The Blue Flower & Lysistrata Jones

I'm so behind with postings.  Here are a couple of missed reviews from the past couple of weeks.  My "Thanksgiving with the Pinedas" coming soon!

The Blue Flower

Second Stage Theatre

Sunday, November 13, 7pm performance

This quirky, ensemble show is one of the reasons I love living in NYC.  It’s the kind of cerebral, experimental piece that’s a difficult sell most anywhere else in the country.  It’s subject matter, the relationship between a couple of artists, a scientist and actress set during Germany’s Weimar era, isn’t exactly family friendly - lots of sex, violence and drugs.  So it’s a perfect fit for me, natch.  It’s got a downtown sensibility, but with the expected gloss of a production playing just off Broadway.

I liked the show more than Trish and really connected with the movement-inspired staging and direction and its sometimes non-linear, quasi-Brechtian presentational style.  With the multi-tiered set, almost constant choreographed movement and video projections, it’s almost a “musical theatre-performance art” hybrid. 

The score is a pop-folk-country hybrid with nods to Weill and German cabaret sung gorgeously by a cast led by Broadway vets Sebastian Arcelus and Marc Kudisch. 

On a side note, seeing publicity photos for the show I kept thinking how old Kudisch looks now.  Then I realized I’m only four years his junior.  Do I look that old?  So depressing.  Thank God for my Asian genes.

Lysistrada Jones

Walter Kerr Theatre

Tuesday, Nov 17, 8pm performance

I’m sure this show was hip and hilarious when it played in a real school gymnasium downtown off-Broadway last year.  But in a huge Broadway house at $120 a pop?  Not so much. 

The cast works it’s ass off to fill the enormous Walter Kerr stage, but from our highly discounted TDF mezzanine seats, the stage looks woefully empty.  Literally and figuratively, the show doesn’t have enough substance to fill a Broadway stage.  That, of course, doesn’t stop many current Broadway hits from playing for years (I’m talking about you, Mamma Mia!). 

The set serves its purpose, but isn’t very imaginative and looks, well, cheap.  Streamer curtains?  Really?  The only appropriate place for streamer curtains are proms and Bar Mitzvahs.

The score might be catchy at a dance club, but doesn’t leave much of an impression in the theatre.  While the lyrics never quite match the sarcastic wit of Douglas Carter Beane’s hilarious book.  Frankly, the music mostly hinders the momentum of the book with its extended (though impressive) dance sequences that seem to go on endlessly for no reason other than to show off the casts youthful, athletic bodies.  On the flip side, songs seem to end abruptly, with the ensemble indicating this with full show choir, extended-arm group poses. 

I’m also confused as to what the show is trying to say.  Woman should use sex to get what they want?  The only motivating factor for young men is boobs and vagina?  Don't get me wrong, I'm not against frothy fun and fluff but it's 2011.  Lysistrata Jones makes Legally Blonde look like Shakespeare.  

I’ll admit the second act improves on nearly all counts, but it’s too little too late.  Great performances from an attractive cast doesn’t - well, shouldn’t - cut it on Broadway.