A Modernist in Paris

James writes:

The phrase “Inspired by the Motion Picture” does not generally inspire confidence on Broadway. More often than not, we’re talking about a popular movie repackaged for the discount crowd. But what if your inspiration is “An American in Paris,” the 1951 Academy Award-winning MGM musical starring Gene Kelly? And what if you are the English choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, one time dancer and resident artist at New York City Ballet? 

In the case of “An American in Paris,” the new musical that opened this week at the Palace Theatre, we are talking about something truly inspiring. In his Cast Notes, Wheeldon says he “honors the artists whose film inspired this new stage version.” That film, directed by Vincente Minnelli from a script by Alan Jay Lerner, was a lightweight romance between an American painter Jerry Mulligan, who stayed in Paris after the liberation, and a French girl, Lise Bouvier. The plot revolves around a cast of supporting characters that includes Jerry’s society patron Milo Roberts (who is interested in more than his paintings), a successful French singer named Henri Baurel (who is engaged to Lise), and a composer friend named Adam Cook (who helps sort it all out).

What set the movie apart was its final fifteen minutes. In what has been called the greatest dance number on film, and with a production that cost of half a million dollars, the painter Jerry Mulligan, played by Kelly, dances with Lise, played by Leslie Caron, through a dream sequence of Paris as imagined through his artwork. The score for the number is George Gershwin’s 1928 symphonic poem, “An American in Paris,” which gives the film and the musical its name.      

Wheeldon began here and built out his musical from this balletic denouement. A new book by Craig Lucas also adds some true grit to the story. The 1951 musical did little to acknowledge the war. For that matter, it barely acknowledged the twentieth century: Jerry still lives in the Paris of La bohème. On Broadway we are now clearly contending with the hangover of war, with characters with new backstories and new last names: Lise Dassin (Leanne Cope) is a Jewish refugee hidden by Henri’s family, who fought for the Resistance; Adam Hockberg (Brandon Uranowitz) is an injured Jewish American GI, Jerry is suffering from shell shock. Sometimes Lucas overly burdens the story: it was smart to recast Henri (Max von Essen) as a struggling singer, but an insinuation that he “does not fancy women” and therefore hides his own secret muddies the plot; Hockberg also overly plays up his own impotence. 

Yet overall these additions give the musical a modern urgency that propels the performance. It starts in a swirl, with the Nazi flag of the occupation pulled down and turned back to the colors of the Republic, all in one flowing movement. With costumes and sets by Bob Crowley, the scene changes are seamlessly handled by the performers, who wheel out and dance around the mobile set pieces. Backdrop projections imagine Paris as a sketchbook that gets redrawn through each scene.

Robert Fairchild, the NYCB principal who, like his sister, has (temporarily?) traded Balanchine for Broadway, fills out Kelly’s shoes as Mulligan. Those are fast, muscular, and multitalented shoes to fill. While Kelly could perform equally well as singer, dancer, and actor, Fairchild is a dancer first and foremost, arguably one of the best ballet dancers of our day. His voice, however, is only serviceable as a soloist. The decision to add additional Gershwin songs for him to lead, such as “Fidgety Feet,” was a mistake. Additionally, no one else could ever have Kelly’s megawatt presence, and Fairchild’s theatrical range is limited, even compared to the other actors on stage.  

Fortunately the musical is driven by its forceful choreography. For this the production looks much more closely than the film to the history of Parisian modernism. Here Mulligan is something of a Sunday painter until Milo Davenport (Jill Paice) convinces him to work in abstraction. A comical dance within the dance called “The Eclipse of Uranus” gives a nod to dance’s early avant-garde. As the play progresses, the sets also become more abstract, leading to a minimalist pas de deux between Jerry and Lise danced to Gershwin’s eponymous number. In this way the musical pays ultimate tribute to Gershwin’s radical 1928 tone poem. As Gershwin said of his composition, “My purpose here is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere.” Here is a musical that makes it new all over again. 

A Helluva Show

Clyde Alves, Tony Yazbeck, Jay Armstrong Johnson and the cast of On the Town

CITY JOURNAL 

March 26, 2015

A Helluva Show
by James Panero

A new production of On the Town captures the spirit of New York City.

With music by Leonard Bernstein and book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the original 1944 production of On the Town was a celebration of the freedom and energy that New York City represented in wartime. The musical rightly brought fame to its three wunderkind creators, all in their twenties, who drew their inspiration from the Jerome Robbins ballet Fancy Free.

Now, as the spectacular, must-see revival of On the Town returns to Broadway at 42nd Street’s Lyric Theatre, the musical reflects a city that has itself been revived in a synergy of past and present. Then as now, it’s the right time to see On the Town. After all, could there be a greater paean to urban life? The ultimate love interest in this musical of three American sailors on shore leave is, of course, “New York, New York, a helluva town,” where “The Bronx is up, but the Battery’s down” and “the people ride in a hole in the groun’.” The city captivates and animates the storyline, beginning with that famous opening number. One sailor, Chip (Jay Armstrong Johnson), calls the city “a visitor’s place!” and announces his ambitious touring schedule (“10:30 Bronx Zoo, 10:40 Statue of Liberty”).

