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Closing notices posted for : Donna Summer Musical Posts Broadway Closing Notice, With Tour to Follow When one disco’s doors close, another disco’s doors open. That seemed to be the message from a dual alert from the producers of “Summer: The Donna SummerMusical,” which simultaneously announced a Dec. 30 closing notice for the show on Broadway and the Sept. 30, 2019 beginning of a national tour. When the Des McAnuff-directed “Summer” shuts its doors in the dead of winter at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, it will have played 289 regular performances on the back of 27 previews since the start of performances March 28. A cast album was released in July. For the latest week for which grosses were posted by Playbill, ending Nov. 25, the show was playing at 43 percent of capacity — the lowest attendance rate among existing Broadway productions, falling just slightly beneath the 46 percent for “Head Over Heels,” which posted its own closing notice Tuesday. AND... Broadway’s ‘Once on This Island’ Revival Will Close Jan. 6 Hailey Kilgore and Isaac Powell in a scene from “Once on This Island.”CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times “Once on This Island,” a tragic West Indian fairy tale that won this year’s Tony Award for best musical revival, will end its Broadway run on Jan. 6. The musical was much praised by critics, and scored an upset victoryover the better known “Carousel” and “My Fair Lady” in the Tony race, but it never fully caught on with audiences. It opened last December; at the time of its closing, it will have played for 29 preview and 458 regular performances at the Circle in the Square Theater. The revival has grossed $27 million thus far, and has been seen by 280,000 people. Its best week was over Christmas last year, when it grossed $827,890, but it has more typically brought in significantly less than that — last week, also a holiday week because of Thanksgiving, it grossed $459,321. The show, about a young woman whose life is upended when she falls in love with a wealthier man, features music by Stephen Flaherty and a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens. The original production opened on Broadway in 1990 and ran for 14 months. The revival was directed by Michael Arden, with Ken Davenport as the lead producer. It cost $7.5 million to capitalize, and has not recouped those costs. A national tour is planned beginning next year. AND, to no one's surprise... Go-Go’s-Scored Broadway Musical ‘Head Over Heels’ Set to Close in January Broadway won’t be going to a go-go for long. “Head Over Heels,” the Elizabethan period farce scored incongruously to the music of the Go-Go’s, has posted a closing notice five months into its Broadway run at the Hudson Theatre. Vacationers still have six weeks to get to it over the holiday season, though; the final performance has been set for Jan. 6. By that date, the show will have played 188 regular performances, on the heels of 37 previews that began June 23 at the Hudson. A cast album had been released less than three weeks ago, with 19 theatrical performances of Go-Go’s or Belinda Carlisle solo songs augmented by a brand new recording of “This Town” by the original five members of the group (the first time the quintet had been in the studio together since the 2000 album “God Bless the Go-Go's" The musical was considered a crowd-pleaser, especially among LGBT audiences who took to the laughs based in gender-bending and non-binary themes. But selling a Go-Go’s score transposed to a distant century was always a tough sell, and decidedly mixed reviews weren’t altogether helpful in drawing a crowd. The show struggled most weeks to exceed 50 percent of the Hudson’s capacity, even with more reasonable ticket prices than many of its competitors, and the good will of some well-heeled producers (who included actors Gwyneth Paltrow and Donovan Leitch) is believed to be a big reason why “Head Over Heels” soldiered on past the point when others might have pulled the plug. “Along with my partners, creative team and cast, it was our desire to create a piece of live theatre that celebrates love of all kinds and portrays a world of beauty in which joy and acceptance reign above all else,” said lead producer Christine Russell in a statement. “We are incredibly proud of what ‘Head Over Heels’ has come to represent, not only on Broadway, but for future generations of theatergoers.” Many of the responses to the closing notice on social media spoke to the show wearing its socially progressive heart on its sleeve, as the @HOHmusical Twitter account retweeted messages like, “Thanks for giving young LGBT folks the fairytale we were denied as children. Y’all mean the world to me.” Ben Brantley’s review in the New York Times drew controversy when he referred to the androgynous oracle character played by former “Drag Race” contestant Peppermint as “her — I mean them,” riffing off a pronoun joke that occurs in the script. The review that now appears on the Times’ website has a note that the content has been edited; Brantley publicly apologized, saying, “I was trying to reflect the light tone of the show, as well as a plot point in which one character learns to acknowledge another not as ‘she’ but as ‘they.’ This unfortunately read as more flippant than I would ever have intended, especially with regard to a performance that marks a historical first. I am deeply sorry.” In the less controversial passages of his review, Brantley called the show “a shotgun wedding of song and script,” wishing “this oddly earnest show could really kick up its heels and let the message take care of itself.” Other critical notices ran the gamut. A Variety review of the original San Francisco production enthused, “The mix of ’80s music and 1680s setting is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds, and that’s a good thing.” A subsequent Variety review of the New York opening said “the show never recovers from the pervasive feeling of exhaustion.” The critical split had the Village Voice writing, “Shrewd, funny, sexy, and with a glorious beat, ‘Head Over Heels’ will have you flipping for joy,” while the New York Post carped, “This indulgent show is wackier than it is fun.”

I L loved every minute of this thrilling and exciting production! This is one of those theatrical moments when everything works. This is a marvelous cast, great writing, acting, direction and production. If I had any quibbles with it is the length. At 3 hours and 15 minutes its just a tad bit long, but it moved very smoothly and there is little room for boredom. The ending is shocking and "gasp out loud." I did not have any problems with the Northern Irish accents (me Mother is from Northern Ireland). I did have to chuckle that besides the wonderful cast of actors, there's a cute bunny, a well behaved goose and an adorable baby. I say give 'em all a Tony!

