“Peter Pan the Musical” / Performing Arts Center at Taconic Hills

KURT ANDERSEN’S NEW BOOK “Fantasyland” traces our American love affair with fantastical untruths from the Pilgrims to the Trump. The author is thorough, clever, timely and scathing about the moribund condition of “truth” and “fact,” then and now.

However, the flip side of our very human gullibility is our marvelous talent for living temporarily in a novel or theater piece, swallowing it like a gulp of fresh air for a few hours or a few days before breathing back to “reality,” somehow the better for it.

“Peter Pan the Musical” lets us do that—almost. It invites us to be simultaneously gullible child and sophisticated, rational adult. (The authors have put the “never” in Peter’s “Neverland,” and Kurt Andersen would approve.) Read more…

Among the members of the cast in Guys and Dolls at the Theater Barn in New Lebanon through September 3 are (l to r) Olivia Bullock, Conner Milam, Liane Zielinski and Megan Koumis. Photo contributed

“Guys and Dolls” / Theater Barn

Act I:

NOT EVEN THE WONDERFUL Andrew Pace (as Nathan Detroit) can rescue the first act of Theater Barn’s “Guys and Dolls.” The opening cityscape is accompanied by a sickly piano riddled with wrong notes and wrong chords. The wrongs pop up throughout the show, and the piano, bass, and drums combo that performed so confidently in the company’s “Godspell” seems to have had a nervous breakdown. In the lobby after the opening performance, “Kill the piano player!” could be heard. Twice.

Act 1 of this musical is heavy on the characters of Sky and Sarah, played here by Nick Abbott and Katherine McLellan. It includes some beautiful Frank Loesser songs: “I’ll know (When My Love Comes Along),” “If I Were a Bell,” “My Time of Day.” Those songs need voice. For Sky, it should be a rich, robust baritone rather than a light-ish, almost tenor. As for Sarah, McLellan’s thin soprano, unsteady on the top, does not quite suffice. Abbott’s Sky is surfacey and unconvincing, and he and McLellan share very little heat. Read more…

Sweeney Todd / Mac-Haydn Theatre

THOU SHALT NOT EAT thy fellow man. That’s in the Bible, isn’t it? No?

“Sweeney Todd” is a morality tale shaped by the musical theater genius of composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim. It makes the eating your fellow man entertaining, laughable–even palatable. (Oh dear.) That is, when it is not terrifying you or quietly or noisily inviting you to look at something darkly true.

But the important music-thing and theater-thing is Sondheim. Sondheim is beyond good. I predict that his late-20th century work will still be savored and revered by your great-, great-grandchildren. And you’re in luck! At Mac-Haydn Theater there is a wonderful production.

Before I describe the wonderfulness, let me go quickly through my few carps. 1) The actors portraying the young lovers (Johanna and Anthony) have no sexual chemistry. When they repeatedly sing “Kiss me,” it could easily be “please pass the oatmeal.” 2) And when the young Anthony sings, “I feel you, Johanna,” it seems as if his attention is glued to his own (very good) voice rather than to her charms. 3) The jiggly movement in the vocal technique of Kelly Gabrielle Murphy as Johanna is tremolo rather than vibrato, a defect that may be related to her occasional pitch problems. 4) The extended gyrations of the ensemble in the lunatic scene make the audience uncertain about whether to shrink in horror—or laugh. 5) In spite of their excellent singing, the actors playing Judge Turpin and Tobias may be age-miscast, the former being too young and the latter not young enough. Read more…