April 1, 2014
New York Tax Credit to Encourage Theater Productions
Upstate
By Patrick Healy
New York has passed a tax credit aimed at persuading Broadway producers and others to use upstate
theaters as rehearsal halls and construction shops for shows going out on national tour. The 2014-15 state
budget, passed by the legislature on Monday, includes a credit that would cover 25 percent of productionrelated costs for shows that prepare their road tours at theaters outside of the five boroughs. Theaters in
upstate cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Elmira and elsewhere are most likely to be used, given their size and
availability.
Roughly 25 touring productions of Broadway shows are in the works each year, and producers often use
empty theaters to rehearse the casts, fine-tune choreography, build sets, and design the lighting and sound
systems. Illinois, Rhode Island and Louisiana already have tax incentives aimed at attracting producers to
prepare their tours in those states. To better compete for that business, theatrical tour operators in upstate
New York teamed up with Broadway producers this winter to lobby for a similar tax credit in New York.
Supporters estimated that the credit would end up covering a few million dollars’ worth of expenses each
year, as well as create jobs during weeks when theaters are otherwise empty. Some New York City theater
businesses could benefit too; as long as producers use theaters outside of the five boroughs to rehearse their
tours, they can apply for the tax credit for the costs of costumes purchased from a Manhattan shop, for
instance.
Total Daily Circulation–1,586,757
Sunday Circulation– 2,003,247
April 1, 2014
The Rich Girls Are Going to Lose, for Once
‘Heathers: The Musical’ Brings Back Guilt-Free Mayhem
By Ben Brantley
Are there any souls out there brave enough to admit they were popular in high school? O.K., maybe Gov.
Chris Christie, but that wasn’t a good career move.
The teenage kings and queens of the prom, the homecoming and the keg party — the golden boys and girls
who taunt and belittle the smart and sensitive — have become first-choice villains in contemporary pop
culture. They’re the winners we love to hate, and one of the last minority groups (along with their parents,
the 1 percent) that it’s acceptable to mock savagely.
The latest entertainment to capitalize on this satisfying loathing is “Heathers,” the rowdy guilty-pleasure
musical that opened at New World Stages on Monday night. This is a show that turns an Ohio senior class
in-crowd into a lineup of piñatas, waiting to be busted open. And when I say busted open, I am not
speaking metaphorically.
Written by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe, “Heathers” is based on Daniel Waters’s screenplay for
the 1988 Michael Lehmann movie, which died at the box office but has had a flourishing afterlife in cult
heaven. Starring a young, untarnished Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, “Heathers” was the bold
template for later, more successful films like “Mean Girls,” not to mention cherished misfit television series
like “Freaks and Geeks.”
Mr. Lehmann’s film, which presented its leading heartthrob as an exterminating angel specializing in bratty
rich kids, was also blacker and more daring than its successors could afford to be. Since the original release
of “Heathers,” the United States has experienced the Columbine massacre and much consciousness-raising
about adolescent bullying and suicides.
This means — and how strange is this? — that “Heathers: The Musical” is nostalgic for a more innocent
time, when a plot about killing off high school royalty wasn’t quite so sick a sick joke. This show also
evokes a pre-”Hunger Games” era when fantasies about teenage revenge could be smaller and didn’t have
to involve apocalyptic maneuvers. In a way, this latest incarnation of “Heathers” is to the 1980s what
“Grease” was to the 1950s (when it was first staged in the 1970s). Directed by Andy Fickman and featuring
a buoyant, cartoonlike cast, this “Heathers” isn’t as savvy or mordant as the film that inspired it.
But in scaling up the movie’s grotesqueness — which is inevitable when you set dark material to bubbly
music — the production puts a guilt-quelling distance between its onstage mayhem and its audience. The
rowdy matinee crowd with which I saw the show hooted as gleefully as little Bart and Lisa do when they
watch gore-filled “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoons on “The Simpsons.”
The three title characters of “Heathers” (played with sneering cheer by Jessica Keenan Wynn, Elle
McLemore and Alice Lee) rule Westerburg High with expensively manicured fists of iron. With their more
Total Daily Circulation–1,586,757
Sunday Circulation– 2,003,247
dimwitted male equivalents (embodied by Evan Todd and Jon Eidson) they mock and torture those who are
less cosmetically perfect and more studious, with epithets usually banned in public discourse.
