SITE GUIDE
SEARCH
REVIEWS
REVIEW ARCHIVES
ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP
FEATURES
NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings
LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
NYC Restaurants
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Connecticut
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
TKTS
PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
A CurtainUp Feature
Some Stories Are told As (or more) Effectively
Stripped to Their Essence as Big and Splashy
Shows covered:The Color Purple . . .A View From the Bridge . . .
Dames At Sea . . .Spotlight the Film/Sin . . .Woman In Gold Stripped to Their Essence as Big and Splashy
By Elyse Sommer
The Color Purple
The Color Purple is the latest of this season's revivals to hit Broadway in a pared down edition. It had me pondering the many roads taken by writers and directors in taking a story from page to screen or stage, or reviving previous productions.
Alice Walker's 1982 best-selling book has certainly run the gamut: A big, splashy Stephen Spielberg production starring Whoopi Goldberg, a long-in-the-making 2005 musical with LaChanze headlining a large cast and colorfully and evocatively designed by John Lee Beatty, and now a new version stamped with director John Doyle's scenery eviscerating style —still true to Marcia Norman's book but with fewer actors and chairs as the main scenic props.
While I didn't think it was another Porgy and Bess and found some of the extravaganza-like staging a bit too excessive, I liked the 2005 production a lot better than some other critics. This time around I find myself more on the same page as all who praised the Doylization. So. . . this just goes to show that, true to the maxim about there being more than one way to skin a cat, if you have a potent story and fine performers, there are different ways to successfully tell that story. (Reviews of the Color Purple currently on Broadway and in London ; and my review of the 2005 Broadway production .
A View From the Bridge
To tie in with Arthur Miller's centennial, another high profile minimalist director Ivo Van Hove has brought A View From the Bridge back to Broadway for the first time— and with a far more drastic minimalism. Besides actually eliminating characters and any place defining kitchen sink realism, his actors wear no costumes, not even shoes. Since I thought both previous directors' presentations of View. . . compelling and memorably performed, I was a bit apprehensive about Van Hove's presenting it as if in a Greek amphitheater. But lo and behold, the Vanhovized production drew me in. So once again, a strong vision and performances can make even drastically different from a work as originally presented work. ( Reviews of View From The Bridge: Current Broadway production London production, 2010 Broadway revival and 1998 Broadway revival ).
Dames At Sea
Dames at Sea, yet another reconceived revival hasn't worked quite as well. Unlike Color Purple and A View From the Bridge, it was never on Broadway. And, while my colleague Simon Saltzman loved the small cast production ( Review), I thought its minimalism applied not just to its casting, but to its durability and strength as a musical worthy of a Broadway production.
Spotlight the Film/Sin: [A Cardinal Deposed]
The question of whether pared down, unfussy story telling can be as or even more, effective than one employing a larger more detailed in every way, also came to mind after seeing several of this season's new films: Spotlight and Woman in Gold.
I went to see Michael McCarthy and Josh Singe's Spotlight mostly because, as someone saddened by the shrinking opportunities for serious journalism careers I find story of serious investigative journalism irresistible. As a theater critic, I was also drawn in by the stage actor heavy cast: Liev Schreiber, Mark ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Brian d'Arcy James, Stanley Tucci, billy Cruddup, John Slattery. Wow!
The two hour film takes us to multiple locations without a dull moment. And the actors are terrific. No way this could be effectively turned into a screen to stage adaptation. But wait, the story of how Cardinal Law infamously protected the priests who abused countless children has indeed already been done as a very effective small scale play. That was Sin: (A Cardinal Disposed back in 2004 mounted by the New Group ( Review ). Instead of using the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize winning expose as the story-telling device, director Carl Forsman and writer Michael Murphy used Law's trial and six actors (two playing all the witnesses) to make it all work on a single set. Clearly, this is yet another example of good stories being adaptable whether writ small or big.
Woman In Gold
Simon Curtis's take of journalist Anna Marie O'Connor's book The Lady in Gold is a must-see for Helen Mirren's many fans. The minimalism here applies to the use of the source material. The film focuses on the key segments of the final part of O'Connor's exhaustive and well worth telling 3-part coverage of the art works stolen from Jews by the Viennese during the Nazi era. There's no shortage of locations as octogenarian Maria Altman (Mirren) and composer Arnold Schoenberg's grandson, a lawyer, fight for the return of her family's stolen Gustave Klimt paintings. While I liked the book, the less comprehensive film works beautifully. Yet another way some stories can be told as (or more) effectively when stripped to their most dramatically potent essence.
Postscript: The busy Mirren also plays a minor role (gossip columnist Hedda Hopper) in John McNamara adaptation of Bruce Cook's book for a new movie about Dalton Trumbo starring Bryan Cranston. It so happens that there was a small-scale live play about Trumbo in 2004, based on letters published by his son. ( Review ).
Book of Mormon -CD