I agree with Foxy, an actors ability to memorize and pull off a 7o minute monologue seamlessly and almost effortlessly is to be admired. I pulled the NYTimes review, and surprisingly, the construction is a set design! Review: Michael C. Hall Probes the Despair of ‘Thom Pain’ By Ben Brantley The dark and sulfurous chamber of Thom Pain’s mind has been unsealed for public inspection again. Audiences already familiar with Will Eno’s “Thom Pain (based on nothing),” which has been revived by the Signature Theater, may find this Stygian space roomier and less oppressive than they remembered. Oliver Butler’s new production, which opened on Sunday night, lets some fresh air and even a sliver of sunlight into the nocturnal depths of its title (and only) character’s imagination. And with a handsome, self-assured Michael C. Hall in the role of Pain (a last name that shrieks volumes), he appears as less of a lost cause than he once did. But while I’m usually grateful for glints of optimism in these cynical times, I can’t honestly say that this transformation is for the good. When I first saw “Thom Pain” at the tiny Soho Theater in London in 2004, its masochistic bleakness lingered on my skin afterward like a toxic slime. I may have wanted to take a shower immediately, but I was also electrified by the original, full-frontal attack on the audience that Mr. Eno had engineered. It helped that Thom’s despairing monologue was delivered by an angular, snarly James Urbaniak, whose utterances felt as dangerous as a double-edged razor blade in the hands of child. When Mr. Urbaniak’s Thom crossed the Atlantic the following year for a long Off Broadway run, Mr. Eno (who was born in 1965) was hailed as the theater’s new young messiah of existential despair. In a wonder-struck review in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood called him “a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation.” If, in its latest incarnation, “Thom Pain” seems to have shed its ability to shock, that’s partly because we have had a chance to become accustomed to the skewed perspective of Mr. Eno, whose later, fuller works include “The Realistic Joneses” and “The Open House.” But this relative tameness is also a matter of Mr. Butler and Mr. Hall’s interpretation. To begin with, Thom — who spends the play’s 70 uninterrupted minutes wallowing in bitter self-consciousness — has been given more room to roam. Amy Rubin’s set has transformed the Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center into what feels like a limitless construction site, with ladders, tarps and a gaping hole cordoned off with yellow tape. The show still begins in total darkness, interrupted by the startling flame of someone trying — “trying” being the operative word — to light a cigarette. “How wonderful to see you all,” says a voice. That’s our Thom, a man who lives to tease with prickly paradoxes and to undermine expectations — his and ours. “Do you like magic?” he asks, once the lights have come up to reveal Mr. Hall in a trim black suit, looking like a department-store mannequin. “I don’t. But enough about me.” It is not enough, of course. The show proceeds as a sustained, cryptic, circular apologia pro vita sua, in which childhood tragedies and grown-up losses in love are anatomized like corpses in a forensic lab. That confession is sometimes told in the third person, sometimes in the first. But there’s no question that it’s always all about Thom — unless you believe, as he likes to insist teasingly, it’s all about us, too, and our bewildered, desperate and ever-shrinking time on this planet. Mr. Hall has established himself an accomplished and adventurous actor, both on screen (“Six Feet Under,” “Dexter”) and stage (brilliant as David Bowie’s alien alter-ego in “Lazarus,” and on Broadway in “The Realistic Joneses.”). Yet his Thom is self-conscious in the wrong ways. His narrative of self-catechism and self-laceration has the carefully modulated quality of a classically trained actor doing an intense audition piece. Mr. Hall is best in relaxed moments of semi-improvised interaction with the audience. But this Thom is seldom lovably loathsome enough to make us squirm. Thus delivered, the script now registers as the product of a restless and very talented young dramatist, showing off and playing with the influences he has absorbed. The ghost of Beckett still hovers, but so do, just as visibly, the specters of T. S. Eliot, Edward Albee and Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man. It’s Mr. Eno’s love for and grasp of rhythmic language that most impress here. Listen, for instance, to Thom’s trying to remember what might have inspired a young boy’s wet dream: “Some fuzzy uneducated image of a girl, saying a word he liked. ‘Voucher.’ Or, ‘Ankles.’” Thom’s angst may feel a trifle sophomoric now, like something he might grow out of. But his way with words, and that of the man who created him, is already deliciously ripe.

I saw the Sunday matinee. A quick 60+ minutes. A one man monologue, and as the title says is "based on nothing." Seriously, it's a rambling state of consciousness dialogue that for the most part is forgettable. I will say I enjoyed Michael C. Hall and thought he was very good. What I didn't get was the shambles the theater is in. I wasn't sure if it was deliberately done for this production or the theater is under a state of renovation. Odd.

Today's Bway news: The Boss is paving the way for big musicians on Broadway By Michael Riedel November 22, 2018 | 10:39pm Bruce Springsteen has paved the way for a host of legendary music acts to play the Great White Way in 2019. A group of powerful entertainment companies — Live Nation, Creative Artists Associates and Entertainment Benefits Group — is about to snap up a Broadway theater where A-list rock, pop and country performers will be “in residency” for three-week stints. Deals have not been finalized, but CAA — home to Springsteen’s agent — represents a boatload of superstars, including Ariana Grande, Kelly Clarkson, Bette Milder, Aerosmith, Carrie Underwood, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Demi Lovato, Diana Ross, Faith Hill, the Eagles, Michael Bublé and Adam Lambert. All are in the mix to play Broadway. At the top of the list is Beyoncé, although a source says her price may be too high to make a three-week gig at a Broadway theater profitable. Barbra Streisand, another CAA client, is also a possibility. She hasn’t appeared on Broadway since she starred in “Funny Girl” in 1964, and sources say she’d love to cap her career with a triumphant return to the Broadway stage. Springsteen has proved that a pop star can make a big splash on Broadway. His show — “Springsteen on Broadway” at the Walter Kerr Theatre — has been grossing $2.5 million a week since it opened in October 2017. The top ticket price is $850, although good luck getting one for that amount. Scalpers are getting $3,000 to $6,000 per ticket. The Boss’ success has “opened our eyes to what you can do on Broadway,” says a music-business source. “There is plenty of money to be made.” Springsteen enjoys performing in an intimate setting — the Kerr seats just 975 — and has told friends that his Broadway run has been a highlight of his career. “Springsteen on Broadway” was scheduled to run four months. But demand was so great, it has been extended three times. It will play its final performance Dec. 15, the same day Netflix will stream a performance of the show filmed in July. Netflix is likely to broadcast other performers live from Broadway as well, sources say. “Springsteen has completely changed the way music people look at Broadway,” says a source. “He can play huge venues all over the world, but look at the attention he got for doing this show. He made it an event. It’s an artistic success, and it’s making a lot of money.” Springsteen tailored his show to Broadway, basing it on his best-selling memoir, “Born to Run.” The other performers and groups looking at a Broadway run will do scaled-down versions of their acts, sources say. The draw for ticket-buyers is the intimacy of a Broadway theater. The chance to see Ariana Grande or Barbra Streisand up close is irresistible. The promoters don’t want to charge more than $500 a ticket, although if the demand is there, prices could go higher. Live Nation and CAA haven’t closed a deal yet on a theater, but the choices are obvious. “King Kong,” a $35 million musical roasted by critics, is in serious trouble at the Broadway Theatre. It could close by February. The West 53rd Street venue seats 1,761 — plenty of room to make a three-week run with a music legend profitable. Another possibility is the Lunt-Fontanne, where the winter months may not be kind to “The Donna Summer Musical.” But I’d vote for the Palace Theatre, which is due to be hoisted up a couple of floors to create retail space on the street level. So many showbiz giants played the Palace — Al Jolson, Fred Astaire, Enrico Caruso, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland. Why not postpone the renovations for a year and bring in today’s legendary talents?

NYPost reports that the box office personnel are amazed at how many people are purchasing tickets thinking Cher is actually starring....

Saw it last night and liked it very much. Funny, smart, well-written, and well-acted. A superb cast.

Saw the show tonight. I jokingly told friends that I bought a ticket and for all this money and she isn't even in it! Wrong! The diva herself showed up at tonight's show and sat a few seats away from me in the center orchestra! The crowd went wild and she looks amazing. The show is a lot of fun. 3 actresses play the role of Cher, and they are titled Star, Lady and Babe, reflecting the age range of Cher throughout her life. Stephanie J. Block who plays The Star, perhaps comes the closest to embodying the essence of Cher. Her voice and vocals are almost spot-on and although she doesn't quite facially resemble Cher, with all the makeup and wigs she does a damn fine job. I did sit there wondering if Chad Michaels would have been better! The show does a good job of condensing Cher's life and struggles, and with an amazing array of hit tunes, the music is fun and rousing. There's a good supporting cast and Emily Skinner, as Cher's Mom, Georgia, and Jarrod Spector, as Sonny Bono, are very good. Of note is costumes, many recreations of originals worn by Cher, are by the original great designer, Bob Mackie. All in all, it's a jukebox musical and the a great walk down memory lane. I went hime with a Cher Greatest hits ear worm for the remainder of the night.

