Recently by William Randall Beard

Michael Brindisi’s production of Mel Brooks’ The Producers at Chanhassen Dinner Theatre deserves to be seen, if for no other reason than Jay Albright’s Max Bialystock. There are plenty of other reasons, but Albright, a perennial second banana, takes full advantage of his chance to play the lead and delivers a true star turn.

I’ll admit, I’ve always been prejudiced against the musical version of The Producers. First of all, the original Zero Mostel/Gene Wilder film is such a classic. How do you improve on perfection? And Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick could never emerge from the shadows of their predecessors. It was disconcerting to hear echoes of the original line readings in their performances.

Even more, there is no way that the original production deserved the record number of Tony Awards that it received. And it didn’t. It benefited from a kind of mass hysteria that overlooked the corny and frequently tired old gags.

But Brindisi’s direction redeems the material. He makes it seem much less superficial than it initially appears. This is a man with a true passion for classic musicals, and he treats this show as if it were one of the best, with genuine affection and not a whit of condescension. And the production’s energy and infectious high spirits are almost enough. What’s more, Brindisi is absolutely shameless; there is no gag too low that he won’t stoop to it. Which is exactly what this material needs.

In Albright, Brindisi has his perfect partner. The actor makes this sleazy Broadway producer—who raises 1,000% of production costs and then plans to stage a surefire flop, “the gay romp,” Springtime for Hitler, and pocket the excess—into a genuine a tour de force.

He is best in his solo moments, when he can demonstrate his flawless timing unimpeded. And no one can mug like Albright. When the avaricious Max is encouraged to give money back, his wordless reaction goes on for more than a few hysterical moments. And then he still gets a laugh on the line! His two-minute recap of the show from his prison cell is a comedic whirlwind.

He has a perfect foil in Robb McKindles’s Leo Bloom, the wimpy, nebbish accountant who actually comes up with the fraud scheme. McKindles is convincing as the nerd, but he also brings Leo into his own, making him a true romantic hero. McKindles makes “Till Him,” a song honoring his relationship with Max, a moment of genuine emotion. It’s a nice Brindisi touch.

There are so many outrageous bits, it would be impossible to chronicle them all. As if the queer director, in drag, singing “Keep it Gay” wasn't outrageous enough, Brindisi adds an appearance by Village People look-alikes. The song, “That Face,” starts out as a moment of innocent romance between Bloom and the secretary, Ulla. But when reprised, Max sings it directly to Ulla’s ass. I must be careful not to give all the delectable surprises.

But one more. When the director has to step in as the lead (when the star takes the admonition to “break a leg” literally), his consort says, “You’re going out there a screaming queen and coming back a passing-for-straight Broadway star.” It’s a delicious irony that it’s said to David Anthony Brinkley, who said the original of the line very recently in 42nd Street.

This show is the ultimate in political incorrectness. (Anyone with memories of any of Brooks’ movies will not be surprised at that or at the gross-out factor.) From Max dry humping an old lady on the sofa to chorus girls with twirling swastikas at her tits, there is something here to offend everyone. But that’s the whole idea. The point is not to take it too seriously—or better yet, not to take it seriously at all!

Brinkley did his own star turn as the director; he’s unafraid to indulge in over-the-top camp and remarkably confident in drag. And he has great legs! Zoe Pappas, as Ulle, has a great set of pipes, and she takes the dumb-blonde stereotype and makes it fresh and uniquely her own. Scott Blackburn also gets his share of laughs as the Nazi playwright. If only the real Nazis had been that stupid. From top to bottom, the show is cast from strength, even down to Keith Rice’s amusing cameo as Leo’s abusive CPA boss.

Nayna Ramey’s set is serviceable and witty (especially in the way that Brooks’ image keeps turning up). But it is the costumes of Rich Hamson that steal the visual show. From the opulent gowns of the opening night audience to the Germanic chorus girl costumes (two steins strategically placed, not to mention the use of pretzels and sausages), he created the visual equivalent of Brindisi’s outrageous production.

I will admit, I was surprised when I heard that Chanhassen was staging The Producers. The repertoire choices have become increasingly conservative in recent years. It’s nice to see them being a bit more adventurous. Here’s hoping the Chanhassen audience is not turned off by the subject matter and comes out in droves. They will have a delectably good time.

The Producers continues at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres through Jan. 31, 2009.

This show should have been a musical comedy queen’s wet dream: some of the greatest songs ever written, show tunes both familiar and novel, sung by an amazing group of women. For the most part, the show lived up to expectations, but with so much fine talent and material to draw on, it’s not unreasonable to expect a bit more.

