City Center Keeps ‘The Wild Party’ Going On in Style

There was one piece of stagecraft in the original production of “The Wild Party,” which is the subject for an impressive revival at City Center Encores!, that I still remember vividly 26 years later. We have been primed for the entrance of the leading man, Burrs — Mandy Patinkin in 2000, Jordan Donica at City Center — and we have been informed beforehand that he is a bad guy, a violent and vicious vaudevillian, given to extreme jealousy and beating up women. The stage is completely dark, and then all of a sudden there’s a center spot on Mr. Patinkin as Burrs, in full blackface, with a malevolent sneer on his face, looking like Al Jolson on a murderous rampage. You could literally hear the entire house gasp in horror. In fact, when Burrs is seen in blackface again at the end of the show, even the pistol that he is brandishing somehow seems less transgressive than the burnt cork makeup. The current production of “The Wild Party” doesn’t play up that horrific moment in the same way; contemporary audiences wouldn’t know how to unpack the sight of an African American actor in blackface, although Black comedians appearing before black audiences wore blackface well into the 1950s, well after it was no longer considered acceptable for white performers. But don’t worry, director Lili-Anne Brown has found plenty of shock value in this hundred-year-old property.“The Wild Party” is probably, after “The Great Gatsby,” the most-staged story of the Jazz Age, even though Joseph Moncure March is hardly as renowned as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, or Dorothy Parker. In fact, he’s only known for this one work, published as a poem in 1926. But unlike his more illustrious contemporaries, March came up with a great showbiz setting — all the characters are larger than life, and, accordingly, are given their own songs, which they parade across the stage like numbers in a Ziegfeld revue — and an action-packed plot, which centers on envy and revenge. The narrative fully dives into issues of feminism, racism, antisemitism, gay relationships, and what was then called miscegenation, in a way that most fiction from the 1920s doesn’t. As Gold (Kj Hippensteel) and Goldberg (Andrew Kober), two Jewish producers who show up at the wild party for a cheap thrill, observe, “You got your girls wit’cha girls. / Your boys wit’cha your boys. / Your coloreds wit’cha whites.” Thus “The Wild Party” takes us back to when the 20s roared, but at the same time seems relevant to today. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the work wasn’t dramatized until it was 50 years old, first in a 1975 film version with both a screenplay and new songs by Broadway’s Walter Marks. It surfaced again 25 years later in two musical theater adaptations — by Andrew Lippa, which was presented by Encores! Ten years ago, and the current version by Michael John Lachiusa — that coincidentally and unfortunately opened within a few weeks of each other. In 2000, the big appeal was to see Mandy Patinkin and, especially, the legendary Eartha Kitt as Dolores Montoya, as well as Toni Collette, the original Queenie, who had just been nominated for an Oscar for “The Sixth Sense.” Looking back, that original cast album seems especially star-studded. At the time, most of us didn’t know yet who Tonya Pinkins, Marc Kudisch, and the mighty Norm Lewis were, but they’ve all become headliners since. Jasmine Amy Rogers and Jelani Alladin in ‘The Wild Party.’ This is a show that revels in its own decadence, and that is precisely the point. In March’s time, relations between people of different skin colors or of the same gender were taboo, if not explicitly illegal, in most of the country. Today the most eyebrow-raising character is Nadine, a 14 year old trying to pass as 16, which isn’t any less disturbing, played by a comfortably adult Maya Rowe but in Mary Pickford drag, and who indulges in bootleg gin and cocaine but thankfully isn’t fully “Epstein’d.” All the characters are memorable, even if few are likable. “Queenie was a blonde and her age stood still / And she danced twice a day in vaudeville” and who likes both her men and her parties on the wild side. Jelani Alladin is Mr. Black, who dresses in white, and presents himself as a gigolo. Their main character arc is that they somehow become sympathetic by the evening’s end. I was especially fond of Wesley J. Barnes and Joseph Anthony Byrd as a team of black song-and-dance men in the tradition of Buck & Bubbles and Layton & Johnstone. They reminded me of Akbar and Jeff in Matt Groening’s “Life in hell.” Ms. Pinkins, who played Kate in 2000, has graduated to the no-less-imposing role of Dolores, a star of an earlier era, whom March describes as “somewhat Negro And a great deal Jew” and who tries to blackmail Burr and the producers into helping her stage a comeback.The dramatic tension comes partly from waiting to see the cast shed their clothes, and in the case of Meghan Murphy, Betsy Morgan, and Lesli Margherita, it was well worth the wait. There’s not exactly an orgy, but there’s a big sex scene — that’s hardly a spoiler — after which everyone awakens in a postcoital hangover. We spend most of the show wondering when we’ll reach the inevitable moment when Queenie finally does something to incur Burr’s abusive rage and hairtrigger temper. Mr. Donica, whom I last saw as the saintly Sir Lancelot in Lincoln Center’s misguided production of “Camelot,” doesn’t disappoint; with monster lighting he looks like a demonic version of poor Jud Frye in “Oklahoma!”Between the excellence of the cast, Ms. Brown’s direction, and the high quality of the book and score, I’m leaning in the direction of those who declare this an under-appreciated gem of a show. Indeed, the production seems ready for imminent transfer, much like the 2024 Encores! edition of “Ragtime” led to the current Lincoln Center Theater revival. A lot of hearts, not to mention heads, are broken along the way, but, as Queenie says, “What’s a party without a few casualties?”

City Center Keeps ‘The Wild Party’ Going On in Style

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