Interesting announcement, this show will open right after the Tony Awards. ‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical’ to Head to Broadway Karen Olivo and Aaron Tveit in the Boston production of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical.” Both will stay with the show when it moves to Broadway. By Sara Aridi Nov. 19, 2018 A stage adaptation of the wildly popular 2001 jukebox musical film “Moulin Rouge” has set its 2019 Broadway opening date. “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” which had its premiere in Boston this summer, will begin performances June 28 at the Al Hirschfeld Theater before opening on July 25. Most of the cast, including the three leads — Karen Olivo, a Tony Award winner for “West Side Story,” Aaron Tveitand Danny Burstein — will remain with the production on Broadway. In his New York Times review, Ben Brantley called the show “smart, shameless and extravagantly entertaining.” He added: “This ‘Moulin Rouge!’ captures the sensibility of a movie-loving movie in a theater lover’s language.” The film, directed by Baz Luhrmann, follows a young writer who falls for a dancer and courtesan at the Moulin Rouge cabaret hall in late-19th century Paris. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won two, for costume design and art direction.

I have a ticket in 3 weeks for this show. I eagerly await watching the Daly's battle it out! One minor complaint us that the show is intermission less and runs 1 hr and 45 min. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/theater/downstairs-review-tyne-daly-tim-daly.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Farts&action=click&contentCollection=arts&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront Review: Tim and Tyne Daly Are Dysfunctional Siblings in ‘Downstairs’ By Laura Collins-Hughes. Nov. 18, 2018 There is no rewind button in live performance, and it might be that my ears deceived me. But I could almost swear that, as Tyne Daly made her entrance in Theresa Rebeck’s chilling new domestic thriller “Downstairs” the other night at the Cherry Lane Theater, she called her brother Tim’s character Timmy. He’s Teddy, actually, but she addressed him as Timmy once later in the show, too — a charming slip in a fine performance, and an easy one to make, given that the Dalys are playing siblings. Ms. Rebeck wrote “Downstairs” with them in mind, and for the first half it comes across as a comfortably uncomfortable dysfunctional-family drama about the psychologically fragile Teddy and his protective older sister, Irene, who is letting him stay on the couch in her unfinished basement. From the play’s wordless opening scene in this Primary Stages production, Teddy is comically, endearingly O.K. with his subterranean surroundings, rooting around amid rusty tools for a bowl for his cereal. (The grimy set is by Narelle Sissons.) Irene, who pops down to visit, likes having him there. It gives her someone to talk with, to cook and bake for, even if he rants sometimes in ways she finds upsetting — about the guy at his office who he’s sure has been poisoning him or the money their mother left to Irene, which she and her controlling husband, Gerry (John Procaccino), used to buy their house. “You want to act this crazy, go act this crazy somewhere else,” she tells her rumpled brother. “I am not going to allow you to act this crazy in my basement.” Teddy does have trouble staying tethered to reality, but he’s a smart and curious guy who loves Irene even as he uses her, and to his credit he’s too ingenuous to be a decent liar. Interspersed with his apparent delusions are observations of the sharpest lucidity: about his isolated sister, how the world really works and the dangers that she has elected not to see. Gerry’s malevolence, for instance. Ms. Daly’s Irene is a timid, beaten-down woman with a nervous smile and a Judy Garland flutter to her voice. So obedient to Gerry that she doesn’t work because he doesn’t want her to, she is the sort of person whose kindness and eagerness to please make her credulous, and far too tolerant of her husband’s cruelty. “So you’ve been living with a demon for, what, 30 years or something?” Teddy says, and it’s both disquieting and funny that he means demon literally. Directed with striking clarity and command by Adrienne Campbell-Holt, “Downstairs” is a well-constructed play of whipsaw moods that have much to do with Teddy’s instability — a restless volatility that Mr. Daly struggles to embody in a performance that is the production’s most amusing yet least convincing. But this is ultimately a kind of horror story, and in its second half we understand that the danger has been lurking in the house all along. What Ms. Rebeck is exploring here is the struggle between good and evil, and the tendency of decent people with honorable intentions to doubt their own perceptions when what they perceive is too sinister to seem plausible. “Downstairs” is about the realization that horrific actions that might have seemed solely the province of scary movies, or paranoid delusions, can be perpetrated by people in your life — perhaps against you and the ones you love. So it goes for Irene, anyway. Ms. Rebeck and Ms. Campbell-Holt are politically minded artists, and there is a larger social point in all this. It’s not just about domestic abuse (though it is about that) or looking after the most vulnerable among us (though it’s about that, too). It’s about shaking off willful naïveté and confronting menace instead of allowing it to determine how we live. If that sounds heavy-handed, it’s actually quite entertaining, all the more so when Gerry makes his entrance halfway through the intermissionless performance. A gray-haired suburban thug, he descends into the basement, and the play instantly thrums with tension, becoming the kind of show where it seemed perfectly natural that the young woman next to me started whispering urgent instructions to the characters, as if she were watching them on T.V. Mr. Procaccino’s Gerry is a magnificent villain — belligerent, dangerous and so habitually, casually vicious that he chews on a nail as he gives Irene a devastating, off-the-cuff list of reasons he married her. When one of them is “You’re pretty,” it’s a little bit heartbreaking to see her blatant need as she asks, “You think I’m pretty?” “Pretty enough,” he says. But by then she has already realized something crucial about the ties that bind us to one another. Some deserve strengthening. Others must be severed for dear life.

Comedian, actor, writer Mike Birbiglia is now appearing on Broadway in his new show, The New One, for a limited run. Tired of the daily news reports from Washington, the tragic disasters in California and a whole host of other depressing events, I picked up a TDF ticket and went to see it in the hopes of having a night out not thinking about all those other things. This show did the trick! Mike is a talented and clever man. his show, about his life and marriage is funny, clever and insightful. I loved it! Highly recommended. Heres' what the NYTimes said: Review: Mike Birbiglia Is a Very Nervous Dad in ‘The New One’ By Ben Brantley If Mike Birbiglia were a piece of furniture, he would surely be a well-worn, deeply stained, slightly squishy couch, much like the one he describes at the beginning of “The New One,” his winning Broadway debut at the Cort Theater. That may not sound like a flattering comparison. But Mr. Birbiglia has great respect and affection for this kind of sofa, and so should you. As he explains in this one-man show, which opened on Sunday night under the seamless direction of Seth Barrish, a couch is “a deceptively simple piece of technology.” It is, to be precise, “a bed that hugs you.” And in delivering that deceptively simple classification, Mr. Birbiglia’s voice becomes a low, wraparound, pleasure-drenched caress. This somnolent sound makes you feel both relaxed and attentive, drowsy and giddy. And somehow an expensive night with a lone comedian starts to feel like a better bargain than bingeing and chilling at home. In an age in which starry stand-up is instantly accessible to anyone with a Netflix subscription, dropping big bucks to see a low-key, self-effacing comedian in person might seem like a waste. Such an attitude doesn’t account, though, for the paradoxically lazy energy that Mr. Birbilgia emanates — a seductive force of physics that can be felt only partly when he’s onscreen. Mr. Birbiglia — who came to national attention with the stage and ,” an autobiographical account of his dangerous nights with a sleep disorder — seems not only to occupy but also to absorb and transmute every inch of the Cort’s naked stage. (Appropriately, there’s more to Beowulf Boritt’s bare set than first meets the eye.) He achieves this partly by pacing, pacing as he talks, in ever-widening circles and diagonals and loop-de-loops. As he does so, he kicks at and stumbles over invisible obstacles. Mr. Birbiglia is retracing the road map of his life, which has always been cluttered with his neuroses and physical ailments. In the months he describes in “The New One,” that life has become even more congested, almost to the point of paralysis. That’s because of the before and after events surrounding the arrival of the play’s title character, a baby named Oona. Yes, she’s his child. Except she’s not quite. Mr. Birbiglia has the disadvantages — not shared by his beloved wife, the poet Jennifer Hope Stein — of being: a) a man, b) an itinerant comedian and c) a raging solipsist. Connecting with a needy creature who has disrupted the delicate balance of an anxious existence does not come easily to him. Dad as the odd man out in baby-makes-three scenarios has long been a basis for domestic comedy. Reduced to synopses, much of the territory Mr. Birbiglia covers here sounds as wearily familiar as This means (as my colleague Alexis Soloski pointed out when she reviewed this show Off Broadway) that Mr. Birbiglia is not a thoroughly modern dad, fully sharing the duties of parenthood. Mr. Birbiglia is quick to admit this dereliction and to praise his wife — and women in general — as belonging to a superior order of beings. Men, he contends, are born jerks, a universal truth that he believes accounts for the state of the world today. (“The men we used to think were great were priests, politicians and gymnastic doctors. It hasn’t ended well for great.”) He supports this contention with humiliating stories of his own bad behavior, including a graphically detailed account of sex with a prostitute in Amsterdam. His status as male is only one of the reasons he once thought that he and his wife shouldn’t have children. In the show’s opening section, he lists seven arguments against his becoming a father. They range from assorted physical ailments (an early experience of cancer, diabetes and his tendency to act out his dreams while asleep) to his suspicion that “consciousness is only a hallucination.” The list in and of itself is not funny (although I did love the self-explanatory brevity of “No. 4: I have a cat”). The conversational detours the list inspires can be sublime. That caveat about consciousness and hallucinations? It somehow segues into a description of the role of Roman Catholicism in Mr. Birbiglia’s childhood as “this weird three-way with God” and his mom. Unlikely similes and metaphors become a means of both addressing and (temporarily) defusing terrors and tensions. Presumably, verbal felicity is part of what brought Mr. Birbiglia and Ms. Stein together originally. He quotes her poem about their daughter at eight months: “An infant reaches for something (I don’t know what), pushes it farther away and cries in frustration each time she reaches without realizing she is crawling for the first time. She is just like her father.” That’s also a pretty good description of Mr. Birbiglia’s style as a performer here. As he restlessly circumambulates, verbally and physically, he’s always reaching for explanations that seem to explode on him. Yet, in the end, a symmetry emerges from the chaos he describes and embodies. Such is the gentle genius of one man’s comfortingly haphazard approach to comedy. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/theater/the-new-one-review-mike-birbiglia.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftheater&action=click&contentCollection=theater&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront

