First Date has charming stars, Soul Doctor is on life support and Peninsula has buff boys but needs a director!
First Date (3 ½ stars)
Soul Doctor (1 ½ stars)
Peninsula (2 ½ stars)
First Date, a forgettable new musical by Austin Winsberg (book) and Alan Zachary & Michael Weiner (music and lyrics) is notable for the Broadway debut of Zachary Levi. Levi, who’s made a name for himself on television in NBC’s Chuck and ABC’s Less Than Perfect, is simply terrific and a bona fide stage star! Utterly charming, a superb comic actor and totally hot, Levi, along with his co-star Krysta Rodriguez (late of Smash), spin straw into gold with their undeniable chemistry in a silly musical about a couple on a first date. The supporting cast works hard and has a couple funny moments, but it’s Levi and Rodriguez’s show. It’s a guilty pleasure and painless fun. And Levi is putting all the other leading men on Broadway on notice – he’s arrived!
If you don’t already know who Shlomo Carlebach is, then Soul Doctor, the new bio-musical about his life probably isn’t for you. Carlebach, a rabbi who became a semi-recording star by mixing traditional Jewish folk tunes with a folk-rock beat, and who apparently carried on a long-term friendship with the singer Nina Simone, actually has a fascinating story – especially the friendship with Simone. But Soul Doctor, with its rudderless book and flaccid direction by Daniel Wise, its stupefying choreography by Benoit-Swan Pouffer, and its monotonous musical score courtesy of Carlebach, is a show on life-support.
Nathan Wright’s provocative new drama, Peninsula, has plenty of buff boys and innuendo. What it needs, however, is a director! Written in a combination of poetic verse and conversational dialogue, Wright’s play is a significant step up from the usual Fringe Festival fare though it still needs work. Peninsula is the story of Tiago (Josué Gutiérrez Guerra), a Brazilian trying to pull himself out of the slums of Rio de Janeiro and better himself. Tiago lives with his girlfriend Lily (Vanessa Bartlett) but he finds himself sexually attracted to a drug dealer, Nelson (Marc Sinoway), whose plan to escape poverty proves tempting. This plot line in Rio alternates with a second one set in Michigan where wealthy summer vacationers like Tommy (Kellan Peavy) and his mother Mrs. Vaughn (Angela Atwood), avoid mingling with locals like Mitch Bennett (John Zdrojeski) and the migrant workers Bennett supervises. Tiago is one such worker and Wright interweaves his story of despair in Brazil with his story of labor in Michigan, intercutting and overlapping the separate tales of Tiago in ways both interesting and frustrating. It’s a character study of a man struggling with demons and searching for his identity, but its clear Wright aspires to tell a broader story – one that touches on issues of class, culture and sexuality. He succeeds occasionally, but his script needs tightening and director Nadia Foskolou’s inexplicable directorial concept doesn’t do it any favors – just the opposite, in fact. Foskolou directs Peninsula in a highly stylized, manner that employs unnatural, jerky choreography and angular staging patterns reminiscent of Agnes de Mille or Martha Graham. This pretentious stylization doesn’t make any sense and certainly doesn’t serve the piece. (A directorial conceit should illuminate the text, not overshadow and detract from it.) Much of the acting in Peninsula vacillates with Foskolou’s staging antics, but Peavy and Zdrojeski are the most consistent, with the two women’s roles grating and reduced to two-dimensional stereotypes. (There’s an important seduction scene between Mrs. Vaughn and Tiago that’s played for laughs when it should be a dramatic turning point in the show.) As Tiago, Guerra doesn’t yet have the magnetism or acting skill to carry Peninsula the way the script requires. It would be interesting to see Peninsula again with completely new direction. But since Wright and Foskolou are long-time collaborators, that’s not likely to happen.
First Date plays at the Longacre (220 W 48th St, FirstDateTheMusical.com). Soul Doctor plays at Circle in the Square (1633 Broadway @ 50th St, SoulDoctorBroadway.com). Peninsula encores Sep 6 thru Oct 13 at The Players (115 MacDougal St, OvationTix.com).
