Hell, Rupert Murdoch and Other Demons: It's the Pre-Tonys Broadway Wrap-Up!

WILKOMMEN! André De Shields as Hermes, who narrates the musical “Hadestown.” The show just earned 14 Tony nominations, more than any other 2018-19 production.

FIVE NEW BROADWAY SHOWS to talk about in this month’s issue, and every one is a Tony nominee for best musical, best play or best revival.

One is literally set in hell (“Hadestown”). One stars a demon and a door to the underworld (“Beetlejuice”) in Connecticut. One is about a real-life ghoul (the newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch). One takes place right after a talented young man has died (“Burn This” — so it sounds hellish). The fifth (“Tootsie”) is about the hell of being a man pretending to be a woman in a man’s world. Damn them, bless them, praise them all!

DEMON AND GOTH Alex Brightman and Sophia Anne Caruso as unlikely allies in “Beetlejuice” at the Winter Garden Theater.

BEETLEJUICE

Musical based on a movie

You can’t say there wasn’t music in the movie version of “Beetlejuice” (1988). In fact, one of the film’s finest moments was the “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” number, when an artsy New York couple and their snooty dinner guests are possessed by supernatural forces and get in touch with their inner Jamaicans. But now “Beetlejuice” is a full-blown musical. The musical highlights is the playfully dark, self-referential opening number, led by the title character (Alex Brightman) which is titled something like “A Show About Death.” But I was also fond of “Dead Mom,” sung by Lydia (Sophia Anne Caruso), the gloomy teenager played by Winona Ryder in the movie. Lots of plot changes and new story lines here. but it’s still about New Yorkers who buy a country house in Connecticut and bring such bad vibes to it (not to mention hideous decor) that the former owners — who died and are residing in the attic as ghosts — determine to get them out. And they’re not above using a wild-eyed demon — that’s Beetlejuice — to scare them away. It’s all a little too busy, but David Korins’s over-the-top set, William Ivey Long’s costumes and a lively (if mostly dead) ensemble make it enjoyable. Tony Award nominations were announced on April 30, and this show got eight. Spoiler alert: My favorite puppet was the talking, dancing roast pig.

“Beetlejuice,” Winter Garden Theater, 1634 Broadway (at 50th Street), 212-239-6200, beetlejuicebroadway.com. 2 hours 40 minutes. Opened on April 26, 2019. Open run.

________________________________________

LOFT LIVING Chic, artsy downtown people — from left, David Furr, Keri Russell and Brandon Uranowitz — in “Burn This.” The set (the wall of windows shows up better in daytime scenes) is by Derek McLane.

BURN THIS

Drama revival

I am a fan of Adam Driver, from HBO’s “Girls” and (almost as much) when he’s in “Star Wars” mode. He’s been receiving amazing reviews for this performance, and his best actor Tony nomination is one of this show’s three. But in this revival of Lanford Wilson’s play about love, grief and animal magnetism, I missed John Malkovich, who originated the role on Broadway almost 32 years ago. I have loved Keri Russell since “Felicity,” and she’s touching in the Joan Allen role, wavering between vulnerable and tough as nails. But my real favorite was Brandon Uranowitz (also Tony-nominated) as the gay best friend.

The plot: A young gay male ballet dancer has died in an accident. While mourning him, his female roommate, also a dancer, inexplicably falls for the dead man’s straight brother, a coarse and blustery New Jersey restaurant manager whose distinguishing personality characteristic seems to be bursting into rooms (almost Kramer-like, dear “Seinfeld” fans) and ranting. “Half my adult life, I swear to God,” his character says, “has been spent finding a place to park.” Somebody, tell this man about the PATH.

“Burn This,” Hudson Theater, 141 West 44th Street, 855-801-5876, burnthisplay.com. 2 hours 30 minutes. Opened on April 16, 2019. Limited run. Closes on July 14.

________________________________________

WHO SAYS THERE’S NO DANCING IN HELL? Amber Gray and Patrick Page as the first couple of the underworld in “Hadestown.” Reeve Carney, as the lovesick Orpheus, is on lyre.

HADESTOWN

Drama based on two Greek myths

The New York Times critic Jesse Green described the new Broadway production of “Hadestown” as “sumptuous, hypnotic and somewhat overactive.” I was absolutely O.K. with the overactive part. And the show just received 14 Tony nominations, the greatest number of any show this season.

André De Shields narrates the story with simultaneously sauntering and electrifying style. He’s Hermes (let’s call him the Greek god of multitasking — his specialties include trade, trickery and travelers). Patrick Page brings the most profound basso profundo I have ever heard (and yes, I’ve been to the Met) to the role of Hades, king of the underworld.