Here's what NYPost columnist Michael Reidal had to say about the future of King Kong: Critics beat up ‘King Kong,’ but producers aren’t pulling the plug By Michael Riedel November 15, 2018 | 4:35pm Never mind those Curtiss Helldiver fighter planes circling the Empire State Building in “King Kong.” The real threat to Broadway’s big ape may be those vicious drama critics. They strafed the $35 million spectacle, which opened Nov. 8 and is by far the most expensive show of the season. The 20-foot-tall puppet got its due — and it is a remarkable creation — but minor things like, oh, the script and score, got clobbered. Can this wounded beast limp along until the Tonys? Word is there aren’t plans to close “King Kong” anytime soon, though it’s an open secret that other shows are circling the Broadway Theater, wondering when it will be back on the market. January and February can be pretty cold, even if your leading man is covered in fur. But “Kong” is blessed with deep-pocketed producers, the Australian firm Global Creatures. One of its shows, “Walking With Dinosaurs,” grossed millions of dollars. Global Creatures spent nearly 10 years developing “King Kong,” and sources say the company is fighting for the show. What a source calls an “aggressive” television campaign began this week, and the footage of Kong is impressive. Kong will also put in an appearance at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade next week which, with its millions of viewers, does move tickets. The hope is that “Kong” can trample its bad reviews and go straight for tourists who now make up nearly 65 percent of the Broadway audience. “We did not go into this naively,” a production source says. “I don’t think we ever thought the critics would be on our side. But we’ve got a great title and the big guy delivers the goods.” The problem is the expense. “Kong” grossed a little more than $900,000 last week. But with a running cost north of $700,000, that’s not a big profit. Earning back $35 million is a tall order. Global Creatures has another, infinitely more promising show headed to Broadway: “Moulin Rouge,” which earned raves over the summer in Boston. Days after it opened, there were rumors it would come to Broadway this season. But Global Creatures didn’t want to compete with itself, so “Moulin Rouge” won’t get here until the summer. The Broadway crowd doesn’t think much of “King Kong,” so don’t look for many Tony nominations in the spring. But there is a sense that the show got a raw deal from the Times, which reviewed “Kong” in the form of a dialogue between the paper’s critics, Ben Brantley and Jesse Green. They tried to out-Addison DeWitt each other, though neither came up with anything as good as the zingers in “All About Eve.” Their one-two punch ticked off a lot of theater people. “It’s bad enough to get a lousy review from one of them,” says a veteran producer not involved in “King Kong.” “But to get dumped on by the two of them is excessive.” Another producer calls the dialogue of dish “vile,” adding, “It’s beneath the paper.” Carping about critics gets producers absolutely nowhere, but I haven’t seen people this agitated about press coverage in a long time. The Broadway League may issue a formal complaint. Pointless, but producers have to let off steam somehow.

NY Daily News liked it: REVIEW: Broadway saves Indiana in 'The Prom,' a savvy, self-aware and consistently funny new musical of liberal longing https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/broadway/ny-ent-the-prom-broadway-review-1019-story.html

