Love can tell a million stories...
- William Finn, FALSETTOS
[While this production was not in Erie, it did feature the performance of Erie native, Mercyhurst Preparatory School alumnus, and for Playhouse performer, Nick Adams.]
The Murphy/Falchuk/Canals television series, POSE, is striking more than poses; it's touching on moments and experiences that many in the arts hold in our memories. While it celebrates the performative and political assertions of gender and orientation identity, with more than just a little dramatic flare, it also plucks at heartstrings and remembers those beautiful people held in death's dateless night. The AIDS crisis, an integral part of the POSE storyline, sometimes seems like centuries ago. Last April the New York Times Style Magazine ran a sobering list of the names of those who were lost to the AIDS epidemic - Alvin Ailey, Michael Bennett, Tina Chow, Dorian Corey, Brad Davis, Robert Drivas, Tom Eyen, Michel Foucault, Larry Kert, Robert Moore, and Clark Tippet were just a few of the names featured in the necrology. Also mentioned was Keith Haring, the artist, whose cartoon-like graphics and murals filled the urban spaces.
Haring's vision was one of the first to inspire the iconic image associated with the first advertising campaign for William Finn and James Lapine's collaborative musical FALSETTOS, which had its original Broadway production in 1992, and a successful revival in 2016. The image was one of a black/white cartoon of two adults, with the help of a child, holding up a bold, red heart. The image draws the viewer into the world of the play - two one-act musicals linked by shared characters and an overarching plot of a man who continues to explore his sexual orientation and personal identity as relationships pull him in and out of crises and concerns. The Haring image ultimately affirms that the heart is the strongest, but that it often takes more than one person to hold up, even if it is one's own.
The current U.S. Tour of FALSETTOS stopped at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for three weeks this June, and the production as directed by Mr. Lapine, who co-wrote the book of the musical with Mr. Finn, is a breathtaking, entertaining, emotional freight train that drives the melodies and lyrics, which stand the test of time as they were written before their time. The use of a single unit set, a pile of furniture sized building blocks which open to become homes, offices, clinics, and public spaces, allowed for the sung-through score to continue to move forward, thrusting the principle characters and catching the audience up in the madness that can be some people's lives.
Seven actors in the ensemble, each with their featured moment and essential plot points, brilliantly embody the complicated characters who intone even more complicated melodies and harmonies. Led by Max Von Essen, who's central character of Marvin is desperately searching for an authentic relationship in spite of his own brokenness. The other performers in the company, each deliver powerful vocal and emotional portrayals. Nick Adam's Whizzer is obnoxiously narcissistic until his emotional and physical vulnerability break the hearts of both those on stage and those in the audience. Jonah Mussolino's young Jason has the audience eating out of his confused and strangely mature pre-adolescence. Eden Espinosa's demand for primacy is beautifully scaled with her character's fading hope for normalcy. Nick Blaemire brings a welcome comic Mendel the psychiatrist to the mix. Audrey Caldwell's Cordelia tries to maintain an aloofness that pretends to focus on canapes when she clearly longs for success in business and in love. And Bryonha Marie Parham's Doctor Charlotte arrests every breath when she chants, "Something Bad is Happening."
Something bad was happening. While "March of the Falsettos," the first act of the musical, attested to how Marvin dragged the other characters into his own personal mine field, the second act, "Falsettoland," underlined that the something bad that was happening was the epidemic loss of an entire generation of arts, performers, and producers who unknowingly, in an attempt to connect to relationship through intimacy, were inadvertently being placed into harms way. The true surprise at this contemporary tour of FALSETTOS is that it still feels fresh, innovative, and is still able to grab the all to red heart of Haring and make the sense of love and loss immediate and vital to the third decade of the twenty-first century. Like POSE, which on the surface appears to be a narrative from decades ago, the truth is that each generation recognizes the tenuousness of the fabric of our relationships and the intricate interrelation that we each have to one another.
Our hearts are often too big for us to hold up ourselves; they often need a companion...and the promise of a next generation.
