Adventure and Mystery -- Bruce
Greenspan's Blog
BLOG ARCHIVE
▼ 2019 (71)
▼ October (9)
THEATER: "Terra Firma" Is On
Shaky Ground
On the other hand, I once paid more money than I ever did before for
concert tickets to see Simon & Garfunkel in concert. And boy am I
glad I did. Recently, I did the same to see Jake Gyllenhaal in Sunday
In The Park With George -- for me, it was a lot of money. If I could
afford it, I'd fly to London next summer and pay the same amount tosee him in it again.
And it's not just the money. I saw Betrayal on Broadway and it was a
pitch perfect presentation. If I saw that same play at Madison SquareGarden (at any price), it just wouldn't work. It's the wrong space forthat show. Some shows BELONG on Broadway for all sorts of reasons.
And some don't.
Which bring me to Freestyle Love Supreme. Conceived by Anthony
Veneziale and created by him, director Thomas Kail and Lin-Manuel
Miranda, it's classic improv with a hip-hop twist. If you've ever seenan improv group, you know the drill. Audiences shout out ideas like a
verb or a pet peeve or the like, the emcee chooses one and the cast
goes to town. Instead of creating skits, in this case they create free-flowing raps. It's fun, genial, modestly entertaining and if it was OffBroadway at $40-60, I'd highly recommend it to one and all.
On Broadway, at Broadway prices? Then I hesitate. It doesn't help that
the performance I caught was nots a barn-burner. The show surely canbe better. But even at its best, it just feels like the sort ofentertainment that should run and run Off Broadway a la Stomp and
Blue Man Group. That said, Aneesa Folds was a very welcome femalepresence the night I caught it. I'm still not quite sure why she didn'tcome out with the rest of the guys at the start, but thank god shearrived soon after. The guest rapper was Christopher Jackson ofHamilton . (As long as the audience gets one of the original cast
members of that landmark show, they may feel their Broadway buckswere well-spent.) And co-creator and emcee and all-around winningpresence Veneziale set the perfect tone.THEATER: "The Glass
Menagerie" Sans Tricks Or
Trea...
THEATER: Wrestling With
Faith in "Heroes Of The Fo...
THEATER: A Bright Future In
Reach For "Chasing Rai...
THEATER: The Not-So "Great
Society"
THEATER: BOO! A Halloween
Scare Fest Closes Its Ey...
THEATER: "A(loft) Modulation"
-- A Play With Jazz ...
THEATER: "Freestyle Love
Supreme" and "Derren
Brow...
BOOKS: A Fantasy Classic
Finally Translated Into E...
► September (11)
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► 2009 (43)
► 2008 (86)
► 2007 (781)
► 2006 (2412)
► 2005 (5)
The show climaxes with the group recreating the day of an audience
member, with musician Arthur Lewis stepping up for some funcrooning to add variety to the vocals. Mine involved a woman who ranover her basketball-playing brother's foot and weirdly detoured intothe brother being dead and the woman also plowing into a crowd of
bystanders. Huh? Indeed, the highlights can't be planned or built into
the show. You never know where they'll occur and for me it was Foldssaying "Noooooo!" repeatedly during a rant about raisins. Was it a
pleasant evening? Absolutely. Would I recommend it? Ummm....
I had the opposite reaction to entertainer Derren Brown tacklingBroadway. His show of "psychological manipulation" aka good old-fashioned magic/mentalism dressed up in science drag played likegangbusters Off Broadway and won a Drama Desk Award. No wonder.
He's been a big hit in the UK for years, doing a string of TV specials
and shows in the West End.
So any fears that Brown might not be able to "fill" a Broadway house
with just his compelling patter were utter nonsense. He belongs
onstage and knows it and the audience knows it too. Brown delivers aclassic evening, from a modest stumble at the start (just so you knowthings don't always work out) to seemingly impossible acts of mind-reading (not that he calls it that) to a grand finale that leaves jaws
dropping. On a second viewing, I especially enjoyed his gift for gab and
the way Brown paces certain moments. Brown goes to great lengths todress up his magician's skills at misdirection and manipulation asscientifically based.