The doom of these tyrants is sealed when they recruit into their clique one Veronica Sawyer (a very good
Barrett Wilbert Weed), a geek with makeover possibilities and a gift for forgery. “These are people I work
for, and our job is being popular,” Veronica rationalizes to her previous best friend, the overweight,
natural-born bully target Martha (Katie Ladner).
Veronica is deeply divided about her new social status, a state that Ms. Weed conveys engagingly, by
singing and dancing while looking as if she weren’t sure whether she’s supposed to be enjoying herself.
She’s ripe to be seduced by the school’s resident boy in black, J. D. Dean (the smooth Ryan McCartan of
the Disney Channel’s “Liv and Maddie”), a Baudelaire-quoting renegade with a homicidal God complex.
For its first half, “Heathers” is skillfully sloppy fun, as it arranges the cool kids for vivisection with dopey
blue jokes and prancing choreography by Marguerite Derricks. Mr. Murphy (“Reefer Madness”) and Mr.
O’Keefe (“Legally Blonde“) provide the sort of bubbly generic score and sassy sendup lyrics now common
to musical adaptations of film comedies. (I enjoyed J. D.’s ode to the numbing ecstasy of Slurpees.)
In the second act, the show turns serious, sort of. It almost seems to be apologizing for any untoward
pleasure it may have afforded us before, as it ricochets between the antic and the conciliatory. (The movie
had similar tonal adjustment problems toward its end.) The production would be more digestible if it were
at least a quarter shorter. Not that the audience with which I saw “Heathers” seemed to mind. As you may
know, drinks — the hard, kicky kind that the Heathers imbibe illegally — are served in the lobby of New
World Stages. And though I’m loath to advocate drinking and theatergoing, this might be a show to see
while slightly buzzed. Everything is writ large enough to penetrate an alcohol haze.
That includes the film’s most cited line, which is delivered directly and archly to the audience by Ms.
Wynn. I can’t quote it in full, but it involves using a chain saw for sexual gratification. That’s “Heathers”
for you.
Heathers: The Musical
Book, music and lyrics by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe, based on the film written by Daniel
Waters; directed by Andy Fickman; choreography by Marguerite Derricks; music director, Dominick
Amendum; sets by Timothy R. Mackabee; costumes by Amy Clark; lighting by Jason Lyons; sound by
Jonny Massena; hair, wig and makeup design by Leah Loukas; fight directors, Rick Sordelet and Christian
Kelly-Sordelet; general manager, Roy Gabay Productions/Daniel Kuney; production manager, Juniper
Street Productions; production stage manager, Ritchard Druther; company manager, Mandy Tate; associate
producer, Hipzee; arrangements and orchestrations by Mr. O’Keefe and Ben Green; executive producer,
Denise Di Novi in association with Lakeshore Entertainment. Presented by Hasty Pudding, Andy Cohen,
Mr. Fickman, J. Todd Harris, Kevin Murphy, Mr. O’Keefe, Amy Powers, Jamie Bendell, Bruce Bendell,
Scott Benson, Scott Prisand, Big Block Entertainment, Michael Paesano, Bernard Abrams and Michael
Speyer/StageVentures, Katie Leary/Vineyard Point Productions, Bill Prady and Karen J. Lauder. At New
World Stages, 340 West 50th Street, Clinton, 212-239-6200, heathersthemusical.com. Running time: 2
hours 10 minutes.
NY Times
Total Daily Circulation–876,638
Monthly Online Circulation–19,500,000
WITH: Daniel Cooney (Kurt’s Dad/Veronica’s Dad/Principal Gowan), Anthony Crivello (Ram’s Dad/Big
Bud Dean/Coach Ripper), Dan Domenech (Hipster Dork/Officer McCord), Michelle Duffy (Veronica’s
Mom/Ms. Fleming), Jon Eidson (Ram Sweeney), Cait Fairbanks (Young Republicanette), Rachel Flynn
(Stoner Chick), Charissa Hogeland (New Wave Party Girl), Katie Ladner (Martha Dunnstock), Alice Lee
(Heather Duke), Ryan McCartan (J. D. Dean), Elle McLemore (Heather McNamara), A J Meijer (Preppy
Stud/Officer Milner), Dustin Sullivan (Beleaguered Geek), Evan Todd (Kurt Kelly), Barrett Wilbert Weed
(Veronica Sawyer) and Jessica Keenan Wynn (Heather Chandler).