- William Finn, FALSETTOS
[While this production was not in Erie, it did feature the performance of Erie native, Mercyhurst Preparatory School alumnus, and for Playhouse performer, Nick Adams.]
The Murphy/Falchuk/Canals television series, POSE, is striking more than poses; it's touching on moments and experiences that many in the arts hold in our memories. While it celebrates the performative and political assertions of gender and orientation identity, with more than just a little dramatic flare, it also plucks at heartstrings and remembers those beautiful people held in death's dateless night. The AIDS crisis, an integral part of the POSE storyline, sometimes seems like centuries ago. Last April the New York Times Style Magazine ran a sobering list of the names of those who were lost to the AIDS epidemic - Alvin Ailey, Michael Bennett, Tina Chow, Dorian Corey, Brad Davis, Robert Drivas, Tom Eyen, Michel Foucault, Larry Kert, Robert Moore, and Clark Tippet were just a few of the names featured in the necrology. Also mentioned was Keith Haring, the artist, whose cartoon-like graphics and murals filled the urban spaces.
Haring's vision was one of the first to inspire the iconic image associated with the first advertising campaign for William Finn and James Lapine's collaborative musical FALSETTOS, which had its original Broadway production in 1992, and a successful revival in 2016. The image was one of a black/white cartoon of two adults, with the help of a child, holding up a bold, red heart. The image draws the viewer into the world of the play - two one-act musicals linked by shared characters and an overarching plot of a man who continues to explore his sexual orientation and personal identity as relationships pull him in and out of crises and concerns. The Haring image ultimately affirms that the heart is the strongest, but that it often takes more than one person to hold up, even if it is one's own.
The current U.S. Tour of FALSETTOS stopped at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for three weeks this June, and the production as directed by Mr. Lapine, who co-wrote the book of the musical with Mr. Finn, is a breathtaking, entertaining, emotional freight train that drives the melodies and lyrics, which stand the test of time as they were written before their time. The use of a single unit set, a pile of furniture sized building blocks which open to become homes, offices, clinics, and public spaces, allowed for the sung-through score to continue to move forward, thrusting the principle characters and catching the audience up in the madness that can be some people's lives.
Seven actors in the ensemble, each with their featured moment and essential plot points, brilliantly embody the complicated characters who intone even more complicated melodies and harmonies. Led by Max Von Essen, who's central character of Marvin is desperately searching for an authentic relationship in spite of his own brokenness. The other performers in the company, each deliver powerful vocal and emotional portrayals. Nick Adam's Whizzer is obnoxiously narcissistic until his emotional and physical vulnerability break the hearts of both those on stage and those in the audience. Jonah Mussolino's young Jason has the audience eating out of his confused and strangely mature pre-adolescence. Eden Espinosa's demand for primacy is beautifully scaled with her character's fading hope for normalcy. Nick Blaemire brings a welcome comic Mendel the psychiatrist to the mix. Audrey Caldwell's Cordelia tries to maintain an aloofness that pretends to focus on canapes when she clearly longs for success in business and in love. And Bryonha Marie Parham's Doctor Charlotte arrests every breath when she chants, "Something Bad is Happening."
Something bad was happening. While "March of the Falsettos," the first act of the musical, attested to how Marvin dragged the other characters into his own personal mine field, the second act, "Falsettoland," underlined that the something bad that was happening was the epidemic loss of an entire generation of arts, performers, and producers who unknowingly, in an attempt to connect to relationship through intimacy, were inadvertently being placed into harms way. The true surprise at this contemporary tour of FALSETTOS is that it still feels fresh, innovative, and is still able to grab the all to red heart of Haring and make the sense of love and loss immediate and vital to the third decade of the twenty-first century. Like POSE, which on the surface appears to be a narrative from decades ago, the truth is that each generation recognizes the tenuousness of the fabric of our relationships and the intricate interrelation that we each have to one another.
Our hearts are often too big for us to hold up ourselves; they often need a companion...and the promise of a next generation.
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