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Press/Reviews
The Greenwich Village Follies
Reviewed by Erik Haagensen June 29, 2011
Innate, unforced charm is an increasingly rare commodity in our perpetually amped-up culture, but the cast and creators of “The Greenwich Village Follies” possess it in spades. Placing itself squarely in the tradition of the whip-smart musical revues once produced in Village boes by the likes of Julius Monk and Ben Bagley, Manhattan Theatre Source’s very first open-ended production could be in residence for a long time to come, even if right now it only plays Sunday nights. A delightful salute to the Village’s history and denizens, this refreshing breeze of a show is tuneful, literate, sassy, and sharp. It plastered an insuppressible 80-minute smile on this critic’s usual professionally impassive face.
The clever sketches and patter are by Andrew Frank (with an improvisatory assist from the company), the gleefully idiosyncratic songs are by Frank and Doug Silver, and the unerring direction is the work of John-Andrew Morrison, a sweetly lubricious sprite who’s also a member of the performing quartet and never more endearing than when enthusiastically handing out condoms as prizes (yes, there’s audience participation). After a short title song of welcome ending in a graceful nod to “The Fantasticks,” a sly Chris French starts things off stealthily as a John Kennedyesque George Washington singing about how, of all his monuments and tributes, he loves Washington Square the best. We then jump back in time as a quirky song informs us that the Lenape Indians called the area Sapokanican. The show proceeds more or less chronologically while taking time out for fun detours like the Village Follies Fact Contest, whose winners get those condoms, and Sneed (a hilarious French), a laid-back marijuana dealer who has bought stage time as a local merchant. The entirely appropriate finale involves high-kicking drag queens at the Stonewall riots, which packed an extra charge in the wake of the passage of same-sex marriage rights in New York.
Though there’s not a clunker in the bunch, musical highlights include the cast as a bunch of edgy New Yorkers refusing Peter Stuyvesant’s pleas to fight the British, the impressively detailed work of Patti Goettlicher as she delineates four very different undergrad years at NYU, and especially the big-voiced Meghann Dreyfuss’ inspired comic lunacy as a blank canvas seducing French’s inebriated Jackson Pollock to “Splatter Me All Over.”
In the tradition of such classic revue songs as “Guess Who I Saw Today?,” Frank and Silver bravely leaven the high jinks with a few serious numbers, the standout being “On Our Corner,” in which Goettlicher and Dreyfuss sing about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Morrison scores with “The Eleven of Us,” an emotionally understated plea by one of the 11 slaves in 1640s Greenwich Village for their freedom, and a setting of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1917 poem “The Dream,” sung to a snuggling French sleeping with his head on Morrison’s shoulder.
The “Follies” promises a different guest star at every performance, and this time it was longtime New York Neo-Futurist Kevin R. Free, now a member of the show’s alternating cast (a total of eight actors revolve in the four roles), pinch-hitting for a sudden cancelation. Free sang a loopy, ingratiating ode of his own devising to his inability to accompany himself on guitar, which he of course accompanied on guitar. I thought he was terrific, but as he performed in my 2000 musical revue at the York Theatre Company about playwright-lyricist John Latouche, I probably can’t be entirely impartial.
There actually was a “Greenwich Village Follies,” created in 1919 by John Murray Anderson and playing in annual editions throughout most of the 1920s, in which the early work of legendary artists such as Martha Graham and Cole Porter was displayed. I’m not predicting legendary status for anyone currently at Manhattan Theatre Source’s funky little Village space, but considering the level of talent and invention involved in this cunning confection, well, who knows?
The Greenwich Village Follies: Interesting People On MacDougal Street
Posted on: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 @ 11:21 PM Posted by: Michael Dale
From Jerry Herman’s Parade to Martin Charnin’s No Frills Revue to nights with Betty Comden, Adolph Green and The Revuers, original song and sketch revue has been a favorite of downtown audiences for nearly a century. With The Greenwich Village Follies, a new show that takes its name from a legendary production from the 1920s, composer/lyricist Doug Silver and bookwriter/lyricist Andrew Frank not only capture the smart, freestyle irreverence that made downtown revues so popular, but they use the format to offer an eighty-minute lesson on the history of America’s first haven for artists, free-thinkers and non-conformists.
The extremely tiny space at Manhattan Theatre Source is a square room with three rows of seats on two sides, allowing for maximum intimacy and minimal design flourishes. A makeshift banner that appears to be recycled from the Sullivan Street production of The Fantasticks and some minor costume pieces and wigs are the only design elements. Pianist Michael Harren and drummer Spencer Cohen (alternating with Bryan Bisordi) are tucked away in a corner and director John-Andrew Morrison doesn’t have much playing space to maneuver his cast of four around, so the emphasis is squarely on the material, which, fortunately, is clever, tuneful and a lot of fun.
Eight actors alternate performances, and the evening’s quartet when I attended consisted of Morrison himself, along with Meghann Dreyfus, Patti Goettlicher and Guy Olivieri; each possessing fine musical theatre voices and displaying the kind of energetic, youthful wackiness that makes this kind of show work.
Beginning from the days when the Lenape Indians called the area “Sapokanican” (meaning “wild tobacco”), Silver and Frank manage to find music in some of the most unlikely scenarios. The spirited march, “Resist The Grid,” recalls how Village residents of 1811 protested the city’s plan to destroy existing streets and replace them with numbered streets and avenues. “Splatter Me All Over” is a sexy vamp that has Dreyfus, dressed as a blank canvass, hitting vocal and orgasmic climaxes as she temps Olivieri’s Jackson Pollack to have his way with her. The whispered offers of drug pushers (“Smoke, smoke.” “Y’need any?”) are presented as rhythmic scoring to an evening in Washington Square Park.
In more sobering moments, Morrison sings “The Eleven of Us,” a beautifully simple request for freedom by one of the slaves brought to New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company, with touching sincerity and Goettlicher and Dreyfus are very effective as stunned witnesses to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Goettlicher is also very funny in a song that chronicles the rise and fall of an eager young woman’s career studying at NYU, a number that cabaret singers should be fighting over any day now.
The Beat Poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Peter Stuyvesant and the drag queens who led the Stonewall Rebellion are also featured, and the evening concludes with a warm tribute to all the unsung artists whose names will never be famous, but whose drive and creativity is what keeps the spirit of Greenwich Village alive.
If I have one quibble with the authors, it’s that their brief section on the creation of Off-Off Broadway makes no mention of Joe Cino’s Caffe Cino, regarded as the birthplace of Off-Off Broadway and Gay Theatre. But hey, there’s nothing like a free souvenir condom to settle any differences.