Ben Brantley interview

[jo]

Interesting and insightful!


playbill.com/news/article/booking-it-new-york-times-chief-theatre-critic-ben-brantley-on-criticism-writing-and-watching-magic-happen-on-stage-332091


There is mention of Hugh, as someone whom Brantley thinks is likely critic-proof :

What is your take on reviews? Do you think they can make or break somebody or a production?


BB: I think you can call attention to something that might not be seen otherwise and help in that. Obviously, with straight plays without big stars, those things do rely on criticism more. Then there are things that are going to slide under the radar that don't need critical endorsements. Most of what Disney does is beyond criticism. Anything that stars Hugh Jackman, although he's mostly done really good stuff, I think is beyond criticism. It's smaller things that need critics and rely on that kind of opinion, so I think you've got to be kind of cautious not to just jump up and down on them.

[suefb]

Interesting. I know that Brantley loves Hugh. I think he must just mean that any show starring Hugh will not be hurt at the box office if it receives negative reviews. I hadn't seen that use of the term "beyond criticism" before. Let's hope The River doesn't have to test his theory!

[jo]

It happened for THE BOY FROM OZ. The reviews about the musical were horrible ( including Brantley's...only Rex Reed praised the show) and practically killed the show after it opened! Nobody was buying at the box office after the horrible reviews were released. And there were many predictions it would not last beyond that yearend ( when it would have exhausted its advance - not sure, but I think it was around 10 million)... But --

*While the reviews were horrible, Hugh Jackman was universally raved about by the critics! Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman famously wrote that he thought Hugh was up there with Brando ( in Streetcar) and Merman in Gypsy - both performances of which he had seen! Everyone but everyone was praising the new stage star!!

*Hugh also repositioned the show at some point -- and highlighted the break-the-4th-wall routine! That was an instant success!

*During the winter months, the box office pickings were very lean ( I think attendance went down to the low 70%), but a most loyal group of fans rallied ( and Hugh has always acknowledged them, including in his speech at the closing of the show) and they were called the Ozalots...and they came often to the show ( who can forget Maev - who saw the show 200 times - acknowleged by Hugh at the show's closing!)!


A Steady Rain did not get a critical bloodbath - but there was some negativity about the lean book ( they said it was mostly monologue and dialogue with hardly any action) - and some even found that Hugh had a less than perfect Italian-American accent from a Chicago cop! But the play sold out!!

Re THE RIVER - it was well-received in London. But it is spare, ambigious, mysterious -- I hope the New York critics and Broadway audiences find it accessible. I hope the staging and the acting chops of the cast ( esp Hugh) win the audiences over! Interestingly, the official site of The River is using a short article from Brantley on THE RIVER to sell the show - check it out!).

Jo

[suefb]

Yes, of course, I believe that Brantley says this because of the success of TBFO. In fact, it probably surprised him when his negative review did not result in an unmitigated disaster. I saw a review of the recent Dallas production which referred to Brantley's negative review and concluded that the Broadway show had been a flop. I think the reviewer should have done more research.

[jo]

THEATER REVIEW: Flash Of 70's Sequins

By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: October 17, 2003


HUGH JACKMAN'S shoulders must ache like the devil when he wakes up in the morning. After all, this able-bodied, infinitely appealing young man is spending most of his nights engaged in the heaviest lifting this side of a Mr. Universe training camp. No shoulders, no matter how broad, should be asked to heft such a burden.

But that's what happens when you put an indisputably authentic star, like Mr. Jackman, at the center of an indisputably bogus show like ''The Boy From Oz,'' the bathetic musical biography of the Australian entertainer and songwriter Peter Allen, which opened last night at the Imperial Theater. If you don't have an Atlas in the leading role, everything topples into that dark and ghoulish memory bank that is always awaiting Broadway failures.

