THE MORNING LINE DATE: Friday, October 21, 2016 FROM: Michelle Farabaugh Lana Picciano, Angela Yamarone PAGES: 10, including this page

October 21, 2016

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October 20, 2016

Review: In ‘Love, Love, Love,’ All You Need Is Selfishness.

By Ben Brantley

Now here’s a couple who know how to grow old in style. Portraying a pair of soul mates in selfishness in Mike

Bartlett’s “Love, Love, Love,” which opened on Wednesday night at the Laura Pels Theater, Amy Ryan and

Richard Armitage advance from the ages of 19 to 64 with a galloping satirical wit that pulls you along, happy

and appalled, through the decades.

Not that Kenneth (Mr. Armitage) and Sandra (Ms. Ryan) are easy to like, much less love. True, they appear to

feel something like real affection for each other. But don’t expect them to think too much about the problems of

anybody else, including their own children, or to suffer those who come between them and their creature

comforts.

Such is the nature of two Grade-A examples of the idealists who came of age in the 1960s, those bright young

things bent on ushering in a new era of peace, love, freedom and happiness. Or, to use the term most commonly

applied to this now graying band of flower children, the baby boomers.

“Love, Love, Love” is a none-too-subtle indictment of a generation from the protean British author of more

ambitious (and better) works as varied as the brilliant future-history play “King Charles III,” and the

ruthless“Cockfight Play,” which presented the romantic triangle as a gladiator fight. Starting with its title —

taken from the opening chant of the Beatles song “All You Need Is Love” — this play rumbles with a

sometimes too easy irony. It presents the archetypal likes of Kenneth and Sandra as “careless people” in the

mode of Tom and Daisy Buchanan from “The Great Gatsby,” insular solipsists who never register the havoc

they wreak in their pursuit of pleasure.

And yet I have to admit I had a swell time at “Love, Love, Love,” aRoundabout Theater Company production,

impeccably directed by Michael Mayer and featuring a nigh-perfect five-member ensemble rounded out by

Alex Hurt, Ben Rosenfield and Zoe Kazan. That’s partly because Mr. Bartlett’s heat-seeking intelligence can’t

help locating the telling and authentic emotional detail even within caricature. And there’s pleasure to be

derived in a comedy as scrupulously and symmetrically assembled as this one is.

But the greatest joy in “Love, Love, Love” comes from the chance it affords its stars to conquer the aging

process and to demonstrate how people change — or more to the point, remain themselves — over the years.

It’s a challenge to which Mr. Armitage, in his New York debut, and Ms. Ryan rise with blissful dexterity. They

have been given the expected period-defining costumes (by Susan Hilferty) and hair styles, but it’s their

postures and poses that most evocatively place them in time.

We first see their characters as Oxford students on summer break in London in 1967, in the grotty flat of

Kenneth’s brother, Henry (Mr. Hurt, wonderfully resentful), filled with a heady sense of license and the

smugness that comes from being 19 in a decade when youth was the supreme virtue. “Young people, our age,

we’re the moment,” trills Sandra.

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The second act, set in 1990, finds them as the parents of two teenage children, Rose and Jamie (Ms. Kazan and

Mr. Rosenfield), in their comfortably appointed home in a middle-class suburb of London. Progress being what

it is here, the third act takes place in 2010, in even more luxurious digs. (Derek McLane did the spot-on sets.)

Though it’s Henry whom Sandra has come to visit in the first scene, it’s the younger, more malleable Kenneth

for whom she immediately feels an affinity. Wearing a Mondrian-print, Yves Saint Laurent-style dress and, by

her own delighted admission, stoned to the gills, Ms. Ryan’s Sandra exudes a sensuous, dithery confidence that

is silly, pretentious and absolutely commanding.

And the way she walks! Her gait combines the uncertainty of the perpetually inebriated with an angular,

stalking purposefulness that persists long after Sandra, who becomes a successful career woman, has swapped

weed for wine. Ms. Ryan, known for intense stage (“Detroit,” “A Streetcar Named Desire”) and film (“Gone

Baby Gone”) work, gives a smashing comic performance that never stoops to excess in presenting an excessive

character.

Mr. Armitage is just as good, capturing the passivity of a man who both resents and enjoys being led by a

streamlined bulldozer. Best known as the mighty Thorin Oakenshield in the “Hobbit” movies, this English actor

was also the best John Proctor I have ever seen, in Yael Farber’s production of Arthur Miller’s “The

Crucible” at the Old Vic in London. Here he tones down his natural intensity to remind us that the seemingly

soft, spineless and charming can be as damaging, in their way, as two-fisted bullies.

For Mr. Bartlett makes it clear that Sandra and Kenneth’s relationship racks up serious casualties. And Mr.

Hurt, Mr. Rosenfield and Ms. Kazan are superb in registering the damage inflicted.

Watch Mr. Hurt’s gruff, stoical Henry realizing that his girl has ditched him for his brother, with just a flicker of

humiliation. Listen to Ms. Kazan’s alternately whiny and accommodating Rose deploying in vain every

stratagem possible to capture her parents’ attention, or Mr. Rosenfield’s 14-year-old Jamie shutting down into

numbed oblivion in the middle of a family firestorm.

Mr. Mayer (“Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “Spring Awakening”) shows a keen eye for the patterns of domestic

dysfunction, and the sight of Kenneth and his son as startled mirror images across a dinner table is priceless.

