Matthew Murphy

Matthew Murphy is a New York City-based photographer specializing in theatre and dance. http://www.murphymade.com

Romeo+Juliet

November 11, 2024

This is another one of those cut down versions of Shakespeare with only ten actors in total. As result, seven of the ten actors double (one triples). The problem is that almost all of the actors have to appear in every scene to fill out the stage. It is also very difficult to know who is who with almost every actor (other than the two leads) playing more than one character, some in gender swaps. The Nurse played by (Ms.) Tommy Dorfman also plays Tybalt, while Mercutio, The Friar and the Prince are all played by actress Gabby Beans. [more]

Bad Kreyòl

October 30, 2024

"Bad Kreyòl" is gifted with a pre-show voiceover from the playwright herself: “To love a people is to learn their language.” This speaks volumes for two women who know what they know, aren’t keen on changing it up any, and are inherently both generous givers and caretakers in every aspect of their lives. And yes, sometimes you need to butt heads. [more]

McNeal

October 15, 2024

As in Ayad Akhtar’s plays "Disgraced," "JUNK" and "The Who and the What," all of which have been produced by the Lincoln Center Theater, "McNeal" is always interesting, always arresting. Unfortunately, in McNeal each scene seems to bring up a new theme and never completely finishes with the previous one. The individual confrontations are fine, but they never coalesce into a unified whole other than to depict the messy life of a famous author which can’t be the author’s sole purpose. Is the message that Artificial Intelligence is dangerous or only in the hands of the wrong people? [more]

The Roommate

September 19, 2024

Of course, with Farrow and LuPone under the direction of six-time Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien, this is an occasion for cheering although this comedy drama, a cross between a female version of "The Odd Couple" and "Breaking Bad" is both predictable and razor thin. However, it is also a scenario for two consummate actresses to strut their stuff. The roles are not a great stretch for either of them – Farrow has often played grown-up waifs and LuPone has often been seen in recent years as a New York sophisticate, but these are the kind of performers that hold your attention at all times, making you afraid to look away and miss anything. [more]

Cats:”The Jellicle Ball”

August 8, 2024

The dynamic and exciting dances include the five elements of voguing: catwalk, duckwalk, hand performances, floor performances and spins and dips in various combinations. The competitions which include almost every song are taken from real ballroom events and the names are appear on the rear wall over the glitter curtain in Brittany Bland’s projection design. These include Virgin Vogue, Pretty Boy, Realness, Body, Bizarre, Opulence, New Way Vs. Old Way, Labels, Women’s, and All American. One razzle dazzle competition is the Tag Team Performance to the song “Mungojerrie & Rumpleteaser” which pitted “knockabout clowns” Jonathan Burke and Dava Havuesca in matching costumes with ballerina Baby as Victoria and gymnastic Bryce Farris subbing for Primo as Tumblebrutus. [more]

Ain’t Done Bad

July 17, 2024

Jakob Karr conceived, choreographed and directed his full-length dance/drama, "Ain’t Done Bad" currently heating up the Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center just west of Times Square. It is a courageous, if generic look at the trials and tribulations of a young gay man confronting his inner demons and his hard-as-stone father. [more]

Empire

July 16, 2024

In "Empire," Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull attempt to tell a very big story but are unable to bring this unwieldy tale into suitable shape. The time traveling framework is both unnecessary and obtrusive. Both the historic characters and the fictional ones are underwritten and there are too many names to keep straight. While the music is catchy, the lyrics are often too unsophisticated and repetitious to make their mark. The cluttered setting and the busy staging don’t help to tell the story. "Empire" is an ambitious but unsuccessful musical which is defeated by its very form. [more]

The Heart of Rock and Roll

May 13, 2024

"The Heart of Rock and Roll" at the James Earl Jones Theatre is one of the more pleasant entries in the jukebox musical derby. Using the musical catalog of Huey Lewis and the News, Tyler Mitchell and Jonathan A. Abrams, (book by Abrams), have fashioned an amusing story of a working class Joe who is torn between his love of rock music and his need to make a living in business. Heart began its Broadway-bound journey in 2018 at the Old Globe in San Diego, but is set firmly in the 1980’s. [more]

