I’ll Take Manhattan

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Finally, a Broadway musical for people put off by the sonic and narrative complexities of “Rent.” If you find the suspense of “American Idol” too much to bear, or just really like loud, shiny things, you may rejoice, for “Brooklyn” has arrived.


Under the bright lights of the Plymouth Theatre, we see five street singers performing for change in a dingy corner of Brooklyn. If you call this fair borough home, you might regard the trash-strewn set as a slur against your neighborhood. But wait: Put the rotten tomato back in your pocket, and look closer. The scenery also seems to be a construction site, and the whiff of rising property values suggests DUMBO. In that area’s current state – an overripe hipster heaven – the performers’ mix of rock, funk, and soul might not yield much cash; early Yo La Tengo covers may be more availing.


But you should check your ethno-musical tendencies at the theater door, because “Brooklyn” announces itself as “a fairy tale.” The fairy tale has a long and decent tradition. These days, when a show is billed as a fairy tale, you know what you’ll get. You should expect a certain effortless whimsy; you should not expect it to make any sense. And if you point out that the show is wholly lacking in effortless whimsy, and simply doesn’t make any sense, you should expect to look like a jerk.


In that spirit I will relate, with all the nonjudgmental serenity I can muster, the plot. The story gets rolling with a tryst between a Vietnam-era American soldier and a nightclub singer in Paris (yes, the one in France). Because the soldier has a guitar, and this is a musical, their union results in a sappy ballad; because he is from Brooklyn, it also results in a baby girl with that name. It’s hard to resist imagining how much more fun it would be, nomenclaturewise, if the virile G.I. hailed from just a few miles off in any direction: Bronx, Yonkers, Massapequa.


By the sign next to him that says “USA,” we ascertain that Dad has returned home. It will be easier for him to settle into the cliches of smack-addict alkie homeless vet-hood there. (“I’m a monster, man, I’m a monster.”) Before long, la mere triste et ridicule offs herself during her act. Little Brooklyn is raised by nuns, is discovered to have musical genius, and leaves France to seek fame and her father, unencumbered by any accent whatsoever.


Complications ensue. Faster than you can say “my ear is bleeding,” she arrives at Carnegie Hall (yes, the one in Midtown) and wows everybody. But she develops a nemesis, the ‘hood queen Paradice who challenges Brooklyn to a winner-take-all contest of competitive belting. Brooklyn is so virtuous she says she’ll give her prize to the homeless; Paradice announces she’s keeping all her money and giving none to the poor – that’s how villainous she is.


As it happens, this is approximately the same level of villainy I feel as I write this review. In case you haven’t heard by now, Mark Schoenfeld, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics, was once homeless himself. He survived by performing on street corners in his home borough, Brooklyn. After a separation of many years, he was rediscovered by an old songwriting partner, Barri McPherson, who ushered him into her family. They have co-written the show, which has made it to Broadway. It is getting long and noisy ovations. The only thing standing in the way of an improbable – nay, miraculous – journey from rags to riches is the verdict of a dozen sullen and finicky critics.


Keenly I would like to help. I am glad to point out that, as Brooklyn, young Eden Espinosa has a colossal voice, and some soul, and bright prospects. It’s a pleasure to see Cleavant Derricks, as the narrator, work the crowd with an easy charisma. It’s rewarding to see director Jeff Calhoun (who did last year’s “Big River”) forgo big set machinery in favor of actor-manipulated pieces. Still, sometimes a show gives you no choice; sometimes you have to kick the puppy.


A sense of duty compels me to point out that this is not a pleasant night of theater. In earlier days, another Brooklynite declared his intention to sound his “barbaric yawp”; we may count ourselves lucky that he did not have power ballads, or microphones. The show’s lyrics run to the meaningless, like when the performers sing about “the heart behind these hands.” Here I go, sounding like a jerk again, but that doesn’t make any sense.


The real difficulty comes from the music. It isn’t pop, exactly. The score boils a half-dozen pop influences down into some nebulous unity. To be sure, it seems that this “works”: Many people respond to this sound, to judge by the standing ovation Ms. Espinosa gets for her last song. Yet it’s also true that with a buildup like that, we’d be on our feet for a plague of locusts.


We all make fun of Frank Wildhorn for his crazy notions of a Broadway score. But any honest observer of new Broadway musicals has to acknowledge that this deracinated music, neither pop nor Rodgers, which substitutes high volume for intensity, and low volume for charm, has become the characteristic sound of Broadway today. Goodbye, post-operetta triumphs of Kern, Porter, Gershwin; hello, “Wicked,” “Dracula,” “Taboo,” “Urban Cowboy.” Et bonjour, “Brooklyn.”


***


“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Sam Phillips,” said Sam Phillips, alone onstage at her microphone. In any other week, it might not occur to me to think of a concert at Zankel Hall (yes, the one at the real Carnegie Hall) in terms of theater. But with strange shapes still dancing before my eyes after withstanding “Brooklyn,” Ms. Phillips’s show began to seem like the perfect antidote to our Broadway woes.


“We bring you torch music tonight,” she said between songs, early in her set. “Do you know torch music? ‘Torch’ as in tortured. ‘Torch’ as in you carry a torch for someone. You love them but they don’t love you. But you still have hope. We’ve come tonight to tell you hope – will kill you. So stop it.”


Ms. Phillips is touring in support of her new album “A Boot and a Shoe” (Nonesuch), and if there is a more gorgeous sound in New York than her voice (sometimes sultry, sometime girlish) floating over a string quartet and a rib rumbling bass drum, I haven’t heard it. She alluded to having had a difficult year and a half, but her banter was mostly comic. For “Animals on Wheels,” she was accompanied only by an electric guitar – on a minicassette player, which she held up next to the microphone. She shook it when the guitarist played vibrato.


Ms. Phillips introduced the encore as a song she had written with the producer T. Bone Burnett. “I dedicate it to him, and send love out to him tonight.” What she didn’t say is that Mr. Burnett is her husband, from whom she separated last year. This made the bleak “Say What You Mean” a heartbreaking end to the night.


But she wasn’t finished. “We’ll leave you with this,” she said, launching into “One Day Late,” the melancholy last song on her new album. “Help is coming, help is coming one day late,” runs the refrain. In a little over an hour, through a dozen songs of heartache, she had gone from hopelessness to a kind of ambiguous optimism. Narrative, lovely songs, emotional arc: If this isn’t musical theater, what is?


The New York Sun

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