Voice Lessons

A Rose by any other name: Gypsy

This week in the Village Voice theater section:

Michael Feingold waxes enthusiastic about Arthur Laurents’s stripped down production of ecdysiast musical Gypsy. Feingold applauds, “the sense of freshness that librettist Arthur Laurents's speedy, spare new staging gives off--its streamlined approach makes the last full-scale Broadway production, by Sam Mendes, look fussy and cluttered in comparison.”

Feingold found Robert Wilson’s Fables de la Fontaine at Lincoln Center less than fabulous, chiding Wilson for “impos[ing] a personal straitjacket on the material in lieu of interpreting it.” Feingold concludes: “One piece was narrated, inexplicably, by a donkey; I couldn't help thinking it was Wilson's way of telling us the whole event was being transmitted through the sensibility of a jackass.”

I considered David Epstein’s Surface to Air rather earthbound and formulaic to boot, though director James Naughton has assembled a remarkable cast. And gently disagreeing with the New York Times, I found gently against The People vs. MONA, wishing Jim Wann and Patricia Miller had featured fewer song sketches and more fully realized tunes.

In the Sightlines section, Garret Eisler sinks his teeth into the vampire comedy Bloody Lies, but finds it bloodless. Meanwhile Candace L. emigrates over to the MITF to see INS musical Take Me America, watching as it "devolves into a collection of anecdotal, runaway tales."