From arranger David Lohman’s witty use of “Beautiful Girls” from Follies as the opening of the overture, this was a sophisticated entertainment that feted talents from Ethel Merman and Mary Martin to Angela Lansbury and Carol Channing, from Barbara Cook and Elaine Stritch to Julie Andrews and Barbara Streisand, from Patti Lupone and Bernadette Peters to Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli, from Betty Buckley to Audra McDonald and Heather Headley.

Then why did I leave even the slightest bit dissatisfied? Because director Perrin Post and Lohman were just too enthusiastic. I kept wishing they would both just take a Valium and get out of the way of their remarkable performers. The Ordway’s production is the third incarnation of this show (which I saw in its first production at the Loring Playhouse in 2004) and it’s the tightest one yet, which is a real plus. But it’s also overproduced, overdirected, and overarranged, to the detriment of the performers.

When scoring for the ensemble, arranger Lohman can be revelatory. For instance, the arrangement of “Sunday,” from Sunday in the Park with George, nicely exposed the intricacies of Sondheim’s harmonies. But Lohman frequently fusses too much. For example, Holly Schroeder was out-Stritching Elaine Stritch in “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company. So why did Lohman have to bring in all the other women and undercut the last verse’s wonderful sense of self-mockery? 

Director Post seemed unable to get out of her singers’ way as well. Too often, she had her singers flying about the stage unnecessarily, and her exaggerated blocking of “Glitter and Be Gay” from Candide did nothing to help Kathleen Bloom’s valiant attempt at the coloratura.

When she let her performers just stop and sing—as she did with Jody Briskey’s rendition of “Meadowlark” from The Baker’s Wife—the result set the heart flying. But all too often the directorial choices were rather odd. For instance, why, when “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” from  Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was intended to celebrate Carol Channing, did the performance recreate Marilyn Monroe’s performance from the movie?

Post, who conceived and directed the show, has written a witty commentary, introducing each of the women being feted. It’s ironic, though, that when she tells us things that most everybody knows about, say, Julie Andrews, she doesn’t bother to set up even the most obscure of the songs. If someone didn’t know the show She Loves Me, they wouldn’t have a clue what was going on in the song “Vanilla Ice Cream” (though Ann Michaels sang it splendidly, all the way to the high B).

Mimicry is a unique talent; impersonation rather than interpretation. And there were some performances, like Jen Burleigh-Bentz’ channeling Ethel Merman in “The Hostess with the Mostes’ on the Ball” from Call Me Madam, or Michelle Carter doing Chita Rivera in “Where You Are” from Kiss of the Spiderwoman, that were spot on. But for the most part, the singers wisely opted for putting their own personal spins on the material.

Many elements of the show that struck me as odd were matters of personal preference. I didn’t think “And I Was Beautiful” was the best song to represent Angela Landsbury in Dear World. And many songs were overly truncated to keep the show to a reasonable performing length. I would rather have had fewer songs, sung completely. What I wouldn’t give to hear Holly Schroeder sing all the bitchy verses of Noel Coward’s “Why Do the Wrong People Travel?” from Sail Away.

Misgivings aside, the performance was a catalog of successes:

• Briskey was almost indistinguishable from Norma Desmond when she sang “With One Look” from Sunset Boulevard. Someone should mount a production of it for this woman.

• Likewise, Michaels nailed the ubiquitous “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” making the song uniquely her own.

• Burleigh-Bentz was heartbreaking in “Your Daddy’s Son” from Ragtime.

• Carter captured the innocence and charming naiveté of Mary Martin, singing “Neverland” from Peter Pan.

• Schroeder, an expert belter, demonstrated that she also knows her way around a ballad with a touching “Quiet Thing” from Liza Minnelli’s breakthrough, Flora, the Red Menace.

• And Bloom proved that “Le Jazz Hot” from Victor, Victoria was a real jazz number, not just a drag novelty.

This is not a perfect production. Would I have made other choices about repertoire or performance? Obviously. And so, likely, would everyone else in the audience. But this is a company that takes this great music very seriously. And there are more than enough wonderful performances that override any other concerns.

Broadway’s Legendary Ladies continues at the Ordway Center through Oct. 26.

Well, “her gays” were out in force Friday night when Kathy Griffin performed to a sold out house at the Orpheum Theatre. And she did not disappoint. This was one of her campiest, bitchiest shows ever. Her straights were there as well. In fact, I was a bit surprised at the diversity of the demographic. There were the expected twenty- and thirty-somethings, but there seemed to be an amazing number of affluent fifty-something couples as well.

She took the stage like a major rock star, to a standing ovation and deafening cheers. This was an audience that was primed. She had had the audacity—and good sense—to serve as her own warm-up act. The evening began with ten to fifteen minutes of video clips of her appearance on sitcoms (Seinfeld) and in movies (Beethoven’s 5th), as well as on talk shows and, of course, her reality show, My Life on the D-List.