Mary Jane

May 5, 2024

The play is an expression of the quiet whirlwind within Mary Jane’s soul, exquisitely expressed by the warm McAdams, surrounded by the boundless support of the others. Director Anne Kauffman masterfully allows the play to express vast emotions in the most subtle ways. What might have been a tearjerker is so much more, a chance to completely belong in this character’s mind and heart. [more]

The Great Gatsby: A New Musical

May 2, 2024

As for previous theatrical takes on the classic Jazz Age novel--and a few cinematic ones, too--the understandable allure of Fitzgerald's breathtaking sentences has represented a deathly siren's song for those tempted to dramatically interpret Fitzgerald by emulating him. Adopting a much smarter tack, book writer Kait Kerrigan avoids crashing into the tony shores of Long Island, where the story is mostly set, by remembering that imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery but also usually very boring. Kerrigan still dutifully opens ("In my younger and more vulnerable years...") and closes ("So we beat on, boats against the current...") with the literary hits, also leaving in place the unhappy character arc of the novel's Midwestern narrator Nick Carraway (Noah J. Ricketts), but she lets the transplanted naif enjoy a friskier journey arriving at the disillusionment that he eventually feels from witnessing the cruel machinations of the East Coast elite. [more]

The Outsiders: A New Musical

April 22, 2024

The cast of "The Outsiders: A New Musica"l bring their own substantial charisma to the stage, but it's been dramaturgically constrained by Adam Rapp and Justin Levine's book, which sacrifices poetry for explanation. That unfortunate choice is abetted by a score from Levine, Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance (the latter two comprising the folk duo Jamestown Revival) that, influenced by "Oklahoma!" instead of pure sentiment, is far too Rodgers and Hammerstein, when it should have aimed for Rodgers and Hart. [more]

Lempicka

April 21, 2024

In telling the life story of Tamara de Lempicka, the show begins with a fascinating premise. Unfortunately, neither the score nor the book lives up to her high standards. Unlike "Sunday in the Park with George" which showed us the workings of the artistic process, "Lempicka" is more interested in the social aspects of the 1920’s and 1930’s Paris than in Tamara’s revolutionary paintings. The cast works hard to put over the new musical but they are defeated by commonplace situations, banal song lyrics, and over-used pronouncements. The musical of Tamara de Lempicka’s life still has to be told. [more]

Water for Elephants

April 8, 2024

Playwright/bookwriter Rick Elice has written the greatest jukebox musical (so far) in his 2005 Jersey Boys. In his adaptation of Sara Gruen’s bestselling novel Water for Elephants, he may just have written the best stage musical about circuses by making the animals as real as the human characters. The indie folk band Pigpen Theatre Co. has written a varied collection of songs, ingeniously orchestrated, that are always exciting as they both forward the story and reveal the emotions of the people who sing them. However, it is director Jessica Stone assisted with circus design by Shana Carroll who has done the most inventive and original work. [more]

The Who’s Tommy

April 8, 2024

But, as the book's co-writer with Townshend, McAnuff is self-aware enough to recognize that "The Who's Tommy" needs to blow one's mind through sensory overload. That way, thoughts can't interfere with the emotional gloss covering the bizarrely bleak world, replete with both Nazis and Nazi wannabes, the show's "deaf, dumb, and blind" protagonist must endure. Its cheeriest passage is, in fact, the British victory over Germany in World War II, which occurs early on and quickly curdles after Captain Walker (Adam Jacobs), an airman thought killed in action, returns home to London in 1945, to discover that Mrs. Walker (Alison Luff) already has found another fella (Nathan Lucrezio), who her rightful husband promptly murders. [more]

Dead Outlaw

April 1, 2024

Conceived by Yazbek, the show is structured as a folksy retelling of the haplessly heinous Elmer McCurdy's life and post-life story, with the unbelievably true and undeniably dead portion reaching its final chapter after a prop person discovered Elmer's mummified corpse in 1976 on the set of "The Six Million Dollar Man." Unfortunately, Yazbek's collaborators from the Tony-winning "The Band's Visit"--book writer Itamar Moses and director David Cromer--are decidedly second fiddles this time around, adding little to the proceedings to make "Dead Outlaw" notable as anything other than a pretty solid concept album, especially as performed by an indefatigable combo that includes Della Penna belting out some of his own lyrics and strumming multiple instruments. [more]

