Tag: Steven Pasquale

My Favorite Performances, 2014

Bryan Cranston, All the Way – It was staggering to see Cranston transform from the dopey dad on Malcolm in the Middle to the now-legendary Walter White on Breaking Bad. His performance as President Lyndon B. Johnson during the first year of his presidency was another astonishing feat. A tour-de-force, Cranston delivered a towering performance that was thrilling and captivating and occasionally unsettling. While the play itself seemed like it could have used some editing (particularly in act 2), Cranston’s performance was worth top dollar admission.

Jan Maxwell, The City of Conversation – While my feelings on the play are a bit complicated, my admiration for Jan Maxwell’s stunning portrait of a Washington DC doyenne dealing with her complex family knows no bounds. In fact, I’d say that this is the greatest performance I’ve seen Maxwell give, and I was lucky enough to see her in Coram Boy, The Royal Family, Lend Me a Tenor and Follies. It was worth the price of admission just to watch her excoriate her reprehensible daughter-in-law in the second act. This played off-Broadway at the Mitzi Newhouse; I wish Lincoln Center had just opened it on Broadway so Maxwell could win her long-overdue Tony Award.

Susan Mosher, Holiday Inn (Goodspeed Opera House) – I’ve always considered the film of Holiday Inn superior to its semi-remake White Christmas, and I feel the same applies to the respective stage vehicles. I don’t have much love for holiday shows of any kind, but I was taken by total surprise by this screen-to-stage adaptation of the Hollywood classic. I smiled non-stop for two and a half hours, when I wasn’t laughing at the hijinks. One of the show’s greatest gifts was a bold and brassy comic turn by Susan Mosher as the mechanic/handywoman/den mother who is utterly endearing, loving and outrageous. I cried actual tears of joy as she led a tap-happy company in a show-stopping rendition of “Shaking the Blues Away.” I hope the powers-that-be keep her for the inevitable Broadway run. I want an original cast album, and I want Susan Mosher to win the Featured Actress Tony.

Megan Mullally, Guys and Dolls (Carnegie Hall) – When it was announced that Nathan Lane would reprise his acclaimed performance as Nathan Detroit opposite Mullally, I immediately bought tickets without a moment’s hesitation. The one night concert at Carnegie Hall was musical comedy heaven from the first note to the last. Everyone was on point, well-sung and hilarious. However, it was Mullally’s Adelaide that walked away with the evening. Funny, warm and vulnerable, she had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand all night. I hope she considers revisiting the role in a longer Broadway run.

Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale, The Bridges of Madison County – I ended up seeing this overlooked gem seven times in six weeks, much to my surprise. O’Hara was given the role of a lifetime as Francesca Johnson, an Italian-born Iowa housewife who finds herself having a brief, yet impassioned romance with a National Geographic photographer. She sang gloriously, and imbued the character with such depth that it was impossible not to care for and about her. Pasquale gave one of the finest male vocal performances I have ever heard in my life. Together, they soared in Jason Robert Brown’s glorious duets, especially the showstopping “One Second and a Million Miles,” which got a mammoth standing ovation and cries of “Bravo!” from the packed house at the show’s closing performance on May 18, 2014 (trip #7). The original cast album is one of the best-recorded in the last five or ten years; a thrilling document of a beautiful, short-lived experience.

Alex Sharp, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Never leaving the stage for a moment in this transcendent adaptation of Mark Haddon’s best-selling novel about a teenage boy with autism, Alex Sharp gives one of the most astonishing tour-de-force performances I have ever seen. I had mixed feelings on the book, but found myself enthralled from beginning to end by this imaginative adaptation. Sharp, fresh out of drama school, is making his professional debut, and his performance is a must-see. I don’t think I breathed during the last revelatory twenty minutes of the first act, as I was on edge as to what Mr. Sharp was going to do next. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the commanding work he is doing onstage at the Barrymore. I look forward to following what promises to be an astonishing career.

One of the best ensemble experiences I had all year was the Encores! production of The Most Happy Fella at City Center. In a starry cast led by Laura Benanti, Shuler Hensley, Heidi Blickenstaff, Jay Armstrong Johnson and Cheyenne Jackson, the production was a glorious, thrilling success (even more impressive since the entire cast was battling the flu that week). It was a great thrill hearing the original orchestrations played by 35 musicians, and to see a Golden Age musical presented with separate singing and dancing choruses. Of the Encores! shows of this season, this was the one that deserves a second chance and a cast recording.

