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[skynyc]

Of course I'm talking about the Rays/Rangers, Phillies/Reds and Yankees/Twins games that were played today.

 

NOT! (Although I am impressed that Roy Halladay pitched a no-hitter against the Reds.)

 

No, I am talking about the three NYMF shows that I saw today.

 

NYMF is the New York Musical Theater Festival and every October they present workshop productions of 30-odd original musicals. There have been some clunkers in the last several years, but there have also been some gems, including [Title of Show] and Next to Normal which both moved to Broadway, as well as Altar Boyz and Yank, two of the numerous other projects that found a commercial run off-Broadway.

 

Today's offerings were pretty great.

 

First was My Mother's Jewish Lesbian Wiccan Wedding. Don't let the title fool you, this wasn't a Saturday Night Live sketch. It was an auto-biographical 90 minute musical with a lot of great tunes and a ton of heart. David's parents divorce when he is thirteen and his mom moves to Ottawa, Canada for a new job and a new life. David follows her there for High School, once she is more settled.

 

The show was a delight, with terrific performances by Broadway's Liz Larson and Ann Harada. David, who with his wife Irene wrote the show, (they played themselves) was adorable and appealing with his non-chalantness over his mother's sexuality, or the fact that when he is in college she rediscovers her Jewish roots. And his other "mom"s Wiccan practices are equally accepted. Several terrific songs: "Wiccan 101"; and "Ottawa" basically a walking tour of the city; "Garth's Turn", a funny doo-wop number sung by David's father when he learns his ex-wife is a lesbian; and "Claire Comes Out Again" complete with the ensemble looking like they just dropped in from Fiddler on the Roof.

 

A real highlight was a very energetic number called "Protest/A Short History of Gay Marriage" which tells of Canada's gay rights movement, and eventual legalization of this institution.

 

I would not be surprised to see this show re-surface at a commercial venue down the road.

 

Next was Anthony Rapp's one man show, Without You. A powerful adaptation of his book, which relates his experience being cast as the original Mark in Rent, and the loss of Jonathan Larson after the dress-rehearsal, while also dealing with his mother's slow death to cancer.

 

Much of the score comes from Larson's Pulitzer Prize-winner...and Rapp has written some original material to round out the show. (His best was "Wild Bill" -- the name that his mother gave her tumor.) As Rapp, whom I loved in both Rent and You're a Good Man Charlie Brown opened his heart to us, the audience as a whole was touched. And the spontaneous standing ovation at the end was unanimous and deserved.

 

And this evening was Frog Kiss...a silly but sweet retelling of the classic The Frog Prince. At 2:15, with an intermission, this was perhaps a tad(pole) long, but much of the music was strong. The cast was sensational, particularly the Frog himself, Curtis Holbrook seen as Action on Broadway's latest West Side and as Cheyenne Jackson's replacement in Xanadu.

 

The score was orchestrated and vocally arranged in a manner seldom seen at these shows...with a terrific reeds player and trumpeter, and tight inner harmonies sung by the cast.

 

While the potential is there, I think it will hard for the creators to decide whether they want to pursue the more adult themes surrounding the princess's nymphomaniacal younger sister, or go for the family audience, but I do think that in this case, they should trim it to 90 minutes and remove the intermission.

 

I have several more NYMF shows to see, and will report on them soon.

 

Thanks to my employer who gives us ample time off to take a personal day occasionally just to go to three shows in a day.