Spain

December 13, 2023

Until now it has been believed that the 1937 Joris Ivens-Ernest Hemingway documentary "The Spanish Earth" was paid for by a corporation called Contemporary Historians sponsored by some of the most famous liberal writers of the time: playwright Lillian Hellman, mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, poet, screenwriter and essayist Dorothy Parker and her husband Alan Campbell, poet Archibald MacLeish, novelists John Dos Passos and Hemingway. However, in "Spain," contemporary playwright Jen Silverman has another idea: what if this famously propaganda film was financed by the KGB and that filmmaker Ivens and his girlfriend/editor Helen van Dongen were agents for KGB operatives in New York? [more]

Spamalot

November 20, 2023

Still, whatever faint accommodations he grants it, for Idle, structure is the enemy of joy, which every aspect of "Spamalot" is relentlessly intent on delivering, not only from a few well-performed and well-known old Monty Python bits (the Knights Who Say "Ni!"; the French Taunter; the Black Knight) but also through amusing allusions to classic Broadway musicals that Aaron Sorkin was never given the chance to ruin. To be sure, it is fan service on a couple fronts, forming a Venn Diagram highlighting anyone who adores, for example, how Idle's brainy, irreverent silliness transforms Stephen Sondheim's song "Another Hundred People" from "Company" into a running plague count. It takes incredibly varied abilities to appealingly belt out Sondheim while landing that joke, which Ethan Slater, as the dejected Prince Herbert, does impressively and without remotely shortchanging either responsibility. [more]

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding

October 10, 2023

"Jaja" is quite different from Bioh's other plays in that it is also very revealing about life in NYC for African immigrants. Directed by Whitney White who has piloted several major new Black plays in recent years, the play is funny, poignant and illustrative. The excellent and compelling cast of 11 includes six fine actors making their Broadway debuts. David Zinn’s detailed hair salon puts every inch of Jada’s Harlem African Hair Braiding parlor on stage down to the last braid and bobby pin. [more]

The Shark Is Broken

August 17, 2023

As for what's in a name, yes, Ian Shaw is Robert's son, returning the life-giving favor not just through his words but also bodily, portraying his father in "The Shark Is Broken" with a candid empathy (and astonishing physical resemblance) that highlights the elder Shaw's strengths while giving context to his weaknesses, too. Because of ongoing technical difficulties with Spielberg's monstrous mechanical fish, known as Bruce, there was protracted downtime during the filming of "Jaws," which the play fills with imagined conversations between Robert and his co-stars Richard Dreyfuss (Alex Brightman) and Roy Scheider (Colin Donnell). Despite set designer Duncan Henderson's remarkable recreation of the Orca, the movie's barely seaworthy boat, hardcore Jaws fans might feel as if they've been bait-and-switched, since, in the final tally, they only get one early image of a not-so-ominous shark fin to satiate their thrill-and-chill-seeking expectations. In keeping with what's on the marquee, it quickly malfunctions, sinking into video designer Nina Dunn (for PixelLux)'s vast ocean backdrop, never to be seen again. [more]

Back to the Future: The Musical

August 16, 2023

"Back to the Future: The Musical," the time travel adventure, joins a long line of problematic screen to stage musicalizations which do not improve on the originals in any way. Joining the list that includes in recent memory "Pretty Woman," "King Kong," "Tootsie," "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "Almost Famous," Back to the Future, using one of the original movie’s co-writers (Bob Gale without Robert Zemeckis), attempts to transplant the film in toto to the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre without adding anything new to the mix other than having the characters sing and dance. If theater is meant to surprise us, then like the stage version of "Almost Famous," "Back to the Future" slavishly follows its source material so that we feel like we have seen it all before – and better. [more]

