Broadway bets two can draw a crowd

Three new plays explore disparate lives pushed together by music, strife, time, and friendship.

from the June 22, 2007 edition

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When Weill finally convinces the über-bohemian Berthold Brecht to allow his poetry to be set to Weill's music, the results catapult the team to the top of 1930s Berlin cafe society. But Lenya's free-spirit approach to her singing career, and their romance, bring up many unanswered questions about how and why they kept coming together and breaking apart. These creative real-life giants jostled their way through a tumultuous relationship that took them from Nazi Germany to talent-hungry America – where Weill conquered Broadway and eventually Hollywood – but Lenya's career suffered from erratic fits and starts. Alfred Uhry's by-the-numbers script, and Hal Prince's rote staging seem content to leave the reasons behind their colorful story a mystery.

Lizzie, the lead character of "110 in the Shade," is a plain spinster, while Starbuck is a lustful traveling con man. When he blows into the county, promising to bring a deluge to the parched territory, it's not rain she smells, but trouble.

Based on Richard N. Nash's play, this musical revival swells with the homespun charm for which their lyricist/composer team (Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt of "The Fantasticks") have become noted. And the material will always create an opening for the most prominent creative force behind any production.

A City Center revival in the 1990s mounted by Susan Stroman was noteworthy for its choreography. In this Roundabout Theatre revival, that creative force is Audra McDonald, who makes Lizzie personable and sympathetic, not cloying or pitiable. McDonald, after four Tony Awards, is still at the top of both 'games' she is playing here – singer and actress.

Veteran low-key musical-theater star John Cullum keeps the subject of her single status on a steady simmer, giving the story somewhere to go when the unthinkable happens – two men show fierce interest in Lizzie, at the same time. Her masked emotions, revealed in glorious complexity in "Love, Don't Turn Away," "Old Maid," and "Simple Little Things," show us a Lizzie who knows what she wants and is willing to wait for it. When she does choose between the flashy gypsy con man and the staid, reclusive county sheriff, her choice is not surprising. What does surprise is the depth of emotions McDonald instills in this potentially two-dimensional character, and as the final, long-awaited cloudburst floods the stage, the outer layers that have cloaked her true self are washed away.

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