Women on the Verge of
a Nervous Breakdown
This latest Broadway musical from our extremely talented
friend David Yazbek (music and
lyrics; whose prior musicals were The
Full Monty and Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels), his partner from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Jeffrey
Lane (book), and the wonderful director Bart Sher (most recently having come from his triumphant, Tony
Award winning production of South Pacific
at Lincoln Center) is a completely novel, wildly exciting, and deeply
satisfying experience. It successfully
brings together David’s fabulous music and emotionally charged, yet always
witty and incisive lyrics and
The storyline faithfully follows that of the film. It is a complex, convoluted, madcap farce
centered about Pepa (Sherie Rene Scott),
who has just been jilted via an answering machine message by her boyfriend, the
aging Lothario Ivan (Brian Stokes
Mitchell), with whom she works doing voice dubbing for films. While Pepa tries frantically to contact Ivan,
her girlfriend model Candela (Laura Benanti) is desperately trying to reach her for help with
her latest of numerous infatuations—this one complicated by the fact that the
man involved is a Shi’a terrorist with a bomb.
On her search to find Ivan, Pepa encounters Ivan’s deserted lunatic wife
Lucia (Patti LuPone), newly released
from a mental hospital, and also intent on tracking down Ivan. Add in Lucia’s son Carlos (Justin Guaini) and his girl friend (Nikka Graff Lanzarone), who show up at
Pepa’s looking to rent her apartment, Lucia’s attorney Paulina (de’Adre Aziza), who turns out to be
Ivan’s new love interest, and an ever-present taxi driver (Danny Burstein) who here as in the film is eerily a suggestively
Almodóvar-looking (deus in machina?) presence, and you have
the same wonderful mix of elements and themes that made the movie such a wildly
funny, deeply satisfying experience. The
momentum of the musical carries us through all this complexity with the same
humor and energy that made the film work so well. It even has actually succeeded in capturing
the physical appearances of the characters—and even of the taxi cab and Pepa’s
apartment with its unmistakable, meaning-laden terrace
(also a major presence in Pedro’s latest film, Broken Embraces; q.v., my review from the 2009
New York Film Festival). But,
far more importantly, it captures the texture and feel of the world Almodóvar
created for his characters and their interactions. As with most of his films, Women on the Verge was not essentially
plot-driven, despite the complexity of its plot. It is the special, meaning-imbued, lovingly
odd relational context that Almodóvar creates that is so unique and special;
and it is this that this wonderful new musical most faithfully recreates. (I got to speak with Pedro at the Opening
Night Party, and he expressed his particular pleasure about how much the
musical had succeeded in doing this.)
The mood of this
film that is being captured is, in many ways, the quintessential expression of
the spirit of post-Franco
In 1987, when I wrote the script of Mujeres
al borde de un ataque de nervios,
And this musical
captures the same “party”—the same vibrant vitality, the same emotional freedom
and intensity—as did the film.
David Yazbek’s music, as always, is sensational and provides
the major emotional expression of the spirit of the work: energetic, soulful, witty, and moving—but
this time with a Sapnish feel. Right
from to opening number (the exciting, toe-tapping “Madrid,” sung by the taxi driver against a projected collage of
photographic images of that city [you can hear the demo version of David Yazbek singing this song
by clicking here ), through Pepa’s wonderful number “Lovesick” and the hilarious,
show-stopping patter song “Model
Behavior” (a series of answering machine messages left by Candela in her
desperate attempt to get in touch with Pepa), and including all the women
singing the riveting “On the Verge”
at the end of the first act, and then Ivan’s “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” Lucia’s movingly fabulous recounting
of her loss and madness in “Invisible,”
right through to the moving and beautiful “Talk
to Me” with which Pepa ends the show—every part of the show is made vibrant
by David’s fabulous score.
The acting and
singing is all of the highest caliber, although
certainly Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti are incredible
standouts, and Danny Burstein also
gives an impressive performance. One of
my few disappointments was that Sherie
Rene Scott was not as wonderful as I have come to expect: her performance was perfectly adequate; it
just never soared to the levels it might have—and that some of the others
achieved.
The combination
of the incredible set design by Michael
Yeargan and the projections by Sven
Ortel add amazingly to the energy and richness of the experience, creating
a visual environment that is at once a realistic evocation of the physical
spaces of Madrid in which the action tales place, while at the same time being
an almost Mondrian-esque symbolic expression of the emotional meaning of those
spaces. The effect is both novel and
rewardingly successful—and very much in keeping with the multi-dimensional
cinematographic spaces created by Almodóvar himself in the film.
Women on the Verge
is not your run-of-the-mill musical.
Almost everything about it is novel and—appropriately—“on the
edge.” The pacing is unusual, the set
design is unusual, the format is unusual—the wonderful part being that, in the
end, it all works unusually
well! Even the ending is a brave—and ultimately
very successful—departure from the expectable, formulaic Broadway approach:
rather than a big, rousing finale, Women
on the Verge ends with the
tender, poignant “Talk to Me.” It is as beautiful and moving as it is
unexpectedly and contrapuntally tranquil in relation to the high energy of what
has preceded it.
As was mentioned in Patrick Healy’s NY Times article of 6 October (which I sent out as a Culture Alert at the time), the play also took the unusual and risky step of opening directly on Broadway, without an out of town run first. This decision led to an incredibly hectic and pressured month of previews, during which time Women on the Verge was extensively and repeatedly reworked, changed, tweaked, and reworked all over again. If you saw the play in its earliest incarnations, you have not seen anything like the finished product. It was only in the final days before opening night that the energy and complexity of all that goes on within this fantastic production finally came together and resolved in a completely integrated way. I find myself wondering whether some of the reviewers who found it too frenetic, or who did not appreciate the incredibly coherent flow which ultimately ties the experience together and creates an understandable and powerful motion through it, may actually have seen too early a performance of it. (This possibility hardly justifies the inexplicably snotty, often self-contradictory negative reactions of the NY Times’ Ben Brantley; but, then, what ever does?)
Nevertheless,
when all is said and done, it was still an amazingly complex undertaking to
make this unbelievably complicated story into a musical; and director Bart Sher deserves enormous credit and
admiration for pulling it all the elements together and orchestrating the
experience in a form that works so extremely well. At the party I said to him, “Bravo, bravo,
arcibravo!” (Given Ivan’s womanizing
that underlies the experience of the women about whom the play revolves, can it
be too far off to quote Don Giovanni?)
If you love
Almodóvar, you cannot afford to miss this musical. If you do not know Almodóvar, then go see
this musical and you will then discover you want
to know Almodóvar. And, Almodóvar aside,
go see Women on the Verge
because it is so much fun, and just so
damn good!
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is now playing at the
newly renovated Belasco Theatre,
Tickets are available through Telecharge.
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