Here Lies Love

August 2, 2023

"Here Lies Love" unreels like an MTV music video with the emotional content lost in the technique. The real issue of this musical is that it’s impossible to feel anything for the lead characters, with the possible exception of Estrella. They are moved about the extraordinarily gimmicky set like chess pieces with Imelda checkmating everybody. Jacobs evinces the boldness of Imelda, the script limiting her ability to show any tenderness or vulnerability. Llana's Ferdinand is written pretty much as a stolid symbol, hardly human at all. [more]

Once Upon a One More Time

July 3, 2023

The only problem with Hartmere’s plot is that it remains undeveloped. None of the princesses get to read Friedan's book (there is initially only one copy) and they take it on faith that it offers them alternatives. The plot goes off on a series of tangents (Prince Charming’s assistant Prince Erudite the Celibate reveals that he is gay when he meets Snow White’s assistant Clumsy, the Cinderella’s Stepmother attempts to get the Narrator to choose one of her daughters for Prince Charming after Cinderella’s defection) but these narratives turn out as you would expect with no surprises. As staged by director/choreographer team Keene & Mari Madrid, whose credits up until now are mainly in film and music video, (creative consultant: British director: David Leveaux), the many production numbers look like aerobics for a rock video which may please Spears fans but look incongruous in a Broadway musical based on 18th and 19th century stories. Spears’ fans will be pleased that the show includes eight of her top ten hits: “Oops!... I Did It Again,” “Baby One More Time,” “Gimme More,” “Toxic,” “Circus,” “Lucky,” “Work Bitch,” and “Stronger,” almost all with lyrics tweaked by Hartmere to fit a story of princes and princesses. [more]

On The Town with Chip Deffaa: At “New York, New York,” “Some Like It Hot,” and Seth Sikes & Nicholas King’s Nightclub Act

May 14, 2023

In the last few weeks I feel like I’ve been stepping back in time—in a nice way. I’ve enjoyed seeing the new Broadway musicals "New York, New York" (set in 1946-47) and (with some definite reservations, which I’ll get to shortly,) "Some Like It Hot" (set in 1933). And although the current nightclub act of Seth Sikes and Nicolas King is set in the present, most of the Great America Songbook numbers that they sing were written long before they were born; and they put those numbers across with terrific razzle-dazzle showmanship—the kind you always hope to see in clubs but all-too-rarely do. [more]

Bad Cinderella

March 29, 2023

The book of "Bad Cinderella" plays like a series of unfunny "Saturday Night Live" sketches. Laurence Connor (who also directed the earlier London production) has given the show no particular style and each scene seems to be in another genre. The show can’t decide if it is taking place now - with its references to rock band Guns N’ Roses (parodied in the song “Buns ‘n’ Roses”),its use of both diversity and inclusion, a female Vicar, its erotic baker, reference to a “spare” prince, and its shirtless muscle hunks seen in the palace gym – or the Middle Ages. [more]

Some Like It Hot

December 19, 2022

Matthew López & Amber Ruffin (book) and Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman (music and lyrics) have transformed the written-for-laughs film into a joyous musical, keeping much of the sharp wit of the original. Most importantly, they added heart and even a surprisingly contemporary spin or two, buoyed by the brilliance of Casey Nicholaw’s direction and choreography (although all those knee slides made me worry for the talented dancers’ health!) [more]

KPOP

December 5, 2022

Adopting the hokey framing device of a concert documentary, Kim turns the impending U.S. debut of a South Korean entertainment company's three hottest acts into a triptych of rigorously gendered plots. While attempting to capture all the glitz, glamor, and artistry, the American documentarian (Aubie Merrylees) also relentlessly stirs the pot to heighten any behind-the-scenes discord for the cameras, which doesn't make much sense since his paycheck is signed by Ruby (Jully Lee), the record label's iron-fisted founder and driving force, who obviously wants a glorified promotional video, not an investigative report. But to ascribe dramaturgical logic to the situation is to entirely miss the point. Aided by Peter Nigrini's voyeuristic projections of backstage squabbling, the objective is not truth but, rather, to establish the type of assiduously rendered false intimacy fans perceive as truth. [more]

