THE MORNING LINE - Boneau/Bryan-Brown

DATE: THE MORNING LINE
FROM:
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
PAGES:
Michelle Farabaugh, Melissa Cohen, Jennie Mamary
Katie Aramento, Raychel Shipley
11, including this page.

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June 16, 2015

Review: ‘Preludes,’ a Hypnotist Tries to Get Rachmaninoff to
Make Music Again

By Ben Brantley

Writer’s block turns out to be a lot more inspiring than you could ever have imagined — and sad and stirring
and gloriously fun. In “Preludes,” which opened on Monday night at the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center,
Dave Malloy makes beautiful music out of a composer’s three years of creative silence.

The suffering young artist in this case is one Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), the Russian whose late-
Romantic compositions summon thoughts of crashing waves beneath skies illuminated by fireworks. You’ve
probably heard his music, even if you’ve never set foot in a concert hall. And you may have been transported,
embarrassed or repelled by its intensity of feeling.

Rach, as our hero is known, is well aware of this possible variety of responses, and it paralyzes him. When
“Preludes” begins, in Moscow in 1900, memories of the hostile reception to his first symphony in 1897,
performed disastrously under the baton of a drunken conductor, still grip him in a stranglehold.

So Rach (a fabulous Gabriel Ebert, with Or Matias as his expressive, piano-playing alter ego) spends his days
doing pretty much nothing but massaging an open wound. The opening song of this show — conceived by Mr.
Malloy with its director, Rachel Chavkin — is a catalog of the empty hours of his typical day. And anyone
who’s ever felt guilty about killing, instead of seizing, time will feel the full sting of Rach’s self-flagellation.

Gabriel Ebert, left, as Rach, paralyzed by writer’s block, with Or Matias as his piano-playing alter ego,
Rachmaninoff. Credit Tina Fineberg for The New York Times

Yet there’s nothing remotely sterile about the way “Preludes” portrays such aridity. As undeniable as it is,
Rach’s pain is also our pleasure for the two phantasmagorical hours of this walls-bursting chamber work, an
LCT3 production. Mr. Malloy and Ms. Chavkin have delivered the best musical about art’s agonies since
Georges Seurat wielded a twitchy paintbrush in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Sunday in the Park
With George.”

Mr. Malloy is the exuberant talent behind “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812” (an adaptation of —
gulp — “War and Peace,” on which he collaborated with Ms. Chavkin) and the enchanting concert piece “Ghost
Quartet.” As a songwriter, he incorporates wildly diverse sources — classical, folk, electro-pop — into a form
that exists defiantly beyond the quotation marks of postmodernism.

He’s that rarity, a smart sentimentalist whose self-consciousness about his feelings in no way dilutes them. His
embrace of Rachmaninoff, in all his emotional excesses, is that of a deeply empathic fan. And you have the
feeling that Mr. Malloy is happily pointing a finger at himself when he has a character say of Rachmaninoff,
“Serge can be rather indulgently maudlin.”

That observation is made by Feodor Chaliapin, the celebrated Russian opera singer and Rach’s best friend, to
Anton Chekhov. Chaliapin is played and sung (beautifully) by Joseph Keckler, while Chekhov is embodied
with understated drollness by Chris Sarandon, who also portrays Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy and Czar Nicholas II.

Mr. Malloy has reincarnated these real-life luminaries with the joy of an art-infatuated kid allowed to live inside
an encyclopedia of culture, and the wit that Woody Allen brought to the Jazz Age literati of “Midnight in
Paris.” (Those who know Chekhov’s dictum about plays and guns will be delighted by the use Mr. Sarandon
makes of a hunting rifle.)

But the most important names here are lesser-known. They are Natalya Satina (Nikki M. James), Rach’s long-
suffering fiancée and cousin, and Dahl (Eisa Davis), based on the hypnotherapist Nikolai Dahl, who helped
guide Rachmaninoff out of his artistic stasis. (Yes, unlike the historic Dahl, Ms. Davis is a woman; such
extravagant liberties are taken throughout and never jar.)

“Preludes” is identified in the script as “a musical fantasia set in the hypnotized mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff,”
and it is an accurate description. But the show is also, implicitly and inevitably, set in the mind of Mr. Malloy
inhabiting the mind of Rachmaninoff. And the interior landscape here is a deliberately anachronistic melding of
past and present.

The frame of reference bends to encompass the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries without strain. The use of
contemporary lingo, verbal and musical, suggests the way we instinctively grope for equivalences in our current
lives for things past, as we try to conceive what life must have been like then. Every element of Ms. Chavkin’s
splendidly inventive production exists in this era-melding state of mind.

That includes Paloma Young’s then-and-now costumes, Bradley King’s stunning lighting, Matt Hubbs’s nervy
sound design and Mimi Lien’s split-level set, which suggests an attic of cluttered memories. The impression is
of one of those elaborate hidden-object drawings for children, and part of the show’s charm comes from seeing
how those objects — a Byzantine robe behind glass or a big white sheet — are deployed.