I came to the event a little concerned. I loved her routines Straight to Hell and Strong Black Woman, which make frequent appearances on Bravo. I was afraid she was going to rehash a lot of familiar material. But I underestimated Griffin’s fertile, twisted imagination. This was a totally new show.

And it was a completely current one. She started out talking about the vice presidential debate of the night before, reveling in the mockery of “vice president Tina Fey.” She skewered Sarah Palin’s hypocrisy, but, as might be expected, was less interested in politics than in celebrity, focusing on pregnant daughter Bristol. (“What’s with those names?” she asked. “Bristol? Track? Willow? Who does she think she is? A movie star like Gwyneth Paltrow?” [who named her daughter Apple]). Griffin made much of Palin’s Katie Couric interview when the woman could not name a single newspaper or magazine that she’d read. Griffin made even more of Bristol's redneck boyfriend’s profanity-filled My Space page—where he insisted that he didn’t want kids…

(She basically steered clear of attacking Obama, confessing that she didn’t find much about him that was funny. She professed real admiration for Michelle Obama, who she dubbed “Blackie O.”)

Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton were frequent targets, though those barbs are starting to get tired, as are her continual putdowns of Barbara Walters and The View. She commented on Clay Aikin’s coming out on the cover of People magazine (“such a shock”), but her riff on the supposedly-dottering old Larry King verged on the nasty.

She tried to focus much of mockery on the Emmys, where she was an ubiquitous presence. She won her second award at what she called the “Schmemmys,” the Creative Arts Awards, (when she announced that, she raised both hands and gave the world the fingers) and she presented at the Prime Time Emmys.

But she was especially wired last night and her monologue was more than usually stream of consciousness. She was all over the map. Sometimes, with all her digressions, she would be in the middle of three stories at once. But to her credit, she always got back to them and made each story pay off. That is the sign of a true master.

She made much of Oprah’s showing up at the Emmys with her “friend” Gayle and found the Desperate Housewives to be “really not nice. They got jaded real fast.” To Terry Hatcher’s insistence that she had never had any plastic surgery, Griffin retorted, “What? You just woke up Korean?”

The one moment when she drew in the fangs was when talking about presenting with Don Rickles. She did an homage to the eighty-two-year old comedian that was sweet and touching, yet tart and funny at the same time.

As usual, her best target is her mother. She is at her funniest when imitating the potty-mouthed eighty-eight-year old and her boxes of wine. “Bottles are for rich people,” she quotes her mom as saying. And Mom rejected any kind of caregiver with, “The last thing I need is a Polack going through my underwear drawer.” It started to become clear where Griffin gets it…

At one point, I began to notice that her targets were primarily women. When talking about California governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, she saved her choicest barbs for wife Maria Schreiber. When excoriating the awful five Emmy cohosts, it was Heidi Klum whom she singled out. It began to feel a little misogynistic. But maybe I’m reading too much into that. It may simply be a case or ridiculing what you know…

I’m not sure that I would find her very amusing up close and personal. Her encounter with “nemesis” Ryan Seacrest at a restaurant was cringe-worthy. Talk about a lack of boundaries. But from the distance of the stage, she remains one of my favorite people to spend time with.

I will unapologetically state that Verdi’s Il Trovatore is one of my favorite operas and that it is not only a great opera, but a great drama. I can imagine eyes rolling at that statement, since Il Trovatore is traditionally dismissed as a contrived and silly story saved by Verdi’s astonishing music.

But Verdi didn’t consider it contrived or silly. And he was a master musical dramatist who fought ferociously with his librettists to improve the quality of their texts. So I am inclined to trust his instincts and explore what attracted him.

In medieval Spain, long before the opera begins, a witch was burned at the stake for supposed bewitching the son of Count di Luna. In vengeance, her daughter, the gypsy Azucena, kidnapped the child and threw him into the same fire. Now, many years later, Azucena’s son, the troubadour Manrico, and the Count’s other son, now the Count di Luna himself, are rivals for the lady-in-waiting Leonora. From Verdi’s pessimistic perspective, it cannot work out well for any of them.

There are certainly plot elements that defy contemporary credibility, like Azucena’s being in such a frenzy of rage that she throws her own child into the fire rather than the one she had intended to murder. But for Verdi, these absurdities were simply expressions of the inexorability of fate, of the futility of life, and of a world without meaning. To my mind, they point forward to the absurdist philosophies of the next century. This is a nihilistic work and Verdi's passionate music evokes that dark and elemental despair.