Were it not for Mr. Jackman, that would doubtless be the fate of ''The Boy From Oz,'' a backstage, back-story look at show business that makes the movie of ''Valley of the Dolls'' seem like ''Children of Paradise.'' But in keeping with the philosophy of Allen, presented here as an eliminate-the-negative kind of guy, let's linger on the positives for a moment. Make that positive, singular. It's an important positive, though, since real-live matinee idols seldom drop by Broadway anymore, and Mr. Jackman's marquee value in ''Oz'' has helped generate a $10 million advance.

First of all, let it be said that Mr. Jackman never looks as if he's even thinking about shrugging this soggy cardboard world of a show off his shoulders. A rising movie star who became world famous playing a pompadour-wearing mutant in the ''X-Men'' films, Mr. Jackman more than confirms the bright theatrical promise of his performances in the 1998 revival of ''Oklahoma!'' in London and the Carnegie Hall concert version of ''Carousel'' last year.


Portraying the besequined Peter Allen, the Swinging 70's answer to Liberace, is of course a different proposition from embodying the flannel-wearing he-men of Rodgers and Hammerstein. But Mr. Jackman confronts the challenge with an alacrity that seems to transform his very physique.

Does anyone familiar with this actor's previous work remember his having such a long and sinuous frame? Like Allen, who died of AIDS in 1992 at 48, this reincarnated, newly elongated Hugh Jackman seems to be doing a perpetual serpentine shimmy, even when he's standing still.

Mr. Jackman's singing voice, though occasionally flat, cannily echoes the way Allen turned his Australian twang into a shiny instrument that slid from dry urbanity to moist sentimentality. (Mr. Jackman is also a native of Australia.) And he captures the insinuating sparkle that was so often in Allen's eyes when he was onstage -- that illusion that he was cruising everyone in the audience.

Mr. Jackman achieves this without resorting to parody, caricature or literal imitation, the bane of the Madame Tussaud-style theater of celebrity. (There are actresses playing Liza Minnelli, to whom Allen was briefly married, and her mother, Judy Garland, to take care of that side of things.)

His limbs twirling like the blades of a windmill, Mr. Jackman channels the energy that was Allen with a rejuvenating life force all his own. And you don't feel -- as you so often do with such interpretations -- that your memories of the prototype have been blurred. This is a performance that, against the odds, holds on to its integrity.

Those odds, for the record, are astronomical. As directed by Philip Wm. McKinley, ''The Boy From Oz'' presents Allen as a hard-smiling, hard-partying cipher, forever on the run from his fears and doubts. And as written by the respected playwright Martin Sherman (''Bent,'' ''When She Danced''), from Nick Enright's original book, ''Oz'' seems never to have met a show-biz cliché it didn't like.

The hardscrabble, small-town childhood with an abusive father and adoring mother; the heady rise to the top and the depressive slide downward, rendered with the theatrical equivalent of splashy cinematic montage -- these elements are served without spice or shading, as if familiarity alone were enough to give them emotional clout.

The leadenness is compounded by Allen's flat connective narrative, in which every new speech seems to begin with the equivalent of ''And then I . . . '' (Don't even get me started on the aspiringly clever double entendres that pass for sophisticated dialogue.)

Add to this the shorthand psychology of a bisexual, egocentric star who never learns to express his deepest feelings and a ''Citizen Kane''-like conclusion that explains the origins of all that denial. Hint: the revelation is set to one of Allen's signature numbers, ''Don't Cry Out Loud,'' warbled here by his mother, Marian Woolnough (Beth Fowler), to his childhood self (the engaging Mitchel David Federan).

Allen's music does not benefit from being jimmied into the plot in such a manner. Nor is it helped by the arrangements, which feature back-up choruses of ''ooohs'' that bring to mind the Carpenters at their most syrupy. The wryness and wistfulness of his ballads become synthetic and shallow. In some cases, context alone makes the songs unbearable, as when Allen's dead boyfriend (Jarrod Emick) descends from heaven, an angelic vision in white sportswear, to sing ''I Honestly Love You.''