At center stage is a revolving grand piano. Its bench is often occupied by the gifted Mr. Matias (also the show’s
music director), a charmingly bereft figure who plays music that melds Rachmaninoff and Malloy — and Bach
and Beethoven and Mussorgsky — as Mr. Ebert’s Rach glowers and beams at his underemployed alter ego.
(The program is invaluable in annotating the sources for each of the songs.) Wiley DeWeese and Emily
Marshall, on synthesizers, fill out the aural landscape.

Ms. James and Ms. Davis are lovely as the frustrated women who only want to help the unhappy Rach. An ode
to the sources and selfishness of creativity, “Preludes” does not romanticize tortured genius or the martyrdom of
those who live in its shadow. Ms. James, who won a Tony for “The Book of Mormon,” has a wonderful,
double-edged number that suggests that this narcissist’s helpmate has her own impatient ego.

Above all, there is Mr. Ebert, a Tony winner for “Matilda the Musical,” whose Rach is a marvel of acrobatic
anxiety. Every movement small and large — from snapping pencil after pencil to grabbing a microphone stand
and making like a rock star — and strangled vocal inflection ring true and exact.

New York audiences have been spending a lot of time inside the heads of socially challenged geniuses. Think of
those two recent Tony winners, the musical “Fun Home” (about a cartoonist’s unhappy family) and the play
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” (about an autistic teenage math whiz).

Even in such celebrated company, “Preludes” stands tall. Along with “Fun Home” and the soaring, Broadway-
bound “Hamilton,” this smashing production says that the American musical is not only not dead but also
growing luxuriantly in places you never expected.

June 16, 2015

Monica Lewis Dies at 93; Her Apple-Pie Appeal Sold Chiquita’s
Bananas

By Sam Roberts

Monica Lewis, the dimpled, diminutive chanteuse who made her Broadway debut as a teenager, taught
Americans how to ripen their newly imported bananas as the ubiquitous voice of Miss Chiquita, appeared on the
inaugural episode of Ed Sullivan’s television variety show in 1948 and durably continued to perform jazz and
pop hits for decades, died on Friday at her home in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles. She was 93.

Her death was announced by her former agent, Alan Eichler.

The daughter of musicians, Miss Lewis had a fairy-tale career.

She overcame early poverty, capitalized on lucky breaks, was discovered by Benny Goodman, crooned “Put the
Blame on Mame” and “Autumn Leaves” as “America’s Singing Sweetheart,” performed with Frank Sinatra,
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, was wooed by Ronald Reagan (she said she rejected his marriage proposal),
appeared in films and on television, and resumed her singing career in her 60s.

Reviewing her performance at Danny’s Skylight Room in Manhattan in 1988, John S. Wilson wrote in The
New York Times that while she “is not the same singer that she was 30 years ago, she has skillfully retained her
basic qualities as a performer.”

She was born May Lewis in Chicago on May 22, 1922. Her father, Leon, was a pianist, composer and
symphonic conductor. Her mother, Jessie, was an opera singer. Miss Lewis studied voice with her. Squeezed by
the Depression, the family moved to New York when she was 11.

Miss Lewis was studying at Hunter College when she was hired as a $25-a-week vocalist on a radio wake-up
program called “Gloom Dodgers” to help support the family. She soon had her own radio show, “Monica
Makes Music,” and won the part of a singing cigarette girl in the short-lived Broadway show “Johnny 2x4.”
(Among the other cast members was a young Lauren Bacall.)

That led to an engagement at the Stork Club, where she could perform but was not old enough to buy a drink.
She left school and changed her name to Monica, which she considered sexier. (“I feel much more like Monica
and I look much more like Monica, too,” she told the newspaper PM in 1946.)

In her autobiography, “Hollywood Through My Eyes: The Lives & Loves of a Golden Age Siren,” written with
Dean Lamanna and published in 2011, she recalled that in 1943 Leonard Feather, the jazz pianist and critic,
tipped her off that Goodman urgently needed a singer because Peggy Lee had eloped with the band’s guitarist,
Dave Barbour. She took the subway to the audition in Times Square. “There were 300 girls there,” she told The
Los Angeles Times in 2011. “My knees were shaking. He stopped most of them after four bars. He let me sing
the whole song. He said, ‘O.K., kid, come back at 7:30 tonight.’ You couldn’t get a better start.”







June 15, 2015

How Broadway Musical "Something Rotten!"
Owned Its Loss At The Tonys

Loser Is The New Winner: The Inside Story Of A Daring And Cheeky Ad.

By David Zax

It was the night of the Tony Awards, and as Kevin McCollum settled
into his seat, he was feeling optimistic. McCollum had built a career
as a Broadway producer, in a way, on optimism. He had a strong
appetite for risk. He favored bringing original work to the stage—like
the musical Rent, which he produced 20 years ago—in a business
where revivals are often a safer bet. And he had favored edgy
material—like the foulmouthed Sesame Street sendup Avenue Q—
over the tame. The glowing track record of those two shows, along
with many other hits, had often shown McCollum's optimism to be
justified.