Nonetheless, he knows how to hold a crowd. When he's doing what a
lesser magician might call "mind-reading" and shouting out details
that audience members want to keep secret, Brown seems barraged bypsychic information. He stumbles this way and that, calling out the
details of an audience member onstage but then veering off to reveal
something about a member in the balcony and someone in the firstfew rows and then back to the person onstage, as if his mind is
absorbing it all and he can barely control the flow.
And it's all utter nonsense, as he repeatedly insists you remember,
whether you want to embrace the pseudo-science he dishes up or play
spoiler like me and try and figure out what he's doing when and where.(If you figure it all out, do give me a call. I'm still stumped. In otherwords, he's a terrific entertainer. To me, it was worth every penny. Myguest when I saw it Off Broadway loved the big reveal at the end. My
guest on Broadway felt played for a fool. No, he didn't think it was
mentalism, but it was ALL manipulated by Brown from the start. Itmade him rather grumpy, which I must admit was fun for me. Somepeople just don't like magic.
Worth every penny? Yes, especially since Brown is not a big enough
name to be charging Moulin Rouge! style prices. But what do I know?It turns out Freestyle Love Supreme is quite well at the box office the
first few weeks while Derren Brown (despite very good reviews) is nottearing it up. Lucky you: that means you can see Brown on Broadwaywithout breaking the bank. And everyone paying to see
Freestyle Love
Supreme is having fun and telling their friends. So what do I know? I
loved the musical Avenue Q, but when they decided to leap to
Broadway, I thought they were nuts. Off Broadway, I was sure it would
run for years. On Broadway, I wasn't so sure. Would people pay top
dollar? Would they be ready to see puppet sex on the Great WhiteWay? After 2500 performances, I stopped wondering.
THEATER OF 2019
Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **
Estado Vegetal ***
Hans Christian Andersen * 1/2
Cirque du Soleil: Luzia ***
BLKS ** 1/2
Moulin Rouge ** 1/2
Bat Out Of Hell **
Unchilding **
Sea Wall/ A Life ** 1/2
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ***
Betrayal *** 1/2
Fifty Million Frenchmen ** 1/2
Freestyle Love Supreme ** 1/2
Derren Brown: Secret ***
A(loft) ModulationThe Great Society
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book
lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the
way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new
releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal
recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz
Sandbox , a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on
entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as
guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website.
Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called
Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
POSTED BY MICHAEL GILTZ AT 1:00 AM
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THEATER: "Freestyle Love Supreme" and "Derren
Brown: Secret" -- To Be Or Not To Be On Broadway
FREESTYLE LOVE SUPREME ** 1/2 out of ****
BOOTH THEATER
DERREN BROWN: SECRET *** out of ****
CORT THEATRE
What "belongs" on Broadway? Damn near anything, I say. Hip-hop
improv? Why not? A magic show? Sure! Heck, it's in the grand
tradition to let Broadway encompass everything in the world fromlectures to circus acts to singers to one-person monologues to the mostlavish extravaganza you can imagine. And a satisfying night out hasnothing to do with big budgets or big casts. Give Elaine Stritch a
microphone to talk or Bruce Springsteen a piano and a mic so he can
talk and sing and you're guaranteed a good night.
A steady stream of musical stars are following in Bruce's wake to do
concerts so they can tell the grandkids, "Hey, I played Broadway!" So
I'm looking forward to David Byrne's brilliantly reviewed touring show
American Utopia, the holiday spectacle Slava's Snowshow, Harry
Connick Jr. tackling Cole Porter and whatever else comes this way.
There's one tiny problem: money. Some critics only deal with the art.
Others are dismissed for seeing their job as purely a consumer's guide.