Minnesota Opera’s current production does not touch these philosophic depths. It does not even succeed at the task of simple storytelling. This was my companion’s first Trovatore and even with the surtitles, he frequently had trouble following what was going on onstage. He chose not the read the synopsis—and he shouldn’t need to. But there was just too much extraneous action that got in the way of the story. Many of director Kevin Newbury’s ideas, like what seemed to be an aborted attempt to crucify Azucena in Act Three, just seemed ridiculous.

Where was the horror that inspired Verdi? It wasn’t on the stage. Nor was it in the pit. There is blood and thunder in this score, but conductor Giovanni Reggioli’s erratic tempi robbed scene after scene of its power.

Allen Moyer’s minimalist set added little. The costumes of Jessica Jahn were pleasant but not particularly evocative. That is, when they were visible in D.M. Wood’s murky lighting. The story is dark; that doesn’t mean the stage has to be.

The singers provided the one bright light in this dismal evening. However, they were not stylistically on the same page. But the opera is partially to blame. Il Trovatore stands at the cusp of a new era, the end of bel canto and the movement towards what would eventually become verismo.

Baritone Lester Lynch proved a true bel canto stylist and his performance stole the show. Three singers from the Marinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia were not in that league, but proved adept. Soprano Mlada Khudoley’s Leonora exhibited far too many verismo mannerisms, but her lyric soprano was up to the role’s florid demands. Mezzo Olga Savova was a frequently thrilling Azucena. The weak tenor of Avgust Amonov made Manrico sound ineffectual and rough.

This was a polite Il Trovatore, which seems like a contradiction in terms, an absurdity in its own right. As moment after moment passed ineffectively, I found myself bored. By the end of the evening, I found myself angry that Verdi’s masterpiece had been so ill-served.

Il Trovatore continues at the Ordway Center through Sept.28.

Is there anything more improbable than writing about music? As a critic of classical music, I constantly come up against the absurdity of trying to find concrete language for something so essentially abstract and ethereal. For that reason, I am even more in awe than I might otherwise be of John Marans’ play Old Wicked Songs, which is currently being produced by Theatre Latte Da in the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio.

It is 1986 in Vienna. Stephen Hoffman, a caustic America piano prodigy who is suffering from an artistic block, has come to study with the aging musician Professor Josef Mashkan. The petulant young man throws a fit when he realizes that the professor does not teach piano but voice. The teacher that Hoffman actually wants to study with has insisted he engage in this course first in order to teach the prodigy humility. Not only will he not be studying the great piano masterpieces, he will be forced to work on Robert Schumann’s romantic song cycle Dichterliebe (The Poet’s Love)–and not even as an accompanist! He is being asked to sing.

Hoffman finds this prospect utterly beneath him and rejects it completely, unwilling to admit that there is anything that Maskan can teach him. But in the face of the professor’s commitment to the music, unflagging determination, and great high spirits, Hoffman slowly begins to open himself up. The process eventually rekindles his passion.

Marans’ use of the Dichterliebe is not random. The arc of his scenes coordinates with the progression of the music. In his depiction of Hoffman and Maskan’s detailed and prodigious analysis of the songs, he touches the composer’s soul, and even manages to expose the emotional content behind simple chord progressions. In so doing, he provides fascinating insights into the joy and sadness at the heart of all great music.

The audience is let in on the thrilling process of artistic creation. There are moments when the collaboration takes on a white-hot intensity. Hearts soar as the music takes flight and the audience is carried away on that journey as well.

You don’t have to be experienced in classical music to appreciate the drama. My companion is only a casual listener, but he found the evolving relationship between the two men completely engaging.

But if classical music is your forte, you will find some delicious inside jokes, such as Hoffman mimicking Vladimir Horowitz playing Liszt, Wolfgang Brendel playing Beethoven and, most scathingly, Glenn Gould playing Bach.

The script is full of wit, and the repartee between these two smart men sharp and clever. But at its heart, this story is as dark as Schumann’s song cycle. During the course of the action, Kurt Waldheim, a reputed Nazi, is elected President of Austria. The dark history of World War II and the atrocities at Dachau cast a shadow over the personal intimacy the two men share, because Mashkan harbors a secret that could potentially destroy the relationship.

Marans’ script could hardly be better served than it is in Latte Da’s production. This is a labor of love for director Peter Rothstein. His voice teacher in college was a Viennese musician, so there is an element of autobiography to his tender and compassionate reading of the play. He directs from the heart and strives to make the most direct connection possible with his audience. And here, he succeeds completely. The result is a deeply moving experience that affirms our collective humanity through the power of music.

