Greetings Theater Lovers!

Well, this month I saw two plays: Stephen Sondheim’s (book by Hugh Wheeler) Sweeney Todd and Bradford Louryk and Rob Grace’s Christine Jorgensen Reveals. Both these plays have a “cutting edge” theme: Sweeney Todd with its famous throat slashing barber and Christine Jorgensen Reveals with its own more personal and intimate cutting.

Sweeney Todd is a critical hit and the night we were there the audience simply loved the show. It is an amazing production. The cast is headed by the incomparable Patti LuPone as the murderous baker, Mrs. Lovett, and Michael Cerveris as a sexy Sweeney Todd. The cast also features Mark Jacoby as Judge Turpin and Lauren Molina as Sweeney’s daughter Johanna. And John Doyle’s direction is superb. All the actors are on stage and when they are not part of the scene, they are part of the onstage band. The murderous barber’s throat slicing is depicted by a slash of Sweeney’s razor and then the now-dead actor changes into a white smock covered with blood stains while someone else pours a bucket of blood. Very cool!

So what’s my beef with the show? It’s the music! I have always found Sondheim’s music to be jarring and entirely too precious. It seems to me that he tries so hard to be witty and sophisticated that he totally misses the point that the music is supposed to be beautiful and lyrical. But, I have another theory. I think that brains must simply be wired differently and to some brains, the music of Sondheim is wonderful. They simply receive it differently on their neurons. The night I attended I was with a posse of four friends. The one who picked the show and organized the outing was in ecstasy. The other three of us said things like, “Well, that was very nice but I really don’t like Sondheim. All that shrieking of Sweeney Todd like we did not know his name already!” But the three of us were in the minority, because the majority of that audience was in rapture. Granted the audience was self selected since we all supposedly knew what we were doing when we bought the tickets. And I bet if I had asked one of the people who jumped to their feet in applause at the end of the show what they thought of Phantom of the Opera, I would have gotten an earful about overly emotional and derivative music. And I would have also gotten a little smirk, like they were thinking, “Andrew Lloyd Webber? I bet you have very plebian taste.” It’s a musical disconnect. They don’t get Webber anymore than I get Sondheim. Oh well.

Sweeney Todd stars: Michael Cerveris; Patti LuPone; John Arbo; Donna Lynne Champlin; Diana DiMarzio; Manoel Felciano; Alexander Gemignani; Mark Jacoby; Benjamin Magnuson; Lauren Molina. Music and Lyrics are by Stephen Sondheim with a book by Hugh Wheeler. John Doyle directs. Sweeney Todd is playing (open run) at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre at 230 West 49th Street New York, NY 10036 – tickets range in price form $36.25-$101.25 and can be purchased at www.telecharge.com

By the time you read this (we publish February 1, 2006) the wonderful Christine Jorgensen Reveals will have closed. And that is a darn shame because it is a very clever show. The play is a depiction of a recorded radio interview that Christine Jorgensen gave Nipsey Russell after she returned from having her surgery (her last step to becoming a woman) in 1952 in Denmark. Bradford Louryk plays Christina Jorgensen and he is a marvel in the role. He very delicately crossed and recrossed his nylon clad legs and he used his hands in an oh-so-feminine way. He also looked great in his green dupioni silk suit accented with a stunning gold circular brooch. I have not looked that feminine since I left Texas.

On the stage with Mr. Louryk’s Christine is an old black and white television set. There is a man in the box (so to speak), Rob Grace playing Nipsey Russell. Russell conducts his interview through a video that is played inside the television set. So Ms. Jorgensen was literally talking to a box about a ….. oh never mind.

I loved the show. It was a fascinating look at a past phenomenon; at one time Christine Jorgensen was billed as the most famous person in the world. I was with a friend and we both remarked at how this “interview” could have never taken place in the 1950’s because it was entirely too racy. There was entirely too many questions about what happened to his/her “member” after it was removed and also about the nature of Ms. Jorgensen’s sex life both before and after the surgery.

Well, boy were we fooled. After I saw the show, I saw a copy of the New York Times article about the show and it turns out that both Louryk and Grace were lip synching to the recording of the actual interview Russell did with Jorgensen over fifty years ago. So the show that we already really liked turned out to be utterly brilliant. And like I said before, it is a real shame that this show is closing.

Christine Jorgensen Reveals played at the wonderful Dodger Stages 340 West 50th Street New York, NY 10019

Rock on!

Wendy