I can't help doing both. I'm lucky to see many shows for free, but I dotry to keep in mind I'm seeing stuff from the best seats in the houseand I didn't pay for them. Did I enjoy seeing a show? Well, if I paid$40, I might have one answer. If I paid $400, I might well have
another. One friend is a serious Springsteen fan and ponied up a lot ofmoney to see the Boss's Broadway run. And yet he just couldn't getover paying that much money for the show, as satisfying on an artisticlevel as it may have been. It just rubbed him the wrong way and kepthim from enjoying himself.MICHAEL GILTZ AT WORK
Michael Giltz is a freelance writer
based in NYC and can be reached atmgiltz@pipeline.com
FAVORITE LINKS
Americablog
Five O'Clock Lightning baseball blogDeep Pop -- Lori Lakin's Blog
The Back Page -- Jason Page on ESPN
Radio
Cine-Blog -- George Robinson's Blog
Documents On Art & Cinema - Daryl
Chin's Blog
Brucie G's Wondrous Blog Of
Adventure and Mystery -- Bruce
Greenspan's Blog
BLOG ARCHIVE
▼ 2019 (71)
▼ October (9)
THEATER: "Terra Firma" Is On
Shaky Ground
On the other hand, I once paid more money than I ever did before for
concert tickets to see Simon & Garfunkel in concert. And boy am I
glad I did. Recently, I did the same to see Jake Gyllenhaal in Sunday
In The Park With George -- for me, it was a lot of money. If I could
afford it, I'd fly to London next summer and pay the same amount tosee him in it again.
And it's not just the money. I saw Betrayal on Broadway and it was a
pitch perfect presentation. If I saw that same play at Madison SquareGarden (at any price), it just wouldn't work. It's the wrong space forthat show. Some shows BELONG on Broadway for all sorts of reasons.
And some don't.
Which bring me to Freestyle Love Supreme. Conceived by Anthony
Veneziale and created by him, director Thomas Kail and Lin-Manuel
Miranda, it's classic improv with a hip-hop twist. If you've ever seenan improv group, you know the drill. Audiences shout out ideas like a
verb or a pet peeve or the like, the emcee chooses one and the cast
goes to town. Instead of creating skits, in this case they create free-flowing raps. It's fun, genial, modestly entertaining and if it was OffBroadway at $40-60, I'd highly recommend it to one and all.
On Broadway, at Broadway prices? Then I hesitate. It doesn't help that
the performance I caught was nots a barn-burner. The show surely canbe better. But even at its best, it just feels like the sort ofentertainment that should run and run Off Broadway a la Stomp and
Blue Man Group. That said, Aneesa Folds was a very welcome femalepresence the night I caught it. I'm still not quite sure why she didn'tcome out with the rest of the guys at the start, but thank god shearrived soon after. The guest rapper was Christopher Jackson ofHamilton . (As long as the audience gets one of the original cast
members of that landmark show, they may feel their Broadway buckswere well-spent.) And co-creator and emcee and all-around winningpresence Veneziale set the perfect tone.THEATER: "The Glass
Menagerie" Sans Tricks Or
Trea...
THEATER: Wrestling With
Faith in "Heroes Of The Fo...
THEATER: A Bright Future In
Reach For "Chasing Rai...
THEATER: The Not-So "Great
Society"
THEATER: BOO! A Halloween
Scare Fest Closes Its Ey...
THEATER: "A(loft) Modulation"
-- A Play With Jazz ...
THEATER: "Freestyle Love
Supreme" and "Derren
Brow...
BOOKS: A Fantasy Classic
Finally Translated Into E...