Rothstein’s casting also ensures the success of his production. Raye Birk brings a dry wit to Mashkan, but there are deep layers of pain to his clown. And Jonas Goslow makes Hoffman’s transition from an arrogant prig to a deeply caring human being utterly believable. But their true success is as a team. In the nuanced relationship that they establish, they create a single whole, just as singer and accompanist do in performance.

Add to that the detailed, evocative set of John Clark Donahue and the subtle lighting of Marcus Dillard and this is a class act all around.

It’s perfectly appropriate that Mashkan's secret comes out in the context of the final song of the Dichterliebe. Maran’s intertwining of the story with the music is brilliant. But in the end, even he has to acknowledge the ultimate ineffability of music. He chooses to end his drama appropriately–and very effectively–with the long and moving postlude to the cycle.

Old Wicked Songs continues at Guthrie Theater through October 5.

The Ordway's new musical biography of George M. Cohan seems intent on mining the composer’s classic American songs for box office gold. And judging by the audience’s reaction opening night, they probably have not miscalculated. But the evening left me feeling enervated and demoralized. The only thing that depressed me more than the show itself was the audience’s enthusiastic countenance of it.

The major problem is David Armstrong’s book. According to the Ordway website, it purports to present “a fresh, contemporary view of a celebrated musical theater icon.” But it is really little more than a collection of backstage clichés. The dialogue is often cornier than the excerpts of the scenes from Cohan’s musicals. The plot is overly melodramatic and lacks subtlety. Even worse, it is undramatic. For example, when Cohan’s first wife leaves him out of neglect, it’s hard to muster much interest because her character was barely established in the first place.

Too often, the scenes seemed like just feeble hooks on which to hang the songs, though there are some indisputably great ones, such as “Give My Regards to Broadway,” “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” “Over There,” “Harrigan” and of course, the title song. But a number of songs are decidedly second rate, and the overall production makes a few missteps that could have been avoided.

I was most troubled by a speech of Cohan’s at the top of Act Two patriotically celebrating the United States’ intervention into World War I. In the current political climate, it would not be hard to read this speech as a justification for our invasion of Iraq, and I suspect that’s why it got so much applause. But opinions on the war vary, and I personally don’t appreciate it when patriotism gets hijacked by reactionary politics, and if the producers didn’t realize this would be a sensitive issue—well, they should have.

But for all that, there were compensations:

This is a dance show par excellence. The proficiency of the ensemble, along with the creativity of James A. Rocco and Jayme McDaniel (responsible for the direction and choreography), made for some stunning displays. Frankly, I often find dance interludes to be deadening longueurs, but these complemented the musical numbers beautifully.

I was initially skeptical of the decision to put the orchestra onstage, fearing that it was an attempt to avoid needing to create a much of a set. But it proved a wise choice. It did indeed simplify the need for scenic elements (though designer Chad Van Kekerix was fully able to create a real sense of period). But playing the action fully downstage, without the obstacle of an intervening orchestra pit, created an improved sense of intimacy.

In addition, the costumes by Gregory A. Poplyk were spectacular, adding much visual interest. And, being the Ordway, there was more than a little eye-popping spectacle. The extravagant display at the end of the first act, with its pyrotechnics on stage and streamers descending on the audience, seemed like a New Year’s Eve celebration on steroids. It felt a little extraneous to what was actually going on onstage, but it was hard not to be swept along by the sheer ostentatiousness.

What kept me most interested were the biographical elements. Cohan’s history was fascinating. He basically, single-handedly, invented what we now think of as the Broadway musical, as distinct from the older genre of operetta. The script is full of scenes from some of the early shows, like Little Johnny Jones, that, for musical comedy aficionados like me, were especially illuminating. Armstrong would have done well to replace any number of his own creaking scenes with more such excerpts.

And sweeping all other considerations aside was Sean Martin Hingston’s performance as Cohan. He owned the stage, masterfully capturing the charismatic, larger-than-life persona that was a large part of Cohan’s success. His singing voice filled the theater, ringing to the top balcony, and he had the courage not to disguise Cohan’s less admirable traits (the man was arrogant and unwilling not to have his way, even if it meant being deceitful). Hingston was refreshingly smarmy, especially in the scenes where Cohan manipulated to prevent the formation of the actor's union.

In the end, my reservations about this show probably don’t matter. Its energy and Cohan’s music are probably enough to make it a commercial success. It’s just a pity that it couldn’t be an artistic one as well.

Yankee Doodle Dandy continues at Ordway Center through August 17.

To gay men of a certain age, Armistead Maupin, author of the Tales of the City series of novels, is more than just an iconic literary figure. He is a hero! I was just out of college when the first book came out, and the humor–and the outrageousness–helped hasten my becoming the old queen I am now. And in the second book, when landlady Mrs. Madrigal was revealed to be the transsexual son of a whorehouse madam, I thought, “This is the world I want to live in!”

