Don Scardino, who "conceived" and directed this hybrid bio-musical/concert,
found it necessary to insert some "Director's Notes" in the program. This is
a common occurrence in community and small professional theater companies,
but rare on Broadway where audiences expect to be able to figure out what
the creators intended by simply watching the show. He says "I wanted to
achieve the one thing we can no longer have: an evening, a concert, a real
experience, of John Lennon, the man, the musician and the artist." What he got, however, is really a pleasant concert built
on a theme. It offers a chance to revisit some of John Lennon's better known
solo songs, and in the process, get an overview of his short life and enjoy
some enthusiastic performances by a few highly talented Broadway veterans.
It also lets you get to know a previously unpublished Lennon song titled "I
Don't Want to Lose You" which is effectively used in the show. |
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Storyline: A cast of nine talented actors and actresses alternate playing
John Lennon and the people who were important in his life to tell the
audience the story of that life. They punctuate it with some twenty-one
songs he wrote over the years between his formation of a band that became
The Beatles, and his murder at the age of 40 on the steps of his apartment
building on Central Park, less than thirty blocks north of the theater where
the show is playing.
If you enter the theater
from some fourth dimension where you had never heard of The Beatles or of
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, you would be excused for leaving the theater
wondering just why anyone would want to put together a bio-musical about
John Lennon. On the basis of what is shown on stage, it appears he was
simply a very rich and very famous pop-star with about as much talent as
dozens of other pop-stars. You have to enter the theater knowing that The
Beatles, and most particularly Lennon and McCartney, really did
revolutionize pop culture between 1962 when "Love Me Do" was released and
1969 when they split. Indeed, it is rather ironic that Broadway would be now
be hosting a glowing portrait of Lennon, given that one byproduct of that
revolution was the demise of a market for the kind of music that emerges
from Broadway musicals. That revolution is the reason John Lennon is more
important than most of his contemporaries, and it is given completely short
shrift here as if his personal life with Yoko Ono - as interesting and
productive as it may have been - was world changing. The show fails to make
that case, however, simply stating rather than demonstrating it.
The performances range from
the very good to the under-utilized. Will Chase spends more time delivering
the words and songs of John Lennon than most others and he's engaging,
charming and enjoyable. So, too, is Chad Kimball who gets the second largest
share of the John Lennon role. Chuck Cooper's distinctive voice fills the
house thrillingly at times. Terrence Mann, who can be a commanding presence,
is reduced to comic side-kick too often. Julie Danao-Salkin is the only
performer in the cast who only plays one character. She does a good job of
it, but the fact that that one character is Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, and
that she's the only one given the status of a consistent representation
pretty much tells the reason this production seems so superficial. It isn't
really John Lennon's life up there on the stage, it is Yoko Ono's memory of
the part of his life she shared . . . and that wasn't the important part of
his life either historically or artistically.
The show takes place on a
circular platform before the on-stage band of ten and three sail-like
screens on which are projected many slides and film clips from Lennon's
life, all of which is surrounded by more lights than even the finale of
Mama Mia! The band includes some of the least used brass and reeds in
recent memory on Broadway, as if the producers hired them because of the
musician's union minimum but didn't want to go to the additional expense of
paying orchestrator Harold Wheeler to write music for them to play. The
rhythm laid down by keyboard and percussion is solidly in support of the
cast whose vocal work is clean, clear and crisp.
Music and lyrics by John Lennon (with
back-of-the-program credit to Paul McCarney, Berry Gordy, Janie Bradford,
Vic Caesar, Carl Lee Perkins and Yoko Ono). Book, conception and direction
by Don Scardino. "With special thanks" to Yoko Ono Lennon. Choreography by
Joseph Malone. Musical direction by Jeffrey Klitz. Orchestrations by Harold
Wheeler. Music supervision and arrangements by Lon Hoyt. Design: John Arnone
(set and projections) Jane Greenwood (costumes) Natasha Katz (lights) Bobby
Aitken (sound). Cast: Will Chase, Chuck Cooper, Julie Danao-Salkin, Mandy
Gonzalez, Marcy Harriell, Chad Kimball, Terrence Mann, Julia Murney, Michael
Potts.
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