More than most opening nights, the opening of “Michael Feinstein in Concert,” at the Lyceum Theater, had the feeling of a very large party. At an opening, one is always surrounded by “friends” of the production, but here, possibly because of the size of the theater (rather small), because of Feinstein’s nervous chatter (acknowledging his “Yiddishe mama” in the audience), or because of the chattily over-informative program notes, one felt oneself to be among family—not Feinstein’s own but the community of those who love old songs and the people who wrote them. The Lyceum is an in-between sort of venue—wide for a proscenium theater but too small to have housed many big, glitzy musicals—and Feinstein suggests as much at the beginning of his show. (He is an accomplished historian of musical theater, having been Ira Gershwin’s archivist and amanuensis for six years before the lyricist’s death in 1983.) He himself can hardly point out that he is also something of an in-between phenomenon: a cocktail pianist who has never really had to be a cocktail pianist (not for long, anyway), who charges thirty-five thousand dollars to play at parties (the Playbill tells you this), and who by the time he was thirty-one had cut three albums, played the Algonquin and the Hollywood Bowl, toured with Liza Minnelli, and (in the words of the Playbill) achieved “international acclaim.”
The cocktail pianist’s art is very much a background art. It’s commissioned sound, hired by the hour to fill the space between units of drink and conviviality; accordingly, cocktail pianists tend to fall into two groups: those whose intrusion on conversation can be tolerated (or ignored) and those whose style is so compelling that a roomful of people falls quiet when they begin to sing. Feinstein has never been put to that test in New York. When he burst on the scene, in January of 1986, it was to play in the Oak Room of the Algonquin, and he quickly became the hotel’s principal draw. This followed a successful stint playing the West Coast circuit, which had itself followed his apprenticeships with Gershwin and the late composer Harry Warren, who wrote the scores for such movie musicals as “Forty-Second Street” and “The Harvey Girls.” That Feinstein’s cabaret-style material makes the transition to theater as gracefully as it does is a tribute to the modesty of his musicianship. The hallmark of his style is its purity. Where other crooners attempt to put their own stamp on a popular song, Feinstein lets the song speak for itself, never upstaging a selection or putting himself forward unless it is to heighten a mood or feeling—as when he allows a specter of deadly seriousness to emerge in “Be Careful, It’s My Heart” or flirts with the syncopation in “Taking a Chance on Love.” What comes across is measured sincerity—no relation to the oozing earnestness one has learned to expect from show-biz personalities.
The concert at the Lyceum, which runs through June 12th, consists primarily of songs of the twenties, thirties, and forties—mostly show tunes. There’s a Gershwin section, a Berlin section, and a Warren section. Sometimes Feinstein performs solo, accompanying himself on a concert grand; sometimes he is backed up by a six-piece band led by Elliot Finkel, who also supports him on a second piano; sometimes the band takes over completely, and so leaves Feinstein free to move about the stage indulging in such endearing theatrics as dancing, perching on top of the piano, and propping up the proscenium arch. Among the show’s high points are a dueling-pianos rendition of Great Moments from Broadway Overtures (performed with Mr. Finkel), a rousing “Lullaby of Broadway,” and a sing-along version of “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady.” Feinstein’s knowledge of the genre is exhaustive: He knows all the songs and their intros. Thus, the program becomes a meeting place for the timeless and the charmingly dated. There are hit songs from forgotten musicals, songs that were cut from hit musicals, even samples of great songwriters’ bad juvenilia. Given the extent of Feinstein’s repertoire, half the artistry of putting together a show like this must lie in the process of selection. In general, his taste is flawless: he knows just how much of Noel Coward’s “Sail Away” to give us (veering off on another tack before the lyrics become pompous and maudlin), and, wisely, tends to perform the better-known songs in medley, reserving the mock big-production-number technique for curiosities. Only once in the course of the evening does his judgment seem to falter—with an excerpt from “Never-Never Land.” Feinstein’s is a gift for bringing sentiment to whimsicality and making the whimsical sentimental. With a song that is both whimsical and sentimental even he can do nothing.
Unquestionably, the fact that Michael Feinstein’s concert was attended by so comparatively little hype made it doubly easy to enjoy. I sometimes wonder if the producers and press agents who court coverage of their shows have any idea how quickly a feature article in the Sunday Times Arts and Leisure section can kill one’s interest in a subject. (The Times has a way of investing theatrical events with an importance out of all proportion to common sense.) In the case of the Glenda Jackson/Christopher Plummer “Macbeth,” the negative publicity surrounding the production had a perversely positive effect: all those gossipy articles about backstage rivalry and turmoil—the reports of Miss Jackson’s high-handed way with journalists—only made you eager to see the thing. (Could anything really be in that much trouble?) How characteristic of Broadway that it should prove unable to live up to even negative expectations.
The Jackson-Plummer “Macbeth” at the Mark Hellinger Theatre is not, as one might have thought, giggle-makingly bad, merely numbingly boring and pedestrian. The all-purpose, unit set, designed by Daphne Dare, is static and unimaginative, a throwback to the early sixties, when stylization itself—and not the stylized evocation of anything in particular—was thought to be sophisticated. Patricia Zipprodt has clad the company in earth tones. (Mr. Plummer seems truly dressed in “borrowed robes”—his grandmother’s furs, I would guess.) Macbeth and Banquo come onstage chatting amicably, more like tennis partners than like comrades fresh from the heat of battle; the murder of Banquo is carried out in utter darkness; and soldiers march in place waving staves back and forth to simulate Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane.
Plummer gives us an endlessly amiable Macbeth, all consternation and ingratiating smiles, and recites the dagger speech like an audition piece. It’s hard to imagine how anyone so ordinary could commit something as provocative as regicide. Jack Gwillim’s King, meanwhile, is more Polonius than Duncan, a very parody of a stage monarch (the useless old duffer—you’re glad to see him go!), just as Jeff Weiss makes the Porter seem more like a Borscht Belt Mercutio. (Mr. Weiss is also cast as the First Witch and Second Murderer—an unwise decision, for he is an inveterate ham, and every time he opens his mouth you want to laugh.) Although Kenneth Frankel, who is credited with “Original Direction,” Zoe Caldwell, who is credited with “Additional Direction,” and Robin Phillips, who is credited with no direction at all, all worked on the production, no one seems to have spared a thought for the character of Macbeth.
Instead, the object seems to have been to hot up the production with sex: there’s a good deal of touchy-feely stuff between Mr. Plummer and Miss Jackson, who keeps running her hands up and down her own flanks. The witches, too, frequently seem to be having a sexual experience, and at the end of the sleepwalking scene Miss Jackson appears to be giving birth. Of the weird women present, she is certainly the weirdest. Throughout the evening, she seems to suffer from intermittent bouts of nausea. It’s the leitmotiv of her performance, culminating at the end of the banquet scene, when she throws up on the table. Astonishingly, in spite of these and other antics, Miss Jackson’s is the only performance—apart from Paul Sparer’s Banquo—to register. I suppose the saddest thing about this production is that, for all its mediocrity, it still offers something New Yorkers are not accustomed to: moments when one can take pleasure in listening to Shakespeare intelligently—or, at any rate, intelligibly—read.
Mimi Kramer
The New Yorker, April 4, 1988