This may be a sleeper hit this season... Good review for the NYTimes. A friend offered me a ticket, however, the seat was in the nosebleed section of the balcony and I had to politely refuse. She apologized profusely but said the show has been doing well and sites are limited. I'm a kind of "center orchestra kind of a guy" and my hearing, eyesight and all those other wonderful age-related problems make balcony seats a no-no. ‘The Prom’ Review: Bringing Jazz Hands to the Heartland By “The Prom” begins when a theater critic for The New York Times writes a pan so poisonous that the show he’s reviewing dies on the spot. That’s ridiculous. It could never happen. At any rate, it won’t happen now, because “The Prom,” which opened on Thursday at the Longacre Theater, is such a joyful hoot. With its kinetic dancing, broad mugging and belty anthems, it makes you believe in musical comedy again. These days, that takes some doing. How, after all, with so much pain in the air and so many constraints on what’s allowed to be funny, do we find the heart and permission to laugh? As in many classic musicals, the authors of “The Prom” begin by holding a distorting mirror up to the theater itself. The show shut down by the horrible critic is a bio-musical about Eleanor Roosevelt that naturally features a hip-hop number. Its stars, Dee Dee Allen and Barry Glickman, are narcissistic gasbags who mistake their exhibitionism for humanitarianism. Career rehabilitation for widely mocked middle-aged divas is no easy matter. How can Dee Dee (Beth Leavel) and Barry (Brooks Ashmanskas) “appear to be decent human beings” without giving up a shred of self-love? Their friends aren’t in much of a position to answer. Angie (Angie Schworer) has been stuck in the chorus of “Chicago” for 20 years. Trent (Christopher Sieber) is a superannuated cater-waiter who can’t stop reminding everyone that he went to Juilliard and had a flicker of fame in a ’90s sitcom called “Talk to the Hand.” Still, they come up with the solution: celebrity activism. It would be enough for a show like this to maintain a cruising altitude of giddy. The authors — book by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin, songs by Mr. Beguelin (lyrics) and Matthew Sklar (music) — have on their combined résumés both “The Drowsy Chaperone,” that peerlessly inane 1920s showbiz spoof, and “The Wedding Singer,” an underrated musical comedy about an entertainer so humbled . But working with the director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw, who staged “Chaperone” as well as the current “Aladdin” and “Mean Girls,” the team behind “The Prom” has attempted a more difficult gymnastic maneuver. As in many of the greatest Golden Age musicals, they latch onto a subject of topical importance, using its gravity to anchor their satire and their satire to leaven its earnestness. In full “Hairspray” mode, they mostly succeed. The subject in this case is heartland homophobia. A quick Twitter search leads Dee Dee and Barry to the perfect object for their insincere concern: a 17-year-old lesbian whose high school won’t let her bring a girl to the prom. (The theater executive Jack Viertel came up with the idea after reading about several similar cases, including one in Mississippi in 2010.) Dragging along their exasperated press agent, the four vain actors hitch a ride to Indiana with a bus-and-truck tour of “Godspell,” hoping to rekindle their careers by wowing the “Jesus jumping losers and their inbred wives” into submission. “We’re gonna help that little lesbian,” Barry sings, “whether she likes it or not.” Like segregation in “Hairspray” — or, for that matter, racism in “South Pacific” — anti-gay intolerance offers a comfortable target and a teachable moment. Sincerity can be dangerous for comedies, though, burning away laughs and landing everyone in a lake of treacle. If that problem is mostly avoided here, it is at a slight cost to depth and texture. Emma, the girl at the center of the storm, turns out to be a perfectly adjusted young woman with no satirical qualities except in her wardrobe. (The hilarious costumes are by Ann Roth and Matthew Pachtman.) Though smartly played by Caitlin Kinnunen, and provided with intolerant parents we never meet, the character as written is something of a blank. That seems strategic to me. The lovely romantic ballads Emma is given to sing, with titles like “Dance With You” and “Unruly Heart,” are completely anodyne — or would be if it weren’t for the context, which turns them into breakthroughs. But the other Indianans are blurrier, as if the authors couldn’t quite decide how much ribbing they could take. The local teenagers might as well be from “Bye Bye Birdie” — and they evolve from antagonists to allies with the scantest provocation. Even the school principal (Michael Potts) turns out to be unflappably noble; more surprising, as Dee Dee discovers, he’s a fan of hers and yet straight. That leaves as the show’s only villain that fallback monster, the overworked single mother. Mrs. Greene (Courtenay Collins) isn’t even allowed a first name. She leads the P.T.A., knows very little about her own daughter (Isabelle McCalla, lovely) and, perhaps most damningly, shops at Dress Barn. Other than that, the comic focus is squarely on the interfering, elitist New Yorkers, and here “The Prom” excels. Ms. Leavel is, as always, scarily brilliant at portraying self-involvement and making that passion big enough to justify belting about it. As the title character in “The Drowsy Chaperone” , which won her a Tony Award; here she has two. Mr. Ashmanskas is likewise playing a variation on flamboyant characters he’s mastered before, but at such an extreme level as to leave mere earth behind. His auto-da-fey stylings — twinkle-toes pirouettes and pursed-lip mincing — ought to be offensive but somehow wind up as poetry instead. I wish his big number (like the one given to the terrific Mr. Sieber) were a better song; despite Mr. Nicholaw’s ecstatic staging, it never quite lifts off. That is not a problem in general — the ensemble’s big numbers, set to Glen Kelly’s dance arrangements, are a blast. So is the textbook-perfect second-act opener, “Zazz,” in which Ms. Schworer, with her “crazy antelope legs,” gives Emma an unlikely lesson in Fosse-esque “style plus confidence.” Those attributes, perhaps not as easily achievable as the song suggests, are part of what makes “The Prom” delicious despite its flaws. Moving so fast you can hardly see the cracks in the road, it consistently delivers on its entertainment promises as well as its Golden Age premise: that musicals, however zazzy, can address the deepest issues dividing us. Like a certain cockeyed optimist, you may even note a lump in your throat when Emma finally gets her perfect kiss while the supportive Hoosiers and godless Broadway interlopers cheer her on and sing backup. If that means that “The Prom” trades in some of the same cheesy mawkishness it satirizes, that’s O.K. Cheese has always been part of the American recipe — and rarely hurt the apple pie underneath. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/theater/the-prom-review.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftheater&action=click&contentCollection=theater&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

Actually it sounds like a real laugh! Off-off-off Broadway Two Mormon missionaries ring the doorbell of Ethel Merman and hilarity ensues in this new musical comedy. The Book of Merman is a diva-driven journey featuring original songs and show-stopping ballads. It’s Delightful. It’s Delicious. It’s De-Merman! Directed by Joe Langworth Music and Lyrics by Leo Schwartz Book by Leo Schwartz & DC Cathro (St. Luke's Theatre • 308 West 46th St btwn 8th & 9th Ave) https://www.bookofmermanmusical.com

Bravo, MikebiDude, 510guy, and Moondance. I've been urging and probing Avalon for sometime now to get help. He refuses to do so. Others on this list seem to think that somehow he will eventually come around. I disagree wholeheartedly with them, Avalon is too far down the rabbit hole. When he runs out of prescription meds and the pharmacy and doctors refuse to renew them, perhaps then he will wake up.

NYPost panned it as well! Broadway’s ‘King Kong’ is a gorilla-size mess By Joe Dziemianowicz November 8, 2018 | 11:31pm | Updated The musical's animatronic leading man is a marvel.Matthew Murphy THEATER REVIEW KING KONG Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway. 2 hours, 15 minutes, with one intermission. Show me the monkey! That gargantuan gorilla in “King Kong” is the top banana of the $35 million musical that opened Thursday night on Broadway. Too bad that most everything else wrapped around this animatronic marvel, onstage for just a quarter of the show, is such a mess. The story, like the 1933 original film and several remakes (including one where the ape gives Jessica Lange a Drybar-worthy blowout), is essentially the tale of Girl Meets Chimp. As written by Jack Thorne, who won a Tony for the infinitely superior “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” this plot could fit on a postage stamp. The setting is 1930s NYC, where plucky, wannabe actress Ann Darrow (Christiani Pitts) has come straight off her family’s farm to fulfill her “dream,” a word that recurs repeatedly. She’s nobody’s fool, but she’s desperate enough to join filmmaker Carl Denham (Eric William Morris) and his lackey, the kindhearted Lumpy (Erik Lochtefeld), on a ship bound for remote Skull Island, home to King Kong. The supersize simian takes a shine to Ann, who repays him by aiding in his capture. Chained and bound, Kong’s shipped back to New York for exhibition. He breaks loose, and so does all hell. In one of the show’s better strokes, Marius de Vries’ orchestrations underscore such key moments as Kong’s clash with a cobra set on making Ann its lunch. But those few, faint atmospheric touches are undone by Aussie songwriter Eddie Perfect’s mishmash of period pastiche, power ballads and rap, their knuckle-headed lyrics sticking out for all of the wrong reasons. Director Drew McOnie has the dubious distinction of overseeing the overwrought, out-of-place choreography. The show is a study in mood disorder, careening from high drama to even higher camp, to graphic stylized violence and tacked-on, artificial uplift. Acting is basically beside the point, but, as guided, both leads give shrill, one-note performances. The creators are so intent on making Ann the opposite of Fay Wray’s portrayal of a damsel in distress that she lacks the vulnerability that made the Ann-and-Kong love story click. That leaves it to King Kong to step up. This big, badass beauty of a beast does it with soulful eyes and a rafter-rattling roar that helps him hold the audience in the palm of his giant hand — even with a distracting, luggage-rack-like thing on his back for Ann and the puppeteers to climb on. Early on, as the ship departs New York Harbor, the scenery, stagecraft and video projections merge so beautifully, you think this show may lead to someplace special. Nope. “King Kong” is less fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Double whammy from the NYTimes, both Jesse Green and Ben Brantley HATED it! Sorry I cannot paste the review as it exceed the 10000 character limit, so you'll have to check the NYTimes website. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/theater/king-kong-review.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Farts&action=click&contentCollection=arts&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront

It's quite simple, if you don't like it, don't go.

