Critics bemoan today’s trend of making new musicals out of hit movies, because too often the end result is a product that creates buzz and makes money, but isn’t compelling or even very interesting_- at least not intellectually. Often not artistically, either.
Diner, unfortunately, proves to be the latest case in point. A lot of time, effort and money went into a stage adaptation of Barry Levinson’s critically acclaimed 1982 film. Accomplished Tony-winning director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall was enlisted to flesh out the stories and freshen up the material for a live environment. Marshall and Levinson, who adapted his script, charged the equally accomplished Grammy-winning pop star Sheryl Crow to write original music and lyrics capturing the 1950s, when an edgier pop sound was just starting to find flavor out of a stew of R&B, blues and country.
In the end it’s only the music that lives up to the challenge. Through Crow’s score, we meet several of the women factoring into the lives of the young men, who were the film’s sole focus. Chances are you’ll even end up caring more about the women as written here. The men seem thoroughly stuck in a sexist time warp, unwilling, maybe even unable, to understand women and relationships — and expressing no broader sense of life’s meaning and purpose. By the time the first act ends in jail, after the surreal destruction of a nativity scene, these one-dimensional male characters are almost as much of a joke as the depicted three wise men — and every bit as unfunny.
If only more of the action took place within the stage’s handsomely realized art deco diner (designed by Derek McLane with assist from James Kronzer). If only there were more character development, and conversations about characters instead of just sex, love and football. And if only Signature’s great star Nova Y. Payton wasn’t wasted as an ensemble player who, as a stripper, shows off more of her skin than her vocal range.
“Gotta lotta woman,” Payton sings in one of the show’s last numbers. But sometimes a lotta anything, or a lotta everything, still isn’t enough.
Diner () runs to Jan. 25 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. Tickets are $40 to $95. Call 703-820-9771 or visit signature-theatre.org.
The marvelous cast of Signature's musical Play On! kick up their heels and sing up a storm in a vivacious new production staged by Lili-Anne Brown. Originally conceived by Sheldon Epps, with a book by Cheryl L. West, the three-time Tony-nominated musical employs a bevy of jazz and blues standards by D.C.'s own Duke Ellington, laced through a romantic comedy plot inspired by Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
Turns out, the Bard and the Duke complement each other well. Twelfth Night's tale of a cross-dressing waif embroiled in a convoluted matchmaking scheme cuts a fine figure upon which to hang Play On!'s 1940s backstage romance set amongst the all-Black cast and crew at Harlem's storied Cotton Club.
The U.S. Department of Education says it will begin suspending or cutting off federal funds to five Northern Virginia school districts that refused to roll back transgender-inclusive policies by an August 15 deadline.
"The Virginia districts will have to defend their embrace of radical gender ideology over ensuring the safety of their students," the agency wrote in a statement.
The five districts -- Alexandria City, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, and Prince William County public schools -- were previously threatened with losing federal funding after the Education Department determined that their trans-affirming policies, including allowing transgender students to use restrooms matching their gender identity, infringe on the rights of non-transgender students.
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) runs to Jan. 25 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. Tickets are $40 to $95. Call 703-820-9771 or visit signature-theatre.org.
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