Ann Baggley
What a joy it is to see “Something Rotten” transformed into something terrific.
The caffeinated comedy, which played New York back in 2015, is the marquee musical of the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, an easy trip for New Yorkers.
And before this year, one would have had to search far and wide to find “Something Rotten” on any theater lover’s list of favorites.
Talk about “all’s well that ends well” — the show of Shakespearean shenanigans has a sit-com’s supply of belly laughs. Really, it’s a north-of-the-border reinvention.
What the Broadway musical needed, it turns out, was to schlep 500 miles away from 42nd Street to a 71-year-old festival that made its reputation with stagings of the Bard’s plays.
Since the mid-aughts, Stratford’s musicals, earthier than ours, have gotten better and better. New Yorkers will recall its “Jesus Christ Superstar” that played Midtown in 2011. But director Donna Feore’s “Something Rotten” is, by far, the funniest one I’ve seen there in 17 years.
The show, with a score by Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick and book by John O’Farrell, is about a down-on-his-luck playwright named Nick Bottom (Mark Uhre), whose contemporary is unfortunately William Shakespeare — depicted as a swaggering Mick Jagger type by Jeff Lillico.
Desperate for a big break of his own, Nick visits a soothsayer, Thomas Nostradamus (Dan Chameroy), a nepo baby trying to leech off his better-known uncle’s fame. He’s a hack, but he makes at least one accurate prediction: The future of theater is, like it or not, musicals.
His brilliant number, “A Musical,” is a struggle-to-breathe hysterical lampooning of “Les Miserables,” “A Chorus Line,” “Cats,” and a zillion more. Feore, a spirited choreographer who loves packing in nerdy easter eggs, includes visual nods to years of festival shows.
I didn’t recognize Chameroy, an actor I’ve watched many times, until I read the program at intermission. The hilarious guy, who plays Nostradamus as an unkempt troll under the bridge, is human Silly Putty.
Nostradamus also reveals that Shakespeare is hard at work on a new show he’s pretty sure is called… “Omelette.” Close enough! Ready to compete, Nick and his brother Nigel (Henry Firmston) begin writing “Omelette: The Musical.”
Look, I’m not saying any of this is remotely sophisticated.
But a big part of “Something Rotten”’s newfound success is that it’s a boozed-up party crasher in a typically classy room.
Instead of being performed on a hokey, ye olde Elizabethan set, director Donna Feore’s production treads the same boards as this season’s “Romeo & Juliet” and “Twelfth Night.” A Shakespeare-focused environment adds both believability and irreverence to a show that is so easy to make cheesy and over-indulgent.
The cast embodies that same rebellious spirit. Their comedic personas, more real than razzmatazz, reminded me of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” rather than your average song-and-dance spectacular.
As Nick, Uhre pairs Jerry Seinfeld’s underdog skepticism with a surprise flair for tap dancing. And Henry Firmston, as his lovesick brother Nigel, dials up the doofiness just enough to make the Festival Theatre audience want to adopt him.
They’ll be running amok through Nov. 16.
Across town at Stratford’s Avon Theatre is yet more singing, wackiness, mistaken identities and manic show people, only in an already beloved musical, “La Cage aux Folles.”
Jerry Herman’s 1983 tuner was groundbreaking in its day, making gays and drag queens the layered main characters of huge Broadway hit. The stirring ballad “I Am What I Am,” later covered by Gloria Gaynor, and the euphoric “The Best of Times is Now” both came from it.
Stratford’s genial production, directed by Thom Allison, is not the best I’ve seen.
It’s spare, much like the last Broadway revival starring Douglas Hodge and Kelsey Grammer, but indecisive as to whether that’s because the French Riviera drag nightclub is glamorous or seedy. There’s no discernible point of view. Vagueness abounds.
But the story of Georges’ (Sean Arbuckle) son Jean-Michel (James Daly) becoming engaged to the daughter of a conservative politician, and the madcap effort to hide the family business, still makes you smile and packs a punch when it matters most.
That’s because Steve Ross’ Albin — a k a Zaza, the sassy star of La Cage — ranks with the greats. His voice booms like George Hearn’s, but his power conceals a flower’s fragility that turns on the waterworks. All it takes is a few notes of his first dressing-room number, “A Little More Mascara,” for us to go gaga for Zaza.
Backstage drama is an accidental trend at Stratford this year, most obviously in the world premiere play called “Salesman in China.”
The enticing new drama by Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy also concerns a renowned playwright and his acclaimed work, just as “Something Rotten” does. However, you won’t find any jabs at “Seussical” or Andrew Lloyd Webber here.
Instead, you’ll watch Arthur Miller grapple, sometimes furiously, with the peculiarities of Chinese culture as he attempts to direct the first production of “Death of a Salesman” in China.
It’s 1983, just four years after the US completed normalizing diplomatic relations with the Asian country. Miller (Tom McCamus) is in residence at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. And, boy, is he cranky.
Ying Ruochang (Adrian Pang), the actor playing that tragic titan Willy Loman, is deferential and obsessed with “Salesman.” But the rest of the cast, few of whom speak English, can’t wrap their heads around the masterpiece.
Living in a Communist nation, they can barely comprehend what a traveling salesman even is. Willy’s rocky relationship with his sons doesn’t make a lick of sense to them. Meanwhile, the government wants to cut a long chunk of the play, they claim, because Miller’s drama is too long.
Many of the rehearsal clashes tickle the crowd. But one is a sneaky heartbreaker.
When a designer presents his elaborate character masks and blonde wigs that make the wearers look like stereotypical white Americans, per Chinese stage custom, Miller is appalled.
To the writer — and I suspect most of the North American audience — they’re offensive and cartoonish. The performers should look like their authentic selves, the playwright demands.
But, the locals struggle to explain to Miller, the masks and wigs are authentic to Chinese playgoers. The crushed artisan has spent many sleepless nights trying to perfect every hair and pore for Miller, only to be ridiculed. It’s a shattering speech.
That makeup and costumes are not the first (or, hell, fifth) thing that comes to mind when you think of “Death of a Salesman” shows how wide the gulf is between American and Chinese attitudes and tradition. And how remarkable it is that the monumental Beijing production ever made it to opening night.
And that is why I suspect “Salesman in China,” which is performed in English and Chinese (with subtitles), will become a hot title stateside.
Not only is it a fascinating piece of little-known history, but the engrossing play also boils down a still-contentious, extremely complicated, massively relevant multinational divide into an idea that’s simple, timeless and universal: The show must go on.