‘The Bridges of Madison County’ on Broadway

Recently, I referred to the 1956 musical The Most Happy Fella, Frank Loesser’s lush romantic masterpiece, as a “grown-up musical for grown-ups.” Much of the current Broadway musical theatre is made up of subversive comedies, by-the-number adaptations of movies, and pre-packaged song catalogs. Sincere romantic musical plays tend to be a tougher sell these days. The most recent example I can think of is Giant with its sweeping score by Michael John LaChiusa. However, that show played a limited run off-Broadway at the Public (though it should have been on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont). Well, a new grown-up musical for grown-ups has come to Broadway, and it’s Jason Robert Brown and Marsha Norman’s beautiful adaptation of The Bridges of Madison County.

Based on Robert James Waller’s best-selling novel, Bridges tells of a four-day, once-in-a-lifetime affair between an Italian housewife and a National Geographic photographer in 1965 Iowa. The husband and the kids leave for the state fair, and she is planning to relax with iced tea and a novel. However, fate has something else in store for her when the photographer pulls into her driveway to ask for directions. The novel was excoriated upon its release, but sold millions of copies and became a 1995 film starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.

The bittersweet new musical, now playing at the Schoenfeld Theatre, may be the best incarnation of Waller’s story. Francesca (Kelli O’Hara) married an American soldier after her fiancé died in WWII to escape war-ravaged Naples. Robert (Steven Pasquale) has drifted through life as a roving photographer, never comfortable with commitment or settling down. Truth be told, their romance doesn’t feel like an affair, or for that matter, even remotely adulterous. There is no true villain or antagonist; it is circumstance that brings them together and ultimately thwarts the possibility of “happily ever after.” In many ways, it is reminiscent of Brief Encounter, with two ordinary people discovering an overwhelming passion that had previously eluded them.

Jason Robert Brown has written one of the most ambitious, openly romantic scores heard on Broadway since Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza. It is, I think, his best work since Parade. He serves double duty as orchestrator and creates a beautiful string-based chamber sound. Marsha Norman’s book complements Brown’s score, establishing rich characters with vivid attention to detail. It is to the credit of both that the events never feel cheap or saccharine, and even the most banal word comes from a place of infinite emotion.

Bartlett Sher’s direction is quite superb; his staging is simple and forthright, yet always tender. The show does tend to meander a bit in the first act, and too much time is spent at the state fair, but by the second act, the focus becomes laser-sharp.

When Bridges focuses on its central relationship, it reaches its emotional pinnacle, giving the story a depth I didn’t think possible. O’Hara is giving the performance of her career, with one of the most sensitive and vocally supple turns we’ve yet to see from her. Pasquale makes his Broadway musical debut at long last, and it’s this season’s gift to hear his soaring baritone. O’Hara’s heart-stopping “Almost Real” is practically an operatic aria while he devastates with the eleven o’clock number “It All Fades Away,” which may well be the best show song of the last ten years, maybe more.

Their duets are the sort of dreamy, soaring moments that are musical theatre at its finest. Their duet, “Before and After You/One Second and a Million Miles,” is a gorgeously realized musical scene, which I think compares favorably with the legendary Bench Scene from Carousel. Their singing is matched by the intensity of their onstage chemistry, which was so hot that the woman next to me started fanning herself at intermission.

The supporting cast is mostly excellent. Hunter Foster has the rather thankless role of Francesca’s somewhat oblivious husband, but he humanizes the character. Michael X. Martin and Cass Morgan provide warmly received comic relief as Francesca’s married neighbors. Morgan’s nosy Marge is played mostly in broad strokes throughout the first act, but she displays unexpected depth and surprising empathy in the second. Caitlin Kinnunen and Derek Klena barely register as Francesca’s sparring children, but mostly because the roles are so limited. Whitney Bashor sells her one number beautifully (though I understand she also had a devastating aria, which was cut).

There are many things about Bridges that remind me of the aforementioned Piazza. Both shows share Italian sensibilities, their two leading players, director, and scenic and costume designers (Michael Yeargan and Catherine Zuber, respectively). Brown’s finale, “Always Better,” evokes memories of Guettel’s “Fable.” The leading ladies of both shows even share a surname: Johnson. Piazza opened at Lincoln Center Theatre and ran for 504 performances, which I think surprised many (including the show’s ardent admirers, myself included). Bridges, on the other hand, is a commercial risk, and it hasn’t been doing so well.

I’m not sure how long The Bridges of Madison County will last on Broadway, but I feel it is a show that will grow in estimation through the years, especially after the original cast album is released. After all, it seems Broadway only gets a new romantic musical once a decade. We grown-ups should savor it while we can.