Category Archives: Theater

My friend Dave Schwartz (one of thousands of Dave Schwartzes I know) informs me that he went to see What About Dick? last night and the evening did not close with "The Dick Anthem," the song it closed with on the first night when I saw it. Instead, they did a reprise of a tongue-twister tune that Billy Connolly sang to close the first act. So they seem to have cut the title song, the one you can hear a bit of in this video.

I'm a little curious to see what becomes of this show. I assume there will be a cable special and/or DVD of what's playing through tonight down at the Orpheum in downtown L.A. But what else? At first thought, you'd figure this was a chance to test out the material and maybe then do a rewrite for a longer-running production somewhere…but I'm thinking that wouldn't make a lot of sense. Testing the play out with a cast like that isn't going to tell you much about how it will fare without Mr. Connolly, Ms. Ullman, Mr. Izzard, etc. And if you have this DVD out, people are going to go expecting that play, not the rewrite. Someone who has a small theater group in Oregon wrote to ask me if I thought this play would be good for his company to do sometime. The answer is I don't have a clue. We weren't listening to the play. We were watching Mr. Connolly, Ms. Ullman, Mr. Izzard, etc. So I don't know what, if anything, lies ahead for it. But it sure was fun to see last Thursday night.

And this is not Dick Clark we're talking about here. It's Dick, an Oxford undergraduate and Aunt Maggie's nephew…the lead character in a new play by Eric Idle with songs by Mr. Idle and his Spamalot collaborator, John Du Prez. Last night, my friend Mickey Paraskevas took me to the first of four performances they're doing down at the Orpheum Theater in Downtown Los Angeles. The performances, which continue through Sunday, are being video-recorded for sale or broadcast somewhere at some time. I would imagine they're going to edit together the best moments from the four tries but they could probably just go with what they did last night. The audience sure laughed and applauded a lot.

What's it about? I don't know. Something about a piano. Mr. Idle played the piano. Well no, actually, he didn't play the piano. He played the role of the piano, which is the narrator of the piece. A piano is the narrator? Believe it or not, that made more sense than almost anything else on the stage.

Now, when I tell you I don't know what this play I saw is about, it's not because I'm dumb or wasn't paying attention. I polled several friends I encountered at Intermission and they didn't know what the play was about. I asked some strangers sitting around us. They didn't understand the story, either. In fact, none of us could hear or understand half the dialogue and we still all found it very funny.

Part of this is due to the cast…and get a load of these names: In addition to Mr. Idle, there's Russell Brand, Billy Connolly, Tim Curry, Eddie Izzard, Jane Leeves, Jim Piddock, Tracey Ullman and Sophie Winkleman. Everyone was very funny but I have to tell you. Even when we couldn't understand what they were saying — which was half the time with Ms. Ullman and every single moment with Mr. Connolly — Tracey Ullman and Billy Connolly were hysterical.

The play is a staged reading of a live radio drama allegedly broadcast in 1941, though for some reason, they say the "f" word an awful lot which I don't think people did much on live radio in 1941. They also rarely mentioned Sarah Palin or the Kardashians, as the characters in this play set in 1941 do. Some of the hilarity comes from Bloopers-style screw-ups, many of which came from Eddie Izzard, who had the toughest roles. (Most cast members play several roles.) One of his characters was a seer from India named Deepak Rushdie Obi Ben Kingsley and while Mr. Izzard is a marvelous talent, his skill set does not include a good Indian accent. He was well aware of that, and also that he was missing cues, and was ad-libbing his apologies. He was quite funny in so doing. Everyone was quite funny. You'll especially enjoy it if you love double entendre references to "Dick" because there are an awful lot of them.

Our inability to hear half the lines was partly due to laughter drowning them out and partly due to a clumsy sound system. Mickey and I somehow got front row center seats — as close to the action as you can get without holding an Equity card. So in light of our problem, I wonder if they could hear anything clearly up in the balcony. The fact that they were howling with laughter up there doesn't mean they could because we folks down front couldn't hear a lot of it and we were laughing, too.

We had a glorious time and I want to mention two other "stars" of the evening. One is a gent named Tony Palermo who was onstage doing live sound effects in the style of old radio. He does them for many local productions and he's really good at them. And the other star was the Orpheum Theater, a grand old palace built in 1926. Not that long ago, it was in disrepair and there was talk of tearing it down before it fell down. Someone went in, spent millions and now it's magnificent and sparkling…but retaining that old-time feel.

It was a great place to spend a great evening…and if you're not going to be at any of the three remaining performances, don't despair. It was recorded and it'll be marketed somehow at some time. I'm looking forward to getting a DVD myself. Maybe if I watch it 10-20 times, I'll figure out what that thing I laughed so much at last night was all about.

This year's Tony Awards telecast will be June 10. And Neil Patrick Harris will be back as host.

A Broadway musical based on National Lampoon's Animal House? Hey, why not? And I can already imagine the promotions: Half-price tix on Toga Night if you come dressed in a bedsheet. Or they'll do it like a Gallagher concert and the first three rows will be wearing trash bags to protect their clothes during the Food Fight.

Interesting, by the way, that that film has somehow become "the 1978 John Belushi comedy." I seem to recall him having star billing on it but nowhere near as much screen time as some of the other players.

The score is being written by the rock band, Barenaked Ladies. I'm guessing that's to supplement a couple of songs from the movie. They can't leave out "Shout," can they?

Sorry to hear that the Reprise Theater Company here in L.A. is cancelling another show and suspending its major operations. If you read back on this site, you'll see me praising one production after another of this group. Since '97, they've staged three productions per year of classic musicals along with occasional special events. All have been mounted with modest budgets and very little prep and rehearsal time…and the batting average has been astounding. As I think back over great evenings I've spent in the theater, an awful lot of them have been at Reprise productions.

So what's going wrong here? Wish I knew. It can't be the quality of the shows. Some probably would think it's the selection of the shows. This year, they started with a first-rate Cabaret but the rest of the season was to be The Baker's Wife and The Apple Tree and I can understand that maybe audiences weren't jonesing to see those two, lesser-known shows. Last season they had Kiss Me, Kate followed by Gigi and They're Playing Our Song. The year before, it was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Carousel. But the choices for this season do not explain the problem. Reprise was losing money with the well-known shows. At worst, they made things a tad worse picking The Baker's Wife and The Apple Tree.

I don't have an answer. Good theater. Reasonably priced. In a comfortable building. And they can't make a go of it. The only hopeful thing I can say here is that I've dealt with the Reprise management and they're really smart, determined folks. If there's a way to make this work, they'll find it.

A Year With The Producers is a new softcover book by Jeffry Denman, who played various small roles in the biggest smash Broadway has seen in years.  He also understudied Matthew Broderick, who contributed a foreword to this delightful journal of one year (a little more than that, actually) as Denman closed in his previous show, Cats, and segued to something that may run just as long.  His book is perceptively written, personal without being self-obsessed, and — overall — the kind of thing I wish had been written by many participants in many shows of the past.

The very perspective of the book is interesting since Denman was not involved in the high-level decisions and is often forced to report on them with no inside info as to why such-and-such was done.  Still, one gets a pretty complete portrait of the show, at least as it appeared to those on one level during its formation.  If you'd like to buy a copy from Amazon-dot-com, click here and your purchase will also help out this site.