For me, what helped to make Tales of the City so radical wasn’t the dizzying array of sexualities on display. It was that Maupin had basically redefined the nature of family. Frankly, that is hardly less radical a notion today. Let’s talk about real family values. He dared to say that all these diverse and unique (some might say freaky) individuals could be a family simply by defining themselves as such–and then live up to the highest ideals of that term, albeit in unique and individual ways. I’ve always found that an ideal to aspire to.

So I approached meeting Maupin and hearing him speak at the State Theatre for Hennepin Theatre Trust/Loft Literary Legends series with a great deal of trepidation. I wondered how he could possibly live up to all my high expectations. But he exceeded them. Both onstage and in person, he has all the wit and humor of the books–and all the warmth and humanity as well.

He started out reading an extended section of Michael Tolliver Lives, a 2007 novel that picks up the lives of the Tales in the City gang eighteen years later. It wasn’t really a reading; it was a performance by a master entertainer. He displayed the same deadpan style when telling personal stories, only more self-deprecating.

(Michael Tolliver Lives is a worthy successor to the Tales in the City series. In fact, it is significantly better than the last couple. It is a compelling read in its own right, while honoring the history and the characters. However, Maupin doesn’t seem to know quite how to end it; it runs out of steam towards the end. But the whole earlier series had that problem. The last novels were running on empty compared with their predecessors.)

Claude Peck, senior arts editor at the Star Tribune, proved an excellent moderator. He approached his subject with real eager interest and insight, while avoiding any trace of being a sycophant. Often, though, he ended up being little more that Maupin’s straight man. (No pun intended…) Maupin seemed to look at every question as an opening, and there were very few he didn’t rise to.

For instance, reflecting on his returning to Tales in the City after a decades-long hiatus, Peck asked, “What got into you?” “There’s a very rude answer to that,” Maupin replied without missing a beat. He never seems to have met anyone that he couldn’t poke fun at, but there was never any sense of being mean-spirited or nasty.

Indeed, I found him disarming in his honesty. “The more I confess the worst about myself in print, the less alone I felt,” he said. That attitude of gentle compassion extended to everyone that he talked about–except perhaps the religious right.

But before I crown him with too shiny a halo, I am pleased to report that he was also a wonderfully gossipy old queen. He told some delicious Hollywood stories, like the fact that both Ashley Judd and Cynthia Nixon were up for the role of Mary Ann Singleton in the Tales of the City miniseries, a role that went to Laura Linney. And he talked about how the main character in his novel Maybe the Moon, the dwarf, was modeled on a friend of his who had actually played E. T. in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

The question of why he returned to the Tales of the City characters prompted a telling explanation of why he dropped the series in the first place: “Those were the days when HIV was still a death sentence. And I didn’t want the queer to die at the end.”

But HIV-positive Michael Tolliver does not die. In fact, Michael Tolliver Lives–and very passionately. (Maupin admitted that this book is more sexually explicit that the earlier ones.) Michael has survived to the ripe old age of fifty-five and is perfectly happy in his life. Maupin accomplished the difficult feat of making contentment dramatic and interesting and sexy.

Casting the story in a broader social and cultural context, Maupin said that what he wanted to do in this book was to celebrate this generation. They had grown up in invisibility, had started a revolution and then survived AIDS. “We’re still here!” he said triumphantly. Hearing that, it was nice to realize that I do indeed live in that world I always aspired to.

Taken on its own terms, Ordway Center’s production of Cabaret is dazzling. The full resources of the theater, both financial and technical, are on vivid display in the physical production, from the Emcee’s first entrance, descending on an illuminated sign, to his swinging out over the audience with a gorilla.

But I couldn’t get past the persistently nagging feeling that all this glitz and glamour was, in reality, antithetical to the original story. In 1930s Berlin, Sally Bowles, a singer at the Kit Kat Club, romances American writer Cliff Bradshaw on the verge of the Nazi takeover of Germany. From its beginnings in Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and the play I Am a Camera by John van Druten, the story has emphasized the seedy decadence of Weimar Germany. Kander and Ebb's musical version maintains the dark sleaziness of the original source material, but that tawdriness is nowhere to be seen on the Ordway stage.