"Why confuse things by posting he may have bought the wrong walker.Isn't the goal to hope Avalon has a better life." Sorry William if you feel I am confusing there situation but in reality I am trying to IMPROVE the situation. The walker Avalon bought is going to be difficult for him, other than for very, very short distances. My aim is to get this guy out of his house and into car service and into a physicians office. If Avalon had consulted a physical therapist/doctor, they would have taken measurements and gotten him a "Medicare covered" walker/rollator which would fit his needs. He would never have seen a bill. They would have provided him with training on how to operate it and maneuver around. Avalon will have a better life when he is not hibernating in his dark apartment, devoid of human contact and making decisions that are bad for him. Sorry, I'm a hard case and will always encourage people too "do the right thing,"that is, the intelligent, moral and ethical decisions.

IMO, you bought the wrong product. Here is my suggestion, and when and if you call to order, ask if it's covered under medicare. here is another suggestion, available online and immediate delivery:, and on sale: https://www.parentgiving.com/shop/basic-steel-rollators-6861/p/13962/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=PLA&scid=scbplp6861-13962&sc_intid=6861-13962&msclkid={msclkid} Rated 4.8 out of 5 Medline Height Adjustable Rollator with 8" Wheels $79.99 Regular price:$99.99 You Save $20.00 Features: Classically designed, value priced Comes in three colors: Blue, Green and Red Constructed of a durable powder coated steel Accommodates users up to 350 lbs 8" Wheels especially designed for outside navigation Comes standard with convenient storage bag under the seat Handles are height adjustable in 1" increments from 31" to 35" Width between the handle bars: 17.5" Overall Width: 24" Specifications: HPIS Classification: 630_20_40_20 Latex Free: No Product Type: Basic Seat Dimension: 12" X 12" Top of the seat from the ground is 21" Durable nylong bag (under the seat) dimensions: 14" X 7.5" X 6" Product weight 19 lbs OR: Drive Medical Aluminum Rollator Walker Fold Up and Removable Back Support, Padded Seat, 6" Wheels, Red by Drive Medical Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002VWK3F2/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B002VWK3F2&linkCode=as2&tag=bestprodtag89861-20 Price: $63.18 & FREE Shipping. Comes with a seamless padded seat and a zippered pouch underneath the seat for added privacy and security of personal items Removable, hinged, padded backrest can be folded up or down. Large 7.5 Inch casters are ideal for indoor and outdoor use 6" Black non-marring casters with soft grip tires are ideal for indoor and outdoor use Easy-to-use deluxe loop locks and Brakes with serrated edges provide a firm hold Handle Height: 32-37"; Seat Dimensions: 12"(D) x 14"(W) x 20"(H); Weight Capacity: 300 lbs And, just for the hell of it, here a site that reviewed the TOP 5 walkers. https://bestreviews.com/best-walkers

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Excellent review in today's NYTIMES: Review: ‘American Son’ Puts Kerry Washington in a Maternal Nightmare By Jesse Green Some great performances come with elaborate costumes or prosthetic noses attached. Some involve crackerjack timing or floods of tears. But the great performance Kerry Washington is giving in “American Son,” which opened on Sunday at the Booth Theater on Broadway, features no such decoration. The only thing Ms. Washington has to do as Kendra Ellis-Connor is bulldoze her way through 85 minutes of mounting agony as a mother whose son may be in desperate trouble. Let’s add “black” to that sentence, because it changes everything: “as a black mother whose son may be in desperate trouble.” “American Son,” by Christopher Demos-Brown, is part of a wave of new plays that consider the vulnerability of young black men in their dealings with the police. But unlike “Pass Over,” “Until the Flood,” “Kill Move Paradise” and “Scraps,” the style here is neither surreal nor poetic; it’s ticktock realism, deployed in real time. And the focus is not on the young men or the police but on the parents caught in between. Offering a reverse angle on the standard procedural, “American Son” takes place entirely in the waiting room of a South Florida police station, where in the middle of a stormy night Kendra and her estranged husband, Scott, await news of their missing 18-year-old son, Jamal. Scott (Steven Pasquale) is an F.B.I. agent. Is that why he is so much more effective at dislodging information from Officer Paul Larkin, the policeman on duty? Or is it because of his lack of apparent hostility? Or because both men are white? In any case, Scott quickly learns things that Kendra, who sees racism wherever she looks, cannot. The thing is, Kendra is right. The play’s schematic setup allows Mr. Demos-Brown to demonstrate how the tendrils of prejudice creep everywhere, even into the cracks of a marriage. Scott, though he loves Kendra, simply isn’t very troubled when the clueless Larkin (Jeremy Jordan) describes her with phrases like “the natives are restless” or says that she goes “from zero to ghetto in, like, nothing flat.” No matter that Kendra is a professor of psychology who corrects her husband’s “white trash” diction. In the mind of the officer, she is still the mother of a thug. Would he have asked a white woman, as he asks Kendra, whether her son, despite acing A.P. physics at an elite private school, has gold teeth? Ms. Washington with Steven Pasquale, who plays her character’s estranged husband, an F.B.I. agent who has an easier time getting information from the police. Though comments like this put the audience strongly on Kendra’s side, she does not make it easy to stay there. She is needling, sarcastic, suspicious, inflexible. It is not a pretty role, and properly so; why should Kendra have to be ingratiating to be sympathetic? In jeans and tennis shoes, with her hair pulled back to highlight her weary, worried face, Ms. Washington trails no glamour from her seven seasons as the political fixer Olivia Pope on “Scandal.” Nor does she have any of Olivia’s finesse and power. All she has is a torrent of words, barely containing her rage at everything: at her son for slapping a provocative bumper sticker on his car, at her husband for leaving them, at the police for stonewalling her and at history itself. For even as she speaks through Kendra’s specific experience in lines like “Everything’s coming apart,” Ms. Washington evokes a larger and longer disaster. No matter how you build your life to avoid it, her performance suggests, the day will come when your black son is in danger. Perhaps all of your decoys, all of your success, will make that day come more surely. This is a despairing message in a despairing play, and it renders the actual plot almost secondary. Indeed, after the first few minutes we don’t learn much more about what’s happened to Jamal until the final curtain. In between, the dispensing of calibrated micro-doses of information can seem manipulative; much of it could as easily be revealed earlier. But Mr. Demos-Brown, who is white, is interested in the procedural details only as a tensioning device. His real aim, evidently, is to shift the narrative about police and young black men from individual cases to universal feelings. It would be hard for any parent not to be harrowed by the terror both Kendra and Scott express, in their own ways, about the disappearance of their child. The play’s title clearly expresses that generalizing intention. This puts enormous pressure on the production to keep the personal material in focus, lest the whole thing tip into polemics. Though I could quibble with some of the staging, which sometimes seems to get stuck behind furniture, this is the director Kenny Leon’s best work to date: incisive and breakneck. If the police station set by Derek McLane is a bit grand in scale, it fills the Booth nicely and emphasizes Kendra’s powerlessness. And for the first time I can recall, a thunderstorm recreated onstage actually seems like a thunderstorm instead of a comment. The cast manages a similar feat of naturalism: These are big but nuanced performances. Mr. Pasquale, for once ideally cast, fully inhabits Scott’s contraption of a personality, easygoing for about an inch and chaotic underneath. (Listen, if you can, for his devastating last lines.) Mr. Jordan, naturally ingratiating onstage, smartly uses that ingratiation to suggest a character who has never had to dig any deeper. And as a police lieutenant who arrives near the end, Eugene Lee makes a powerful figure of a plot device. “American Son” is not a subtle play; it barely feels like a play at all. With its unrelentingly high tension on every level — maternal, marital, societal — it’s more like a slice of a nightmare, with few contours despite its surprises. Its abrupt ending doesn’t even offer a chance for catharsis; it just spits you out. But why should the audience be let off the hook? Why, when everything’s coming apart, should any of us? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/theater/american-son-review.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Farts&action=click&contentCollection=arts&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