NY Times
Total Daily Circulation–876,638
Monthly Online Circulation–19,500,000
April 1, 2014
Nothing Up His Sleeve, Just a Knack for Deception
Vinny DePonto in ‘Charlatan,’ a Magic Show at Ars Nova
By Jason Zinoman
On the night I attended “Charlatan,” a solid magic show decked out in theatrical finery, its star, Vinny
DePonto, first appeared on a video screen before the sound went mute and the production ground to a halt.
After a break, he ditched the opening and started again, this time live onstage. Embarrassing? Sure. Did the
technical difficulties hurt the evening? Yes and no.
One benefit of building a show around themes of manipulation and deception is that mistakes can seem part
of the show. Sometimes, they are. Errors even add suspense — Is this part of the trick? — and Mr.
DePonto, a slight boyish 27-year-old, is far more likely to fool you with an endearing, vulnerable-seeming
laugh than the illusion of perfection.
The bones of his solo play (written by Mr. DePonto and Josh Koenigsberg) will be familiar to any fan of
magic: sleight of hand card tricks, mind-reading and sideshow stunts. From a cluttered stage that looks like
the room of an obsessed detective in a serial killer movie (intricate design work by Carolyn Mraz), he
works with the crowd with ease, firing patter to distract and charm, exploiting his youth to gain trust. His
most amazing tricks are his simplest, as when he figures out what color a person in the audience is thinking
of or whether someone is lying by the look on his or her face.
What distinguishes the good magician from the great is the rigor of execution and quality of artistry. Mr.
DePonto’s craftsmanship consistently impresses, but his script is more mixed. Like Ricky Jay, he weaves in
fascinating tales of con artists and medical marvels, but these interludes have the personality of an
encyclopedia entry. And the show ends with underwhelming tricks relying heavily on lighting cues and a
trite final line. Over all, “Charlatan” is an assured, stylish show, but in magic and life, first and last
impressions matter.
“Charlatan” runs through April 12 at Ars Nova, 511 West 54th Street, Manhattan; 212-489-9800,
arsnovanyc.com.
Total Daily Circulation–1,586,757
Sunday Circulation– 2,003,247
April 1, 2014
A Wild Ride Returns. Confused?
‘Chang in a Void Moon’ at Incubator Arts Project
By Alexis Soloski
It takes a wild, warped and sweeping literary imagination to join Jean-Paul Sartre, Condoleezza Rice,
Britney Spears and Wassily Kandinsky in a single script. John Jesurun has one. Since 1982, he has written
and directed “Chang in a Void Moon,” an absurdist serial about a businessman’s efforts to bilk a wealthy
family. Last week, after a nine-year hiatus, the first of three new episodes debuted at Incubator Arts Project.
(The next runs Friday through Sunday; the third runs April 11 to 13.)
For those who haven’t seen the previous 58, Mr. Jesurun offers friendly, rambling curtain speeches. “This
may take a little while,” he said apologetically before a performance of Episode 59, borrowing an audience
member’s glasses, the better to see his notes. After introducing a host of characters and key events, he told
spectators not to worry if they became confused. “You’ll never be able to catch up to it,” he said. “Or you
might if you try.”
The episode offers tangled story lines, impossible chronologies, vigorous name-dropping and gnarled
family trees. It does not much advance the plot, though a couple of people may die when a car slams into a
herd of elephants. This alone won’t bar them from future episodes, as Mr. Jesurun’s dead still get plenty of
lines, often good ones, as when the deceased lawyer Maggie (Sanghi Choi) dismisses the change in her
appearance.
“You were killed. You know you are dead,” her client Svetlana (Asta Hansen) says. Maggie dryly replies,
“It’s a form of aging.”
While Mr. Jesurun regularly deploys video, his live staging imitates the filmic and televisual. There are
close-ups, split screens, crosscuts and odd camera angles. You can enjoy these elements while puzzling
over the narrative, which seems to baffle even the characters. When the patriarch fears a murder, his
associate worries whether to call “the coroner or the dramaturge.”
Looks like it’ll have to be the coroner. The dramaturge, you learn, died long ago.
“Chang in a Void Moon” runs through April 13 at Incubator Arts Project, St. Mark’s Church, 131 East 10th
Street, East Village; 866-811-4111, incubatorarts.org.
Total Daily Circulation–1,586,757
Sunday Circulation– 2,003,247