► September (11)
► August (9)
► July (7)
► June (3)
► May (8)
► April (10)
► March (5)
► February (1)
► January (8)
► 2018 (38)
► 2017 (6)
► 2016 (2)
► 2015 (29)
► 2014 (2)
► 2013 (5)
► 2012 (17)
► 2011 (15)
► 2010 (10)
► 2009 (43)
► 2008 (86)
► 2007 (781)
► 2006 (2412)
► 2005 (5)
The show climaxes with the group recreating the day of an audience
member, with musician Arthur Lewis stepping up for some funcrooning to add variety to the vocals. Mine involved a woman who ranover her basketball-playing brother's foot and weirdly detoured intothe brother being dead and the woman also plowing into a crowd of
bystanders. Huh? Indeed, the highlights can't be planned or built into
the show. You never know where they'll occur and for me it was Foldssaying "Noooooo!" repeatedly during a rant about raisins. Was it a
pleasant evening? Absolutely. Would I recommend it? Ummm....
I had the opposite reaction to entertainer Derren Brown tacklingBroadway. His show of "psychological manipulation" aka good old-fashioned magic/mentalism dressed up in science drag played likegangbusters Off Broadway and won a Drama Desk Award. No wonder.
He's been a big hit in the UK for years, doing a string of TV specials
and shows in the West End.
So any fears that Brown might not be able to "fill" a Broadway house
with just his compelling patter were utter nonsense. He belongs
onstage and knows it and the audience knows it too. Brown delivers aclassic evening, from a modest stumble at the start (just so you knowthings don't always work out) to seemingly impossible acts of mind-reading (not that he calls it that) to a grand finale that leaves jaws
dropping. On a second viewing, I especially enjoyed his gift for gab and
the way Brown paces certain moments. Brown goes to great lengths todress up his magician's skills at misdirection and manipulation asscientifically based.
Nonetheless, he knows how to hold a crowd. When he's doing what a
lesser magician might call "mind-reading" and shouting out details
that audience members want to keep secret, Brown seems barraged bypsychic information. He stumbles this way and that, calling out the
details of an audience member onstage but then veering off to reveal
something about a member in the balcony and someone in the firstfew rows and then back to the person onstage, as if his mind is
absorbing it all and he can barely control the flow.
And it's all utter nonsense, as he repeatedly insists you remember,
whether you want to embrace the pseudo-science he dishes up or play
spoiler like me and try and figure out what he's doing when and where.(If you figure it all out, do give me a call. I'm still stumped. In otherwords, he's a terrific entertainer. To me, it was worth every penny. Myguest when I saw it Off Broadway loved the big reveal at the end. My
guest on Broadway felt played for a fool. No, he didn't think it was
mentalism, but it was ALL manipulated by Brown from the start. Itmade him rather grumpy, which I must admit was fun for me. Somepeople just don't like magic.
Worth every penny? Yes, especially since Brown is not a big enough
name to be charging Moulin Rouge! style prices. But what do I know?It turns out Freestyle Love Supreme is quite well at the box office the
first few weeks while Derren Brown (despite very good reviews) is nottearing it up. Lucky you: that means you can see Brown on Broadwaywithout breaking the bank. And everyone paying to see
Freestyle Love
Supreme is having fun and telling their friends. So what do I know? I
loved the musical Avenue Q, but when they decided to leap to
Broadway, I thought they were nuts. Off Broadway, I was sure it would
run for years. On Broadway, I wasn't so sure. Would people pay top
dollar? Would they be ready to see puppet sex on the Great WhiteWay? After 2500 performances, I stopped wondering.
THEATER OF 2019
Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **
Estado Vegetal ***
Hans Christian Andersen * 1/2
Cirque du Soleil: Luzia ***
BLKS ** 1/2
Moulin Rouge ** 1/2
Bat Out Of Hell **
Unchilding **
Sea Wall/ A Life ** 1/2
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ***
Betrayal *** 1/2
Fifty Million Frenchmen ** 1/2
Freestyle Love Supreme ** 1/2
Derren Brown: Secret ***
A(loft) ModulationThe Great Society
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book
lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the
way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new
releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal
recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz
Sandbox , a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on
entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as
guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website.
Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called
Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
POSTED BY MICHAEL GILTZ AT 1:00 AM
NO COMMENTS:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)Newer Post Older Post Home