At the Tonys on June 7th, McCollum’s optimism centered around his
latest production, Something Rotten!, an original musical about the
fictional Bottom brothers, who invent musical theater in an effort to
outshine their rock-star contemporary, William Shakespeare. The
show was itself written by brothers named Karey and Wayne
Kirkpatrick; both were accomplished in other realms of entertainment
(Karey as a screenwriter, Wayne as a pop songwriter), but Something
Rotten! marked their first musical. McCollum had signed on to
produce back when the show was just a pitch and a handful of songs.

He had been right to do so. The show was doing brisk business, and
despite its brief tenure on Broadway, it earned 10 Tony nominations,
including those for Best Score, Best Book, and Best Musical. "We
were thinking and hoping we would win," says McCollum now, "and
we thought we deserved to win."

As the lights went down at Radio City Music Hall, the Tonys opened with a showstopping Act I number
from Something Rotten!, in which an Elizabethan soothsayer channels Broadway musicals of the future. "The
crowd went wild," recalls McCollum. The awards began, and soon, in the Best Featured Actor in a Musical,
Something Rotten! indeed took home a Tony, awarded to Christian Borle. The evening was off to a great start.

But as the night wore on, the fortunes began to turn. Awards for Best Orchestrations and Best Choreography
went to An American in Paris. And then the award for Best Book arrived—one McCollum felt the Kirkpatrick
brothers had surely earned. But the award went to Fun Home. When Fun Home also took Best Score, "I
basically knew then," says McCollum. "I knew we were not going to win Best Musical." Indeed, Fun
Home took that prize, too.

"Of course it was disappointing," says McCollum. "But a producer has to think about best-case scenarios, and
disappointing scenarios." And deep down, he felt he had still produced a great show. Now he faced a challenge:
How was he going to sell this show to audiences, when his competitors would get to boast "Winner!" in their
newspaper ads?

Meanwhile, in the week prior to the Tonys, the ad agency SpotCo, which reppedSomething Rotten!, had also
talked about the question of how to sell the show should it fail to win. Out of superstition, SpotCo rarely
discussed what strategy to implement in the event that a client lost a show. But on the Friday before the Tonys,
McCollum had pressed SpotCo for ideas in the event of a loss.

The group began spitballing ideas. McCollum pointed out that plenty of worthy, even canonical, shows, had lost
the Tony for Best Musical. Perhaps there was a silver lining in Broadway's historical record...

Meanwhile Jimmy McNicholas, SpotCo’s creative director of Content, had an idea, but he was a bit shy about
it. "I kept it to myself, for fear that it might be too out there," he recalls. But as the meeting drifted along, and
none of the ideas felt edgy enough, finally McNicholas blurted out his idea.

If the show lost, said McNicholas, why not own it? Run an ad with the headline "Loser! Best Musical." After
all, it fit with the ad campaign's cheeky tone so far, not to mention the themes of Something Rotten! itself (in
which—spoiler alert—the Bottom brothers fail to unseat the Bard).

Everyone in the room laughed, including McCollum. And then the idea was shelved, in the hopes that it
wouldn't have to be used at all.

But now, on Sunday night, Something Rotten! had emerged, well, a loser. At the after-party at Bryant Park Grill,
SpotCo cofounder Tom Greenwald pressed his way toward McCollum. "We were asking ourselves," he recalls,
"Do we have the balls to do this, or not?"

McCollum's gut said to go with it. But Something Rotten! had a lot of stakeholders, and he began to consult
with members of his team. He consulted with the owners of the Saint James Theatre, where the show was
running. He consulted with other producers. Some people loved the idea. Others hated it. "A lot of the team felt
no one would get it,"recalls McCollum. "People would just read 'Loser,' and think it's a bad show." McCollum
told Greenwald and McNicholas to draft a layout of an ad, to be examined tomorrow.

The next morning, the group convened at SpotCo's offices, where the creatives had put together the layout.
"Loser! Best Musical" it announced in bold, red letters, with smiling cartoon images of the Bottom brothers.
"We’re in great company..." continued the mocked-up ad, listing over a dozen classics that had likewise been
snubbed, including West Side Story, Chicago, and Into the Woods.

McCollum looked the ad over. "I was a little nervous," he admits. "But then I had to make the call." He signed
off to push the image on Facebook and Twitter, then held his breath.

He needn't have worried. The post was liked and shared thousands of times. Soon, a few entertainment
publications wrote items just about the campaign. McCollum then pulled the trigger on a "Loser!" New York
Times ad. It ran this past Sunday.

The response has been overwhelmingly positive, according to SpotCo and McCollum. The Times even ran a
story Monday focusing on the bold advertisement in its pages the day before.

"I think everyone will relate to the fact that, hey, it’s a contest," says McCollum. "We lost a contest, but the
contest is not the thing. The show’s the thing."

Meanwhile, Something Rotten! just celebrated its best week ever, with a weekly gross of $1,178,048, up by
$140,000. "Loser is the new winner," says McCollum.