Saw the last performance on Saturday night. Not a particularly good piece of theater, so I am glad I won't be accused of promoting it. It ran at the York Theater Co which has a good rep, unfortunately, I felt this production lacking and by the end of the show I was bored, and a bit sleepy. Theater Review: Can Cabaret Be a Tool of Liberation? By Sara Holdren From Midnight at the Never Get, at St. Peter’s. Photo: Carol Rosegg The Boys in the Band have left the building, and Arnold Beckoff’s Broadway transfer is still in previews, but if you’re looking for torch songs in the meantime, Midnight at the Never Get has got you covered. An intimate new musical — co-conceived by its star, Sam Bolen, and Mark Sonnenblick, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics — Midnight has the slightly over-slick feeling of a show that’s been through the workshopping process, and through it and through it. But the high gloss suits the subject matter. As one of its characters, an ambitious songwriter with a low tolerance for chaos, argues: “Raw honesty? That isn’t beautiful. What’s beautiful is the tension between the intensity of the feeling and the polish of the writing. That gap. Having to structure how you feel and make it shiny, presentable to the world … ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ Are you kidding me? That’s not a lyric, that’s a note you pass in kindergarten.” To the men of Midnight, the Beatles will never replace the Gershwins and Judy Garland. The musical is built around the glamorous nightclub act of a singer named Trevor Copeland (Bolen). Trevor is dapper, witty, gay, and head over heels in love with Arthur Brightman, the aforementioned songwriter, who’s fashioned himself as a new Cole Porter. Arthur writes dapper, witty, gay love songs for Trevor to sing, which would be, to quote one of those ditties, all “sunshine [and] smiles [and] movie reels with Ferris wheels and Paris styles” — but the name of the bar where Trevor sings should clue us in to the looming roadblocks in the course of true love. First, Trevor and Arthur are living in New York City in the mid-1960s: Their relationship isn’t even legal, and their underground nightclub act doesn’t officially exist. The Never Get certainly isn’t a gay bar — it’s a “members only club. Members being anyone except the vice squad.” Second, and trickier still, Trevor isn’t actually living anymore. We meet “all that’s left of [him]” in a limbo of his own creation, where, ever since his mortal end, he’s been passing the time in purgatory by honing his act (“Songs, jokes, elegance — Judy at Carnegie! But gay. Well, more gay”). When you die, he tells us, “you get to pick a memory. Make a little house out of it. Hang the walls and rough the floors with all the detail you have left. And then you stay, as long as you like, in your infinite moment, where you can be just like you were…” Trevor has chosen to spend eternity in a fantasy version of the little jewel box of a club where he and Arthur used to perform. Death, it would seem, is a cabaret, too. Trevor’s posthumous memory palace is almost perfect — “[the] stage is polished. None of the bulbs are out in the sign. The piano’s even in tune!” And there’s a full band. Music director Adam Podd did the swinging orchestrations, and lighting designer Jamie Roderick keeps the five-piece ensemble cloaked in shadow at the back of the stage, like the mind-made apparitions they are. Almost perfect — but not quite. “I mean, that’s not Arthur,” Trevor admits, motioning to the pianist (the wry, very musically gifted Jeremy Cohen). “He’s just me. But I use him to remember.” As the singer awaits the ghostly arrival of his true love — the man who gave words to their passion, even if those words did sometimes have to change from “he” to “she” when Trevor sang Arthur’s songs in public — we hear the story of their romance, from starry-eyed rise to troubled decline. We also hear a catalog of clever tunes by Sonnenblick, who’s got an impressive feel for the playful lilt and smoky sentimentality of the Great American Songbook. Sonnenblick knows he’s in familiar territory — “I’m just copying songs that were written 30 years ago,” confesses the Arthur avatar at one point—but he treads it lightly and intelligently. His songs bounce and sparkle, or swell and moan, fittingly. And the boyishly charming Bolen sounds lovely singing them, especially when he releases into his tender falsetto, or gets sly and brassy with us in the more exuberant numbers. “My Boy in Blue” is an upbeat, raunchy love song with an edge to it: “He owns a gun / His outfit’s fun / I won’t forget his number, cuz it’s 9-1-1!” sings Trevor, making light of the very real danger he and Arthur and the whole Never Get community face at the hands of the NYPD. (The song’s kickline-y climax is a sharp little smack: “I’m not on the lam / But who gives a damn? / He swears he’ll always bust me / Just for who I am!”) Then there’s the brisk, self-deprecating “Why’d’ya Hafta Call It Love?” and the defiantly peppy “I Prefer Sunshine,” both songs in which the lovers admit their predilection for romance over reality. “Love’s whatever they show you / At the multiplex / It’s not a psychosexual disease,” trills Trevor as not-Arthur plays along. And here’s the underlying tension of Midnight at the Never Get: While Arthur tries to locate that scintillating gap between deep feeling and fine expression, the show itself is interested in the pull of its characters’ aestheticism against the tide of progressive protest politics. Those politics have shaped our contemporary liberal mores: It would be blasphemous these days to speak of Stonewall with anything less than serious reverence, but for Trevor and Arthur, Stonewall is “the bar for street kids, hustlers, go-go boys on the dance floor — you’d be embarrassed to be seen there if you were over 25.” While Trevor, the more passionate of the pair, is drawn to the revolutionary fervor that starts to fill Greenwich Village over the years that he spends at the Never Get, Arthur is openly disgusted by what he sees as the “loud and aggressive and sanctimonious” tactics in the streets. “Has it occurred to [any of them] to try and actually contribute to society? To put on a suit and look presentable?” he growls. “First you have to make people want to listen to you. And then, maybe, you can change their minds.” Today, if a modern Arthur were posting analogous attitudes on Twitter, it would take about .00005 seconds for him to be drowned in a fiery tidal wave of privilege-checking. And perhaps he would deserve some of it. The “show the powers that be that we’re just like them and then they’ll accept us” tactic is even less fashionable now than it was 50 years ago — we don’t have a lot of patience for people who openly refuse to identify as activists, who prioritize “presentability” and argue for the slow and steady path forward. Especially when those people are — gay or not — white men. What’s interesting about Midnight at the Never Get isn’t that the show itself propagates Arthur’s views: It’s that, through the lens of Trevor’s memory, it examines them. Because Trevor — who’s singing his heart out for us — genuinely loves Arthur, we too must try to find some feeling for the songwriter. We can’t dump him in the wastebasket of history and be done with it. We have to consider his humanity, too: that of the private person, the person who loves beauty, the person who “[doesn’t] want to hide who [he is]” but is struggling with the hard fact that who he actually is, apart from his sexuality, doesn’t jibe with the person his community wants him to be. That’s a tough position to be in, a different kind of closet, and though there may not be much sympathy for it in 2018, it gives Midnight a meatier central question than “Will Arthur show up so that Trevor can spend eternity with him?” Instead, the show wants to know if we can ever get both — romantic, sunshiney, Cole Porter-esque love, and real justice, real freedom — or if the kind of love that goes hand in hand with liberation must, of force, be messier, wilder, more defiant, less polite, less shaped by our visions of a Hollywood past and more by our visions of a just future. You can tell how Sonnenblick, Bolen, and director Max Friedman, who keeps the show clean and tight throughout, want to answer that question. Trevor, despite his love for the protest-averse Arthur, eventually confesses that he did go out to march, waving a sign that said “Don’t let the world shape your love. Let your love shape the world.” It’s a phrase of Arthur’s that the writer was never quite brave enough to actually live. The rub is that it’s hard for Midnight’s purposefully nostalgic format to accommodate a transformative political leap forward. The show is solidly constructed and well performed by both Bolen and Cohen — and its last number comes with a particularly touching twist — but it’s difficult for Friedman to find his way in the finale. The show both wants to break itself and doesn’t. It wants to have it all, the romance and the revolution, and in the end, it errs on the side of sweetness. That’s all right, though it lessens some of the existential sting of the story’s title. What would it have been like, I wonder, to see the jewel box shatter? Midnight at the Never Get is at the York Theatre at Saint Peter’s through November 4.