The famous places to visit are so many, 
Or so the guidebooks say. 
I promised Daddy I wouldn’t miss on any. 
And we have just one day. 
Got to see the whole town 
From Yonkers on down to the Bay.

Ozzie (Clyde Alves), meanwhile, has other attractions in mind: “Manhattan women are dressed in silk and satin,/ Or so the fellas say;/ There’s just one thing that’s important in Manhattan,/ When you have just one day.” A poster on the subway convinces Gabey (Tony Yazbeck), the shy sailor, to seek out Ivy Smith (Megan Fairchild), the winner of “Miss Turnstiles for the month of June.” The sailors’ 24-hour trek spans Carnegie Hall and the uptown museums to midtown nightclubs and Coney Island. Eventually, they assemble together with their dates—the fizzy anthropologist Claire de Loon (Elizabeth Stanley) with Ozzie, the brassy taxi driver Brunhilde “Hildy” Esterhazy (Alysha Umphress) with Chip, and Ivy Smith with Gabey—only to have to say their goodbyes at the Navy docks just as another three sailors slide down the gangplank, singing the same opening tune.

The team behind this current On the Town—lead producers Howard and Janet Kagan and director John Rando—captured the revival spirit of both the musical and the city with a promotional music video released last summer. The video closely tracks the familiar opening shots of the 1949 movie film version starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. Rather than running off their ship onto the Brooklyn Navy Yard, though, our three sailors emerge in their starched white suits running down the gangplank of the Intrepid—the sea, air, and space museum in the aircraft carrier docked on the Hudson River. Then these spirits of World War II-era New York are seen singing and dancing around today’s city. Some locations have thankfully changed little since the 1940s—the Brooklyn Bridge, Coney Island, Bethesda Fountain, the Statue of Liberty, the American Museum of Natural History. Yet, for their bike ride through Central Park, the sailors rent Citibikes. And between shots of Chinatown and a carriage ride through the park, they visit the Apple Store on 59th Street and Fifth Avenue. If anything, the city looks far clearer and better than it did on film 60 years ago.

The preternatural and, at times, winking exuberance of this revival gets carried through the musical, which is lavishly staged with a live 28-piece orchestra at the Lyric. The revival is surprisingly faithful to the original Broadway production. Each performance begins with the cast, led by Phillip Boykin, joining the audience in a rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” This patriotic feeling continues throughout the show, especially as Stephen DeRosa, on the night I attended, singled out a veteran in the audience for special recognition of his service.

But just like the original musical, this revival is far more red-blooded and grittier than the sanitized Hollywood production. Not only did “helluva town” get changed to “wonderful town” in the 1949 film, but many of the best musical numbers were cut, in particular Hildy’s “I Can Cook Too,” which includes a full serving of double entendre (“I’m a man’s ideal of a perfect meal/ Right down to the demi-tasse./ I’m a pot of joy for a hungry boy,/ Baby, I’m cookin’ with gas.”) A new cast recording of this revival has just been released by PS Classics.

In addition to the possibilities presented by the city (where density and public transportation play a leading role), On the Town also hints at the more desperate side of the urban experience, especially for the women. Ivy Smith, a celebrity in the eyes of Gabey, is being hustled by an alcoholic dance teacher (Jackie Hoffman) who insists that she debase herself working at an after-hours gentlemen’s club on Coney Island to pay for her classes. Claire de Loon cracks in an unhappy marriage, which her fly-by-night relationship with Ozzie finally destroys. Hildy, fired from her job as a taxi driver, lives with a sick roommate in an apartment overlooking a brick wall.

Yet for its lows, the New York of On the Town is ultimately one of great heights, finally reached in the dream dance sequence between Gabey and Ivy. Inspired by the heated choreography of Jerome Robbins, the nine-minute pas de deux, choreographed by Joshua Bergasse, finds the dancers sweating it out in a boxing ring before soaring into one another’s arms. That Ivy is danced by Fairchild, the famous principal dancer of the New York City Ballet, speaks to the talent that only a city can gather. Here is a production that only Broadway can stage and a story that only New York can tell.

The Whiff of a New Blacklist

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 12, 2015

The Whiff of a New Blacklist
by James Panero

Recent protests at the Met Opera and Carnegie Hall signal a new turn in the relationship between art and politics.

With his ties to Vladimir Putin , the government patron and old acquaintance ultimately behind his St. Petersburg-based Mariinsky Theatre, conductor Valery Gergiev has become, for some, a proxy figure representing the anti-Western turns of the Russian state, both in human rights and geopolitics. These tensions first took center stage in 2013. Following Mr. Putin’s suppression of gay rights, protesters lined up outside Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera House with signs that read “Gergiev Choose: U.S. Dollars or Putin’s ‘Morals.’” Inside, just as Mr. Gergiev raised his hands to conduct, they shouted him down, yelling “Valery, your silence is killing Russian gays!” Performances were halted until security could remove the disrupters.

