Michael Therriault (left) and Mark Ledbetter in The Tin Pan Alley Rag. / Photo by Joan Marcus
The Roundabout, perpetrator of several of last season’s worst Broadway offerings, has fired its first warning shot of the new season at audiences with the lifeless jukebox musical The Tin Pan Alley Rag, which imagines a meeting between kings of ragtime Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin. As the two men swap long stories—all carefully curated by playwright Mark Saltzman to achieve maximum emotional manipulation—only people who have no knowledge of either songwriter could possibly find much to hold them on the edge of their seat.
Among other banalities, we’re told that Berlin lacked the ambition to compose “serious” music, and so vowed to turn Tin Pan Alley songs into high art; the title character of Joplin’s Treemonisha opera was based on his wife of 10 months, rather than on himself, as most Joplin scholars claim; and the young Berlin was a profit-obsessed bastard.
Even the two composers’ songs are done a disservice by the production, mostly appearing in truncated form that hardly allows the talented singers the chance to delve into them before Saltzman is back with more melodramatic dialogue. Michael Therriault nails Berlin’s confidence but overplays the character’s smarminess, while Michael Boatman manages to come out likable but dull as Joplin. And on the heels of Jenny Fellner’s thankless role in the Roundabout’s Pal Joey comes her thankless role in this production, as Berlin’s ill-fated first wife Dorothy. When Beowulf Boritt’s ever-evolving set represents the evening’s most interesting moments in a musical featuring Berlin and Joplin songs, there’s a serious problem with the material.
Downtown at the Bleecker Street Theatre, farce Perfect Wedding has one of those involved plots that hinges on misunderstandings that could be easily cleared up by a sentence or two, but the cast throw themselves into the show so completely that you find yourself caught up in all the mistaken identities and door-slamming anyway.
The morning of his wedding, Bill (Matt Johnson) wakes up in the honeymoon suite with a naked woman in bed beside him. From then on, the day spirals out of control as Bill enlists best man Tom (Fabio Pires) and the hotel maid Julie (Dayna Grayber) in keeping his bride-to-be Rachel (Amber Bela Muse) and her mother (Ghana Leigh) from discovering his bachelor party tryst.
Playwright Robin Hawdon eventually loses his restraint and goes over-the-top, but director Teresa K. Pond keeps the actors on a tight leash. She’ll let them mug and ham it up, but she never lets them drag the pacing down. Only Pires, whose accent occasionally trips him up, occasionally knocks the show’s rhythm off. But Grayber and Kristi McCarson, as the girl in Bill’s bed, both turn in knockout comedy performances. And in McCarson’s case, she supplies both the comedy and the pathos as a woman who’s fallen in love with the wrong man. As off-Broadway farces go, Perfect Wedding is as close to perfect as it gets.
Through Sept. 6. Laura Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-719-1300, $75–$85.
Through Aug. 2. Bleecker Street Theatre, 45 Bleecker St. (betw. Mott & Lafayette Sts.), 212-579-0528, $25.
Among other banalities, we’re told that Berlin lacked the ambition to compose “serious” music, and so vowed to turn Tin Pan Alley songs into high art; the title character of Joplin’s Treemonisha opera was based on his wife of 10 months, rather than on himself, as most Joplin scholars claim; and the young Berlin was a profit-obsessed bastard.
Even the two composers’ songs are done a disservice by the production, mostly appearing in truncated form that hardly allows the talented singers the chance to delve into them before Saltzman is back with more melodramatic dialogue. Michael Therriault nails Berlin’s confidence but overplays the character’s smarminess, while Michael Boatman manages to come out likable but dull as Joplin. And on the heels of Jenny Fellner’s thankless role in the Roundabout’s Pal Joey comes her thankless role in this production, as Berlin’s ill-fated first wife Dorothy. When Beowulf Boritt’s ever-evolving set represents the evening’s most interesting moments in a musical featuring Berlin and Joplin songs, there’s a serious problem with the material.
***
Downtown at the Bleecker Street Theatre, farce Perfect Wedding has one of those involved plots that hinges on misunderstandings that could be easily cleared up by a sentence or two, but the cast throw themselves into the show so completely that you find yourself caught up in all the mistaken identities and door-slamming anyway.
The morning of his wedding, Bill (Matt Johnson) wakes up in the honeymoon suite with a naked woman in bed beside him. From then on, the day spirals out of control as Bill enlists best man Tom (Fabio Pires) and the hotel maid Julie (Dayna Grayber) in keeping his bride-to-be Rachel (Amber Bela Muse) and her mother (Ghana Leigh) from discovering his bachelor party tryst.
Playwright Robin Hawdon eventually loses his restraint and goes over-the-top, but director Teresa K. Pond keeps the actors on a tight leash. She’ll let them mug and ham it up, but she never lets them drag the pacing down. Only Pires, whose accent occasionally trips him up, occasionally knocks the show’s rhythm off. But Grayber and Kristi McCarson, as the girl in Bill’s bed, both turn in knockout comedy performances. And in McCarson’s case, she supplies both the comedy and the pathos as a woman who’s fallen in love with the wrong man. As off-Broadway farces go, Perfect Wedding is as close to perfect as it gets.
Through Sept. 6. Laura Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-719-1300, $75–$85.
Through Aug. 2. Bleecker Street Theatre, 45 Bleecker St. (betw. Mott & Lafayette Sts.), 212-579-0528, $25.
