Show It

Lots of plays and movies the past week or so (thank goodness for a TENS unit for all the sitting!):

Is He Dead? -- play, Broadway: Written by Mark Twain, discovered after his death and making its Broadway debut. The show and plot are your typical farce. The jokes are stale and the story predictable. Thanks to Norbert Leo Butz in the lead role, however, it's a comic gem. His performance gave it a more modern spin and had us all in stiches for a majority of the show. The second act is better than the first. I wasn't crazy about most supporting roles in the first act, but warmed to them as the play progressed.

From Doris to Darlene -- play, Off-Broadway: The piece itself is pretty terrible. It follows three different story lines in three time periods-- Wagner as he composed for king somebody (don't remember which, don't care), Doris (later adopting "Darlene" as a stage name) as a teen idol singer in the 60's doing a hit song based on said Wagner composition, and the last being a teenage kid in a music appreciation class as a fan of the 60's hit and learning of opera and Wagner. Sound confusing? Boring? Check and check. I enjoyed some of the performances themselves, most especially Darlene/Doris (who I saw and loved in Passing Strange, slated to hit Broadway early next year), her agent and also the music teacher in the modern scenes. There was really only one actor I didn't like, but the piece itself left me absolutely cold. With a different cast, I probably wouldn't have made it to the second act.

The Savages -- film: Loved it!! Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney are excellent as brother and sister dealing with their ill father (Philip Bosco) suffering from dementia, among other things. It's painful and real. The characters were relatable and human.

Margot at the Wedding -- film: I saw this with a friend the same afternoon as The Savages. Thankfully, we saw this one first or it would have been a huge, anticlimactic letdown. Overall, it was slow, had a thin plot and I found the characters uninteresting and often unbelievable. I had high hopes based on the cast, but they just didn't deliver.

Juno -- film: Odd, sweet and had a really good soundtrack. The characters were quirky and fun and the story oddly sweet, but far from sappy. I've never seen Ellen Page (in the title role) in anything prior, but I'll definitely be looking out for her in the future. The whole cast was pretty good.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try and see the movie Grace is Gone if I'm up early enough to take in the first show. A friend and I also have tickets to Glorious Ones (musical, Off-Broadway). This is the latest Ahrens and Flaherty (Once on This Island, Ragtime, and some Schoolhouse Rock). It's getting mixed reviews, but I'm always more likely to appreciate things slightly more when they're comps ;)