Heisenberg and An American in Paris

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I’ve seen two musicals and a stage play in the last 24 hours: An American in Paris last night (Tuesday), Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle this afternoon, and Sondheim’s Follies in its closing performance tonight.



First, Heisenberg. My unsolicited advice to playwrights: unless your name is Tom Stoppard or, perhaps, Michael Frayn, resist the temptation to draw analogies between human relations and the behavior of subatomic particles. It really doesn’t make a banal story more profound.



I also wonder about the impulse to write plays with only two characters. In my experience, monologues have their own virtues, but most plays seem to need the instability introduced by a third character in order to move the plot forward. I have yet to see a two-hander that wasn’t dramatically inert. And no, you don’t get to count as a third character a heroine who seems to have a borderline multiple personality disorder.



The play was not without a few pleasures: a terrific light box sort of set, and one terrific short monologue. Georgie asks 75-year-old Alex what music he likes and he responds, “Oh everything.” She tells him that’s what everyone says and he should be specific. His response:



“I started with rock and roll. And then I moved onto rhythm and blues. Gospel music. Country and Western. And mod music. Garage rock. Psychedelic. Hippy music. Jazz music. Funk. String quartets. Operas. Symphonies. Heavy metal. Disco music. I liked. Rather a lot actually. Motown. Electronic music. German noise music. Punk music. Electro. New Romantic. Rap music. Indie pop. The music that came out of Manchester at the end of the eighties. Acid music. Soul music. Deep soul music. Techno. House. Grime. Dub step.”



Even though the play annoyed me, I was laughing by the time he got to House.





An American in Paris and Follies are both quite spectacular, but it’s Follies that I found genuinely thrilling.



An American in Paris has a paper-thin plot, only slightly fleshed out from the Gene Kelly movie, and the director has decided to make it a full-fledged musical by raiding the George Gershwin songbook. The songs are not exactly driven by the plot, but it’s Gershwin so who’s complaining?



The dancing is terrific—the cast is drawn from both ballet and musical theater worlds—but the real star is the set. Though I’m not sure “set” is quite the right word for the light projections that gave us boats on the Seine, Haussmann-era apartment buildings, and a seedy bar transformed into a dream Radio City Music Hall. I needed Jeremy with me to explain how they did it.



The female lead, ballet dancer Leanne Cope, was scheduled to meet with us this morning, but she was sick—dramatically so. They stopped the show 30 minutes in to replace her with her understudy. And we were fortunate to have an understudy as well. Zoe Rainey, who played Milo Davenport, came to talk to us in the morning and was utterly charming.



I’ll write about Follies tomorrow. That deserves more reflection and a good night’s sleep.

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