By Bob Shuman

Kid Victory, now playing at the Vineyard Theatre through March 19, is an Ordinary People without a shrink—or, to put it in a theatrical context, the musical is an Oklahoma! without a Curly.  It’s a dark hometown show set in modern Kansas—which draws on cases like Elizabeth Smart’s and Natascha Kampusch’s kidnappings and captivities.  Maybe William Inge or Lanford Wilson could have made sense of such sources dramatically, but the ending of John Kander’s and Greg Pierce’s work, directed frustratingly by Liesl Tommy, sits unsatisfactorily with a father (Daniel Jenkins) who accepts his son’s sexuality and who is also complicit in the year-long absence of the young man.  That Kid Victory, the story of sex abuse and pedophilia, premiered while the Milo Yiannopoulos Breitbart resignation and book cancellation stories were breaking, shows how timely and shocking the material is—and how far away the execution of the musical is from an in-depth dramatic examination of the subject. Kander, of course, set a musical in Nazi Germany and in Chicago’s penal system, one ablaze with syncopated “merry murderesses.” But now, with a missing, balancing character and an inability to heighten the material, he’s writing workmanlike numbers, which are really too small for him.  Artists may want to revisit their roots—and might even feel that they that have to (Kander is from Missouri)–but they could end up gagged, as if they are living the lives they would have lived if they had never left.

As the young man who has been abducted, Brandon Flynn is shakingly sensitive and may remind of a kid James Dean.  Audiences are not told why he has not been given immediate and lasting psychological help after release; he does get religious guidance, which only seems anachronistic.  Karen Ziemba plays the chilly and daffy mother, who does not understand the depth of trauma imprisonment would entail—in fact, neither does the whole town, with characters such as the young girlfriend (Laura Darrell) and a church friend (Ann Arvia). Kander has been playing with musicalizing Americana at least as far back as The Act, where he turned a plain, pious Shaker-inspired “Turning” into an up-tempo boogie for Liza Minnelli.  But Kid Victory doesn’t show us anything to sing about (in fact, Luke does not sing):  The book doesn’t take us far enough into the tragedy, and it’s not light enough for standard musical comedy. Thankfully, there is a Liza-like role in Kid Victory—played by Dee Roscioli, as a kooky garden-store owner.  She helps leaven the woes one feels that the show is up against:  Roscioli even sings a good Liza-like number: “People Like Us.”  That’s when we’re in heaven. A hookup of Luke’s is the talented dancer, Blake Zolfo, who tap dances like Tulsa in Gypsy.

But this is John Kander.  The dangerous, controversial subject and themes need to be detonated.  His trade book with Fred Ebb is called Colored Lights, not The Fluorescent Light, which is part of David Weiner’s design–the setting is by Clint Ramos.  Hal Prince was the one who saw that Cabaret was reflecting ‘60s America; after the critics hadn’t understood it, others realized that Chicago is talking about trash, corrupt celebrity culture–before the country even recognized the phenomenon.  Prince and Fosse would have, no doubt, seen the metaphor, the concept of Kid Victory. They probably wouldn’t have discussed it much in the way of an old-fashioned book musical, even if Kander is trying to write chamber work.  Doubtless, they would have pushed the book’s Thornton Wilder elements out into the cold, sarcastic, frightening, and Brechtian—remember Fosse filmed his own heart attack as a musical number in All That Jazz. Whether they would have seen this as the hallucinations of a sexual prisoner, which reflects the current state of the nation, is up for debate.  Or maybe they would have thought that all of America is going through Stockholm Syndrome,  which is part of this musical book—but, doubtless, the subject matter would have been attacked, acidly, head on.

And there would have been a musical vamp: a riveting, mesmerizing, penetrating vamp.

KID VICTORY

BOOK AND LYRICS BY GREG PIERCE

MUSIC BY JOHN KANDER 

STORY BY JOHN KANDER AND GREG PIERCE

CHOREOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHER WINDOM

DIRECTED BY LIESL TOMMY 

WITH ANN ARVIA, JOEL BLUM, LAURA DARRELL, JEFFRY DENMAN, BRANDON FLYNN, DANIEL JENKINS, DEE ROSCIOLI, KAREN ZIEMBA, BLAKE ZOLFO

Press: Shane Marshall Brown/Sam Rudy Media Relations

Visit The Vineyard Theatre: http://www.vineyardtheatre.org/kid-victory/

Photos: The New York Times; Bob Shuman.

© 2017 by Bob Shuman.

Richard Maxwell:GOOD SAMARIANS
mit: Rosemary Allen, Kevin Hurley

By Bob Shuman

Nothing’s invisible or spiritual in Richard Maxwell’s plays.  He only ascertains what’s lumpish, material, and corporeal. Then he so overemphasizes them that they seem like a downtown arts insider’s cool, coercive manipulation.  The insistence on flatness, awkwardness, and mendacity defines a Brutalist vision of an industrial, institutional, and overly socialized worldview, which only Maxwell and his odd artist or misfit can survive.  The vision is so promulgated that it comes across as a tic or fetish—it’s not so much an indictment of society but a sealed truth.  Fortunately, characters and actors can get away from a creator, as Ingrid Bergman does in Bergman’s Autumn Sonata–she had trouble empathizing with the recriminations of her frumpy daughter (Liv Ullmann). Although Ingmar Bergman had written the script to show the “bad” parent, finally, the issue remained unresolved.

Finding the characters who don’t accept their sentences can make work more compelling, because they contradict the dramatist’s universe—and, they can give it more complexity, and, especially in Maxwell’s case, more accessibility. His troublemaker is Rosemary (Rosemary Allen), a hulking coordinator for the homeless in Good Samaritans, which is just ending a short run at Abrons Arts Center on February 25.  She’s interesting because she can survive in a dumbed-down, utilitarian, proto-Orwellian world—as well as breach the rules, like a Sixties anti-hero.  Her disregard would drive others—such as her new resident, the vagrant, Kevin (Kevin Hurley)–out of the system. He can’t sing (she can’t either), and he has problems telling the truth.  Lacking sincerity, without polish to the point of amateurness–which is part of the postmodernism—the play wants to tell a love story for the unindividualized masses, under fluorescent lights.  

Rosemary is like the tough, great-hearted big Catholic women who somehow survive in nursing or teaching, serving the poor with bad pay—O’Neill’s Josie is a relative.  That such a character should find physical gratification—because that’s about all she’s allowed–is the trajectory of Good Samaritans. Maxwell, with such a clinical interest in documenting the species, cannot make her into a complete slab of meat, though.   Allen won an Obie, in 2004 for her role in the original production—her performance is an artistic triumph and Maxwell’s opposition between romance and the mundane is made believable. His solution to being gouged and flattened by impersonal, undifferentiated society is not protest, not finding meaning through work, but delinquency.  The audience may feel frighteningly fat and old by the time they get out of the theater—Maxwell and his company have transmitted his vision, to be worn and lived in. Fortunately, it will wear off after a few days.

Visit Abons Arts Center: http://www.abronsartscenter.org/

Abrons Arts Center and New York City Players present

Good Samaritans

Written, directed and with songs by Richard Maxwell

Set, lights and costume design by Stephanie Nelson

Starring Rosemary Allen and Kevin Hurley

Musicians: James Moore and David Zuckerman

Press: John Wyszniewski/Blake Zidell

Photo: New York City Players.

© 2017 by Bob Shuman.  All rights reserved.