“Hadestown,” by Anaïs Mitchell (music, lyrics and book, God bless her), blends two Greek myths into one. Hades, who brings his wife, Persephone (the elegant Amber Gray), to hell to spend six months a year with him (her absence kills most plant life and creates winter on earth), seems dissatisfied. Has the marriage lost its magic? Reeve Carney is Orpheus, a young songwriter with a golden tenor and lyricist’s block, who takes one look at Eurydice (the charmingly waifish Eva Noblezada), falls in love and turns uncharacteristically brave. He’s determined to rescue her when he learns that Hades has lured her to his kingdom with an iron-clad employment contract.

My press-night guest for “Hadestown” was AS, a Manhattan-born sophisticate with a taste for the classics, but it was SS (a younger friend with a taste for “Harry Potter,” “Beetlejuice” and “King Kong”) who brought up what should have been the obvious that night. Over after-theater drinks at Sardi’s, he asked, “Are these the same people who did ‘Great Comet’?”

Yup. Rachel Chavkin — who gave New York theatergoers the ascendantly complex thrill of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” first at Ars Nova, then on Broadway in 2016 — is the director and developing force behind “Hadestown.”

The show — a musical with many influences, including jazz and blues — is staged flawlessly with an energy that intoxicates. AS’s favorites were the workmen in hell’s foundry. I liked the Fates, who seemed to be channeling the Supremes. But most important, De Shields may be the first real competition that Joel Grey (“Cabaret,” 1966) has ever had for best Broadway musical emcee.

Walter Kerr Theater, 219 West 48th Street, 877-250-2929, hadestown.com, 2 hours 30 minutes. Opened on April 17, 2019. Open run.

________________________________________

THE FRONT PAGE The cast of “Ink,” a London transfer about Rupert Murdoch’s 1969 tabloid takeover of a staid British newspaper, The Sun.

INK

Drama based on real life

The funniest line in James Graham’s “Ink,” set in London in 1969, comes near the end of the play, which was nominated for four Olivier Awards in London last year. Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel — he won for best actor), the Australian-born publisher who has just turned London’s newspaper industry upside down with tabloid sensationalism, says he’s moving on. He’s going to America. “I’m thinking of buying a television network.”

There probably weren’t many Fox News viewers in the audience at the Friedman Theater last Thursday. The drama (with musical accents) does not present a pretty picture of Murdoch, who is a real person (as far as we can tell) and now 88 in real life.

But the Broadway audience knows this antihero well. Act I is a frenzy of energy, as Murdoch hires his new editor (played expertly and sympathetically by Jonny Lee Miller) and they all seduce perfectly good journalists (I think) to abandon their principles for the joys of circulation numbers in the millions. Act II is a tragedy, as the Sun staff learn, sadly, that nothing is more important to them than this kind of success — not even the life of a co-worker’s wife. One-word review: Wow.

And as a newspaperwoman for more than a quarter-century, I found the scenes of the way print journalism used to work sweetly, painfully, typographically, composing-roomly nostalgic. It was about the process, of course, not the content (actual news versus gossip and exaggeration), but they’re both gone.

Samuel J. Friedman Theater, 261 West 47th Street, 212-239-6200, manhattantheatreclub.com. 2 hours 40 minutes. Opened on April 24, 2019. Limited run. Closes on June 23.

________________________________________

YOU’RE GONNA LOVE ME! Santino Fontana, center, as Michael Dorsey, an actor posing as an actress in the musical version of “Tootsie” at the Marquis.

TOOTSIE

Musical based on a movie comedy

There have been some changes made in “Tootsie,” which began as a 1982 movie starring Dustin Hoffman as Michael Dorsey, a struggling actor who poses as a woman to find work. Michael (Santino Fontana) is still Michael, but instead of finding himself on a TV soap opera, he — as Dorothy Michaels — is cast in a bad Broadway musical that’s sort of a “Romeo and Juliet” sequel.

Jesse Green of The Times loved the show and made it an official Critic’s Pick. (In photo: Santino in costume with Julie Halston.) Variety called it a “surefire crowd-pleaser.” On the other hand, Rex Reed, writing in The Observer, called it, among other things, cartoonish, tripe and “a mess.”

Marquis Theater, Marriott Marquis Hotel, 1535 Broadway (at 45th Street), marquistheatre.com. 2 hours 35 minutes. Opened on April 23, 2019. Open run.