Ordway producing artistic director James Rocco makes the case for the production’s historical accuracy by referencing University of Minnesota professor Eric D. Weitz’s New York Times bestseller, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy. According to Rocco, “What this research reveals is that the look and feel of Weimar Berlin cabarets and nightclubs were not all that different from night spots in New York, London, and Paris during the same period.” The Ordway’s production focuses on the glittering cabarets that Hitler kept open to fool an unknowing nation of citizens who continued to party while Berlin was burning. Such high-class establishments obviously existed. But would a garish character, such as Sally Bowles, have worked in one? And if she did, wouldn’t she have earned enough to pay for her own lodgings rather than having to crash with Cliff pleading poverty?

The production team seems to have overlooked these logical flaws in their zeal to create a magnificently opulent set. And, frankly, all such concerns are swept aside by the strong energy and staging of this show.

The revisions to Joe Masteroff’s original book go uncredited, but they are delicious. Adding the conceit of Brechtian conventions is smart and helpful in the staging while also being an appropriate evocation of the period. The emphasis on homosexuality further evokes the liberated attitudes of that age and hearkens back to the Isherwood original.

Bill Berry’s direction is glitzy, but it’s glitz with substance. He finds the abundant humanity as well as the horror in this dark show, especially as the Nazi influence becomes increasingly omnipresent. And there are plenty of clever bits and touches that will surprise even those who have seen several other versions of Cabaret. For example, the “girls” of the orchestra are played by men in elaborate hag drag, and Bob Richard’s choreography in the dancing chorus is splendidly fresh and energetic. 

There is nothing subtle about the staging; it is a broad, no-holds-barred spectacle from beginning to end, including the portrayals of the individual characters. That over-the-top mania works perfectly for the Emcee (Nick Garrison), who is outrageous but pulls it off by capturing the period’s decadence. Tari Kelly’s Sally is somewhat less successful. Her performance is too loud and brassy and would have benefited from a little delicacy here and there. That said, her performance of “Maybe This Time” rivaled even Liza’s from the film.

Next to the Emcee, the strongest performance is Suzy Hunt as Fräulein Schneider, Cliff and Sally’s landlady. She became the emotional heart of the production and made the most of her two songs (cut from the film), “So What,” a statement of her fatalistic philosophy, and “What Would You Do?” a painful justification of her decision to break off her engagement to the Jewish Herr Schultz. Her lacerating performance truly raised the show to the level of tragedy. Allen Fitzpatrick’s Schultz was not in her league, but his sweet naiveté proved endearing.

In that company, Louis Hobson, as the very “nice” Cliff, made little impression. He is ostensibly the lead character, but the role is so pallid and underwritten that it’s not his fault that he receded into the background. He is at his best when singing and has a strong baritone that enlivened even his mediocre songs.

One of the most exciting elements of this production is that it is a coproduction of the Ordway, Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre, and the American Musical Theatre of San Jose. Opera companies discovered years ago that coproductions are essential for survival, but it’s a relatively new concept for nonprofit theaters. More such coproductions are in the works, which speaks to the Ordway’s excellent stewardship of its resources.

Cabaret continues at Ordway Center through May 18.

I hate the way Minnesota Opera is marketing its current production of Antonin Dvorak’s Rusalka. Billing it as “The Little Mermaid without the happy ending” is condescending to the audience, to the opera, and to Hans Christian Andersen’s original story. Must everything in our culture end up being Disney-fied?

Rusalka follows the plot of the Andersen fairy tale fairly closely—until the end, where it veers in the opposite direction from the Disney cartoon. A water nymph, Rusalka, having fallen in love with a mortal Prince, desires to become human. Against the advice of her father, a water gnome, she takes the potion of the Witch Jezibaba and becomes human, despite the potentially tragic consequences. When the Prince betrays her, those consequences unfurl—the Prince dies. But that fate would be too easy for Rusalka: She is also cursed to spend eternity alone.

There is much that is mythic in fairy tales. In the language of children, they reveal some of humanity’s most profound truths. Dvorak’s romantic score hints at these deeper realities, conjuring the unconscious realms that Freud was contemporaneously exploring. But director Eric Simonson didn’t seem able to hear or exploit them.

On the most basic level, Simonson seemed unwilling or incapable of creating a sense of magic onstage. This is a fatal flaw in an opera about a water nymph. The results were ultimately enervating. If I hadn’t had the professional responsibility of reviewing it, I would not have stayed through the end.

Simonson staged the supernatural figures of Rusalka’s father, the water gnome, and the witch Jezibaba like Russian peasants. There was little fantastic or otherworldly about them. Robert Pomakov lumbered about the stage, barely showing much interest in what was going on around him. More disastrously, Dorothy Byrne’s Jezibaba came off like a comic character. She wasn’t dangerous or frightening, even when she conjured the horrifying consequences of Rusalka’s request.

Given Simonson’s earthbound direction, it should not be surprising that it was Alison Bates’ devious Foreign Princess, who seduced the Prince away from Rusalka, that came off as the most fully realized character in the production.