NYTimes review. By Ben Brantley Nov. 1, 2018 In life, drama queens, those extravagantly emotional beings who suck up all the oxygen in a room, are fatiguing souls, to be avoided at all costs when one is tired. But, ah, in fiction — in books and film, and especially on the stage — these same creatures can be an energizing joy, as stimulating as four shots of espresso. That’s why I am advising you to make the acquaintance of a grade-A specimen of this spectacular genus, whose presence is overflowing the Helen Hayes Theater. His undramatic name is Arnold Beckoff, though he also goes by the more promising moniker of Virginia Ham. And, as embodied by Michael Urie in the happy revival of Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song,” which opened on Thursday night, Arnold is just the guy and gal to pull you out of your election-season weariness. He may also cause you to shed a few sentimental tears, but isn’t that what you expect of a drama queen? And wait until you meet Arnold’s mother, who is played, if you please, by Mercedes Ruehl. Though a slender fellow, Mr. Urie reads so exultantly big in this production that you almost forget the man who indelibly created Arnold. That’s Mr. Fierstein, the author and original star of “Torch Song Trilogy,” as it was known when it shook up Broadway in the early 1980s, copping A portrait of a lovelorn, nice Jewish boy who works as a gender illusionist, that original production took mainstream theatergoers to places few had visited before, including (hilariously) a bar back room for the purposes of sweaty, anonymous sex. Yet Mr. Fierstein’s Arnold clearly belonged to a breed that Broadway has always celebrated. I mean those natural-born stage stars who are both inescapably odd and embraceably accessible, like Carol Channing and Zero Mostel, who make eccentricities more commanding than beauty. The strapping Mr. Fierstein, with his foghorn voice and borscht belt timing, gave the world a drag queen that every mother could love, and a script with the zing of an R-rated Neil Simon comedy. Mr. Fierstein went on to become nearly as much a staple of the mainstream theatrical landscape as Mr. Simon, both as a performer (“Hairspray”) and as a book-writer for musicals (“La Cage aux Folles”). Because of his singular status, there was some skepticism when it was announced that “Torch Song” would be part of Second Stage Theater’s Off Broadway season last year. Yet that revival, directed by Moisés Kaufman, became such a hit that it was decided to move it for a limited run to Second Stage’s new Broadway digs, the Helen Hayes. I admired its unexpected intimacy and intensity last year, especially in the scenes between Mr. Urie and Ms. Ruehl. Mr. Kaufman’s staging — still designed to please the eye without overwhelming it, with 1970s shorthand sets by David Zinn, costumes to match by Clint Ramos and lighting by David Lander — now feels smoother and quicker on its feet. It also feels, well, bigger. I’m referring particularly to Mr. Urie’s performance. This nimble actor has already demonstrated canny comic chops in Off Broadway plays (Jonathan Tolins’s “Buyer & Cellar,” Gogol’s “The Government Inspector.”) But in filling Mr. Fierstein’s dauntingly big shoes on a Broadway stage, Mr. Urie stretches to color in the outsize outlines of his part. This might have led to a strained, shrill performance. Instead, it has inspired a seriously entertaining interpretation of living large as a proactive defense against feeling small. “A model is,” Arnold explains to a young man of that profession. “A drag queen aspires.” And as we follow the chapters of Arnold’s rocky relationship with a closeted schoolteacher, Ed (Ward Horton, pitch perfect as an almost-straight man), Mr. Urie finds a physical grandeur in such aspiration. Even without the wigs and tarantula eyelashes of his performing alter ego, Arnold is a preternaturally heightened figure, only rarely without the battle gear of exaggeration and melodrama. His approach to life seems to be that to inflate — problems, pain, indecision — is to deflaate. Hyperbole, after all, makes targets more hittable.\ This means that Arnold never walks when he can bound or caper; never mists up when he can bawl; never simply says “mmm-hmm” in conversation when he can trump whatever’s been said with a top-spun joke, even at his own expense. This is evident in his tortured relationships with Ed; with the woman Ed marries, Laurel (Roxanna Hope Radja, who winningly brings out the character’s wry masochism); and with the handsome, much younger Alan, the model (a likable Michael Hsu Rosen). Those are the dramatis personae of the play’s first half, which on Broadway has acquired a new breeziness. The pain these people inflict on one another in the name of love (and the denial of it) always hums beneath the surface. The second half introduces us to David (Jack DiFalco, convincingly sassy if a shade too old for the part), a gay 15-year-old whom Arnold is hoping to adopt and, best of all, Mrs. Beckoff, the woman Arnold calls Ma, who arrives from Florida on a visit. That’s Ms. Ruehl’s part, which she walks, not runs, with and nearly steals the show in an expertly coiled performance. From the moment she arrives, toting all manner of baggage, it’s clear that Ma and Arnold are of the same flesh. Even when they’re quarreling, which is much of the time, they have the synchronized rhythms of a vaudeville team. You could even say that Ma, the homemaker with a will of iron, is ultimately what Arnold aspires to be. This makes her rejection of him, as a gay man with Good Housekeeping dreams, all the more lacerating. Not that Arnold can’t stand up to her, and not that she can’t stand up to him standing up to her — which turns their climactic face-off into a shattering battle royal. “Torch Song” has its moments of pure sitcom — there’s a protracted scene about the awfulness of Ed’s cooking — which you can only grin and bear. But it also incorporates shadows of tragedy, including a plot turn involving a brutal hate crime, that feel sadly topical. And there are moments when Mr. Urie’s Arnold lets us see the bona fide, bottomless fear and uncertainty beneath the larger-than-life facade. It’s there as a sudden, unexpected flicker in his eyes when he says that, at 13, “I knew everything.” In his opening monologue, Arnold tells us: “A drag queen is like an oil painting. You gotta stand back to get the full effect.” Mr. Urie gives us that full effect, for sure. But as you come to know this dizzying, sobering and surprisingly instructive drama queen, standing back is hardly an option.

As Larstrup so aptly said: "Avalon appears to have all the answers as to why he can’t do something and none of how he can with so much help here - by design." Indeed Avalon posts his trails and tribulations with repetitive frequency and many have offered advice, yet Avalon refuses to do anything. I thought he ordered a walker, but I bet that didn't work out. This guy refuses to do anything meaningful and helpful in his life. He will indeed fall and be on the floor before anyone gets him help. That said, I think Avalons primary issue is depression. But he won't seek help for that either. My other guess is that this is all some internet ruse on his behalf to see how many people will respond to his rantings. I'm surprised he hasn't asked for donations!