“All we’re asking for is some humanity, is some freedom, is to throw off everything that holds us down and

explore what we could do instead,” says the 19-year-old Sandra. It could be said that her wish is fulfilled,

except for possibly the humanity part. Freedom, it seems, is just another word for taking care of yourself.

Mr. Bartlett isn’t about to let Sandra and Kenneth off the hook for their self-centeredness, in what is a deeply

judgmental play. “There she is safe and sound, but a trail of destruction in her wake, no doubt,” says Kenneth as

Sandra arrives late from a pub for a family conference. “That about sums her up.” There’s warmth and

admiration in his voice, though, and watching Ms. Ryan and Mr. Armitage, we may even share his feelings,

despite ourselves.

October 21, 2016

Review: ‘Tick, Tick…Boom!’ Is Jonathan Larson’s Run-Up to

‘Rent’

By Alexis Soloski

“Tick, Tick…Boom!” revived by the Keen Company in an affectionate, emotionally slight production, is a

youthful work by a musical theater composer who never got to grow old.

Jonathan Larson, who later transformed Broadway with “Rent,” used to perform this musical as a one-man

show. After Larson’s early death, in 1996, the playwright David Auburn helped to transform it into a three-

character piece, with the role of Jonathan, a struggling songsmith, initially played by Raúl Esparza.

The year is 1990. Jonathan (Nick Blaemire) is about to turn 30 — apparently that used to be practically ancient

then — and he isn’t handling it well. “I always thought by the time I was 30 I’d either have a hit show or a

really lucrative sellout career, but I’ve got neither,” he complains to his girlfriend, Susan (Ciara Renée).

His best friend, Michael (George Salazar), is trying to lure him into the high-flying world of Madison Avenue

consultancy; Susan is attempting to entice him to move to Massachusetts. Jonathan just wants fame and fortune

and a Broadway berth for his new rock musical, “Superbia.” He might settle for no longer having to wait tables

at the local diner. The score, here performed by an onstage band, is a combination of pop, rock and Sondheim

pastiche.

With his stick-out ears and gentle shock of hair, Mr. Blaemire looks uncannily like Larson. If he lacks the

preternatural charm Mr. Esparza lent the role, he brings comic ease and ready sympathy to a character who can

seem exasperatingly self-involved. (In the 2014 Encores! revival, Lin-Manuel Miranda, in baggy shorts and knit

cap, took on the part.)

Mr. Salazar and Ms. Renée seem less suited to their roles. Mr. Salazar, a sturdy and genial presence, is not

entirely persuasive as a hotshot management consultant. Ms. Renée, lovely of face and voice, does not seem

like the sort of woman who longs for the woods of New England. She and Mr. Blaemire have very little

chemistry; the friendship between Michael and Jonathan is similarly inert here.

Is this the fault of the actors? Or is it rather a tic of Jonathan’s tick-tocking character, so absorbed in his own

internal metronome that he can’t extend himself to the people he loves?

You can sense the director Jonathan Silverstein’s enthusiasm for the material in the bright pacing, the sprightly

use of the onstage band, the generosity toward the performers. But surely the show would resonate more richly

if he had helped them realize the relationships more fully.

Those relationships are more funny realized in “Rent,” of course, and just as it’s impossible to avoid reading

“Tick, Tick…Boom!” autobiographically, it’s also impossible not to read it retrospectively. There’s a saddish

moment in the show when Jonathan’s agent summarizes the discouraging reaction to the “Superbia” workshop.

“I think everyone was just so intrigued by your talent, and they can’t wait to see what happens next,” she says.

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What happened was “Rent,” a musical whose blend of rock and romance and realism has proved so influential

that a predecessor like “Tick, Tick…Boom!” now feels a little passé. That’s a paradox Larson should have lived

to enjoy.

October 20, 2016

Laura Osnes hopes people will swing to ‘Bandstand’

By Mark Kennedy  That rarest of sounds — a new American musical not based on an existing book or film — is heading to Broadway with Tony Award-nominee Laura Osnes — and it’s got quite a swing. “Bandstand,” the story of six World War II veterans who join together in Cleveland to compete in a radio contest with dreams of stardom, has secured a Shubert theater and has an opening night of April 26. It will co-star Osnes, who has been attached to the show since a reading 2½ years ago. “To stay with something this long, it better be worth the wait and I think it is with this show. It’s such a beautiful piece,” she said. Andy Blankenbuehler, a Tony winner whose other Broadway credits include choreographing “Hamilton” and directing and choreographing “Bring It On,” will direct. Osnes will star opposite another rising star, Corey Cott. Osnes was last on Broadway in “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” while Cott was in “Newsies” and “Gigi” opposite Vanessa Hudgens. The exact theater, the rest of the cast and other details will be announced later.

The new musical features a book and lyrics by Richard Oberacker and Robert Taylor, and music by Oberacker. It made its world premiere at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey last year and drew interest for its frank handling of veterans dealing with PTSD and a culture in denial. “It’s an original story and that’s sometimes a hard sell on Broadway these days. People want to see something they know. They want to hear songs they know. They want to see people who are acting in it who are famous,” Osnes said. “To have a completely original score, that’s based on nothing and has an original score should be the most ideal thing.” She added: “People just have to give it a chance. And I hope they will.”

October 21, 2016

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October 20, 2016

Cast Albums For The Week of October 29