Kelly Kaduce, who made such a splash as Rosasharon in last season’s The Grapes of Wrath, was less successful as Rusalka. She never seemed able to inhabit her part. I never felt either her great longing to become human or her great despair at the tragic results. Her "Song to the Moon" in the first act, the opera’s most famous number, was beautifully vocalized, but little more. And her plaintive aria in Act III left me unmoved.

Likewise, the Prince of Brandon Jovanovich was little more than a stock operatic tenor. At his first entrance, for example, he sang of feeling sad, but there wasn’t much sadness in his performance—though he did redeem himself somewhat with a fine death scene.

It was the work of projections designer Wendall K. Harrington and lighting designer Robert Wierzel that generated the real magic. They created the underwater realm and then, in an instant, transformed it into a forest. And the forest that was idyllic in Act I became nightmarish in Act III. There was something mythic in their succession of images, but it is unfortunate that the essence of Dvorak's opera resided only in the visuals.

Rusalka continues at the Ordway Center through April 20.

Leave it to director Michael Brindisi to breathe new life into an old chestnut like 42^nd Street. He treats this quintessential show biz musical like it’s real drama and ends up giving it a dark core, reminiscent of the 1933 movie on which it’s based, which was itself keenly reflective of the despair of the Depression.

The show follows the plot of the movie. Director Julian Marsh has been wiped out by the Stock Market Crash and is desperate that the new musical he’s mounting be a success to restore his fortunes. When his star, Dorothy Brock, breaks her ankle, it looks like the jig is up, until neophyte chorus girl, Peggy Sawyer, steps in and saves the day.

The book of the stage version, which premiered on Broadway in 1980, is amazingly sharp and smart, full of wit and more than its share of bitchy dialogue. It pokes gentle fun at the genre while still celebrating every cliché.

Brindisi’s clever staging expands on that premise, managing to be both satire and homage at the same time. That is an incredibly difficult line to walk, but Brindisi’s version does it expertly and, as a result, he creates a show that is both sardonic and full off heart, hilariously funny and genuinely moving.

It’s not hard to see Marsh, the aging director in search of a hit, as a stand-in for Brindisi himself. This is clearly very personal for him. Through Marsh, Brindisi focuses the silly show on the struggle of the artist, the act of creativity that gets the show up by sheer force of will. And this is reflected in David Anthony Brinkley’s performance. He played Marsh twelve years ago in Chanhassen’s last staging, but this time he creates a far richer character, darker and more wretched, who seems to unravel under the pressure. His rendition of “Lullaby of Broadway” has a palpable, inspiring passion.

Michelle Barber's Brock has that same passion and even a greater degree of humanity. She is every inch the bitchy temperamental diva, but as the character who really transforms over the course of the evening, she adds an emotional depth to the proceedings and carries much of the show. She demonstrated her acting chops earlier this year in Pen at the Guthrie, and they are on display here as well. She also gives a master class in how to belt out a ballad.

As Peggy Sawyer, Jodi Carmeli proves that she is anything but a neophyte, especially in her performance of the title song, which she makes into a real star turn. She is a diva in the making herself. Earlier, she manages to make the character’s innocence fresh, fully embracing the sentimentality of the role without ever becoming cloying.

It’s hard to imagine a stronger dancing chorus anywhere in the country, even on 42^nd Street. And choreographer Tamara Kangas puts them through their paces. From the first curtain, she challenges them with dances that are at once appropriately familiar and yet full of surprises. Her inventiveness keeps the eye captivated at every turn.

The show also demonstrates an amazing depth of talent in its strong supporting cast, which is full of Chanhassen regulars. Tony Vierling is charming as the juvenile, both in his spectacular dancing and in his ability to invest the implausible love story with real believability.

It’s up to Janet Hayes-Trow and Jay Albright, as the second bananas, the married writers of the show, to add an extra level of jocularity. Their performances in “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” are priceless. No one can mug or do the sad-sack shtick better than Albright. And Hayes-Trow’s wisecracking, tough-as-nails dame is a perfect foil.

Nayna Ramey’s set is not one of her more successful efforts. It is functional and efficient, but not particularly eye-catching. But it does provide an effective canvas for Sue Ellen Berger’s dazzling lighting effects. The pride of place for design elements, however, goes to Rich Hamson’s stunning costumes, particularly the flower gowns he creates for a faux-Ziegfeld Follies number.

This is not your grandfather’s 42^nd Street. It’s as silly as any old-fashioned musical should be, and yet carries with it an extra level of seriousness that leavens the foolishness and turns this into a very special celebration of the theatre.

42nd Street continues at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres through July 26.