& Juliet

November 30, 2022

The cast is a combination of New York stage favorites (Stark Sands, "Kinky Boots," and Betsy Wolfe, "Waitress," "Falsettos" and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"), new faces (Lorna Courtney, Ben Jackson Walker, Justin David Sullivan) and older veterans (opera baritone Paolo Szot and London stage star Melanie La Barrie making her Broadway debut.) The clever book is by writer David West Read previously seen in New York with "The Performers" and "The Dream of the Burning Boy" as well as the long running television series Schitt’s Creek. The show seems to have been influenced by "Something Rotten"(parody of Elizabethan times), "Six "(its updated 16th century costumes by Paloma Young), "Head Over Heels" (reboot of a classic tale wedded to a pop-rock score) and "Moulin Rouge" (the over-the-top staging by director Luke Sheppard and choreographer Jennifer Weber) – but is actually more fun than all of those shows. At times it resembles "Saturday Night Live" skits but knows enough to keep them short and not let any of them go on too long before introducing the next complication. [more]

Almost Famous

November 15, 2022

What Crowe has done in writing his own book for the new show is recreate almost exactly every scene in the movie starting from the time when 15-year-old hero William Miller meets rock critic Lester Bangs, including the bus and plane sequences. The best lines in the stage version are recognizable from the film and nothing of equal stature has been added to the version now on stage at the Bernard J. Jacobs Theatre. The new songs credited to composer Tom Kitt with lyrics by Crowe and Kitt add little to the work as they do not forward the story. A good many of the iconic songs from the film make their appearance but as staged by director Jeremy Herrin and choreographer Sarah O’Gleby they are the least effective numbers in the show. [more]

Kinky Boots

September 1, 2022

Several years after vacating its Broadway home, "Kinky Boots" has settled in to a cozier off-Broadway venue, Stage 42, at a presumed discount for theatergoers, albeit with a much smaller orchestra and actors whose talents far exceed their name recognition (and no mask mandates, which might be a dealer breaker for some). Also returning is director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell who gives the resized production the same energy as the original, nurturing a buoyant vibe that, as before, underscores the show's positive messages about celebrating difference, particularly as it relates to hoary conceptions of masculinity. But, when everything is said and sung, Fierstein and Lauper's joyously uplifting, but shallow, efforts are only memorable for meaning well. That's not nothing, especially these days, but the show could have been so much more. [more]

Into the Woods

July 20, 2022

Patina Miller as The Witch in a scene from the New York City Center Encores! Production of “Into [more]

Mr. Saturday Night

May 6, 2022

Anyone else may find this decent show to be a tired affair which just about sustains its two-and-half-hour running time. The memory-piece book by Crystal, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel is based on their screenplay which ranges from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. It intends to be a loving tribute to a bygone show business era and fitfully succeeds at that. The schmaltz-laden dramatic writing never really rises above the rudimentary, rendering the events and conflicts with patness and clichés. Still, it offers choice roles that are marvelously performed by the other cast members. [more]

Funny Girl

April 29, 2022

Beanie Feldstein’s clunky rendition of “I'm the Greatest Star” crystalizes the absurdist dimension of this off-kilter first Broadway revival of the 1964 musical, "Funny Girl." With her nasal, often muffled singing, oddly emphatic line readings and smug mugging, in no way does she suggest a great star, yet this nearly three-hour show is centered around her. It instantly deflates with her wan introductory “Hello, gorgeous.” She does exhibit idiosyncratic pluck and stamina throughout. [more]

MJ

February 10, 2022

Wheeldon and Pulitzer Award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage make every effort to hide the fact that MJ is a jukebox musical, despite the fact that the first notes of every song elicited loud shouts and applause (part of the reason the show runs two and a half hours). Nottage has invented a plodding framework for the show. It is 1992 in Los Angeles. TV reporter, Rachel (a down-to-earth Whitney Bashor who acts as the play’s Greek chorus) and her hyperactive assistant, Alejandro (a charming Gabriel Ruiz) corral a reluctant Jackson to have his rehearsals for his huge upcoming 'Dangerous" tour documented. [more]

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