With the 2014 Russian incursion into Crimea, Ukrainian sympathizers have joined the chorus of dissent. The Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili publicly declined Mr. Gergiev’s invitation to perform in St. Petersburg while also indicting Western audiences for supporting his music. At the premiere of “Iolanta” at the Met two weeks ago, a Boston-based, pro-Ukrainian protester even leapt onto the stage at curtain call with a banner depicting Mr. Gergiev, the Russian headline soprano Anna Netrebko, and a Hitler-inspired image of Mr. Putin with the slogan “Active Contributors to Putin’s War Against Ukraine, Free Savchenko” (after the parliamentarian and former Ukrainian officer imprisoned by Russia in 2014).

Protesters shouting down concertgoers; musicians silenced by hecklers; agitators taking the stages of our performances. All this represents a new turn in the relationship between arts and politics. There’s even the whiff of a new blacklist. At the continuing picket line outside the Met, protesters are distributing fliers that accuse Mr. Gergiev and Ms. Netrebko of using “their artistic standing to support and promote war and aggression... We call upon the institutions to review their policies and to consider appropriateness of allowing vocal supporters of aggression to perform on their stages.”

Current events have now claimed a front seat on the culture, and it’s time to stop them at the gate. Let’s put aside the obvious security threats that political agitation can pose to audiences and performers: It was in a Moscow theater in 2002, we should remember, that Chechen militants left 130 people dead. In 1987, members of a radical group known as the Jewish Defense League pleaded guilty to a series of bombings that targeted Russian performers as they toured the U.S., including the firebombing of a stage door of Avery Fisher Hall and releasing tear gas into the audience at the Met, an attack that hospitalized 20 people.

A banner today may be a weapon tomorrow. Concert houses clearly need to do more to keep us safe, and the Met has since increased security for subsequent performances of “Iolanta,” which have proceeded without incident. But more than that, they must speak up more forcefully for the integrity of the arts and its performers outside of politics. As Russian-American relations continue to deteriorate, it may be tempting for those of us who are justifiably critical of Mr. Putin to join the protests. But by blacklisting artists over not professing the right beliefs, the only guaranteed victim is the art itself. Moreover, such censorship is bad policy toward the causes we might hope to advance.

Mr. Gergiev’s response to such interruptions has been to focus more intensely on his music. “I cannot comment. It’s a silly, silly new invention, silly, ugly, what else can I say here?” he said as he boarded a flight south to conduct in Florida. “People come to the concert hall, the opera house. They are searching for beauty, for a very exceptional journey with the artists. They want to hear great music played well, sung well, staged well. I think that’s all they expect.”

And that’s the point. During the Cold War, when both tensions and the stakes were even higher, culture was used as a bridge, not a wedge. Between 1958 and 1988, 50,000 Soviet citizens visited the U.S. through our initiatives of cultural exchange. While some Americans at the time feared this Soviet influence, Oleg Kalugin, then a KGB general, later said such exchanges were a “Trojan Horse” within the Soviet Union. As Soviet performers brought their Western stories back to Russia, “They played a tremendous role in the erosion of the Soviet system. They kept infecting more and more people over the years.”

Today, no Russian figure promotes cross-cultural exchange more than Mr. Gergiev. Last month, he brought 300 members of his Mariinsky Theatre, which included over 75 musicians, 50 chorus members, and just as many dancers, to a residency at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and various appearances in Chapel Hill, N.C.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Palm Beach, Naples and Miami, Fla.; and Washington, interspersed with his own conducting for the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He had a role in bringing “Iolanta” and “Bluebeard’s Castle,” the new Tchaikovsky-Bartók double bill, to the Met in partnership with the Teatr Wielki-Polish National Opera. Tens of thousands of people will see him conduct during this latest American tour, which Mr. Gergiev notes marks his 25th anniversary performing in the U.S.

And the conductor is also responsible for promoting cultural exchange back in Russia. In June, he will helm the next Tchaikovsky Competition, the same international contest that Van Cliburn, an American pianist, famously won at the height of the Cold War in 1958. Today, “big countries like the U.S. and Russia are sending competitors,” says Mr. Gergiev, “but also smaller countries like Georgia, Uzbekistan, Armenia. Last time, an Armenian cellist took gold. Armenian. It’s not a huge country, as you know. It was a surprise.”

What unites all of these initiatives is great music. Two weeks ago, I was at Carnegie Hall as Mr. Gergiev led his Mariinsky Orchestra through Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4. Despite vocal protests outside, it went off without interruption. In fact, after a gripping hourlong performance that sounded like an approaching subway train, he held the packed audience in silence for nearly a minute before the house erupted in applause. “Symphony No. 4 requires concentration. The audience was really good,” he told me. “This symphony, somehow, naturally, goes to some mysterious world, which cannot be interrupted.”

Exactly. Such music deserves to be heard for what it is. Most of us still understand this is possible only by putting differences aside in the communion of a concert hall.