Well, we've come to the end of the second week of the project! Yesterday, we looked at "American Idiot," a show expected to be a huge success that did not pan out. Today, we examine a similar situation, in David Yazbek's "Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown." An all-star cast, a well-respected young composer, a successful property to adapt... what went wrong? Or did anything go wrong at all?
"Women On The Verge," set in Madrid, Spain, in the late 1980s, tells several interconnecting stories in the classic farce style, yet the stories are all somewhat tragicomic. At the center of the play is Pepa (Sherie Rene Scott), a voiceover and commercial actress whose love affair with Ivan (Brian Stokes Mitchell) has just ended. Her best friend, the sexy but flighty model Candela (Laura Benanti), has just realized that her lover may or may not be a Shiite terrorist plotting to blow up Madrid. Into the story wander Ivan's ex-wife Lucia (Patti LuPone) and her shy, stuttering son Carlos (Justin Guarini), whose lives intersect with Pepa in increasingly catastrophic ways, leading almost every character to the verge of a complete nervous breakdown. At the verge of the action is the Mambo-Loving Taxi Driver (Danny Burstein), who attempts to dispense folksy Latin wisdom from behind the wheel, but honestly has no idea what is going on.
David Yazbek, the lyricist/composer, is known for his versatility. His score to "The Full Monty" was influenced mainly by Seventies light pop in the veins of James Taylor and Billy Joel, while his "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" score was a Nino Rota-style European screwball comedy style. For "Women on the Verge," Yazbek (also a relatively successful singer-songwriter in the indie world) refines his "Scoundrels" sound based on Latin rhythms and pares away the self-conscious goofiness, giving us a sultry but lively score full of mambos, acoustic guitar ballads and Spanish-cum-Italian-foreign-film romanticism. It's a good score, but some of the most beautiful numbers stop a show in the wrong sense- they slow it down almost to a halt. These songs, like much of the score, work better on the cast album than they did on the stage.
The female performances are mostly fantastic, exactly what the term "all-star cast" implies, but with a few minor quibbles. Sherie Rene Scott, who played the female lead in "Scoundrels," is alternately very funny and deeply moving as Pepa, but her Spanish accent is the weakest in the entire cast, often disappearing altogether. Laura Benanti, one of Broadway's top young leading ladies (you may know her from the female leads in"The Wedding Singer," "Gypsy" and "Into The Woods"), is an absolute hoot as Candela, the comic lead. Her big song, "Model Behavior," stops the show in the right way, as she leaves increasingly frazzled message after message on every phone she can find throughout her hectic day as a model. In addition to her comic chops, she is pretty easy on the eyes, making her repeated disrobing and "vogueing" to distract the police in the climactic "farce scene" at the end of Act 2 a surprise highlight. In one of her smallest major Broadway parts to date, Patti LuPone does not disappoint, though her well-known comic skills are underplayed in favor of her mostly tragic character until the "farce scene" at the end.
The men of the show may get the short end of the stick in stage time and material, but they do not disappoint. As a loveable Spanish schmuck, "American Idol" and "American Idiot" veteran Justin Guarini shows off a lovely, very pure tenor voice and unexpected comic potential- a far cry from the infamous film "From Justin, To Kelly." Brian Stokes Mitchell, as Ivan, the chronic Casanova, gets several chances to display his famous semi-operatic baritone to great audience applause, especially when he breaks character to sing directly to a girl in the front row. Finally, and most of all, Danny Burstein drives the crowd wild as Mambo-Loving Taxi Driver in his opening scene, as he sings "Madrid Is My Mama" and improvises jokes about ticket prices and the show's impending closing. All three of the men seem underutilized, but this is, after all, a show about "Women on the verge," not men.
Now, the question arises: great movie, great performers, great songs- why didn't it work? The simple answer isn't so simple: a show has to be more than the sum of its parts, and "Women on the Verge" simply isn't. I know I've harped about "rhythm and tempo" on this blog many times before, but there is a third and equally important element to add to that duo: balance.
A show must not unbalance itself- lose track of its plots, take on too much or too little story or sub-plot, or become too forced. Rhythm and tempo are important to keep a show balanced, but even great and energetic direction- which "Women on the Verge" had- cannot make up for an unbalanced book. Without reading Wikipedia, I would not have known that Pepa was the main character, as the play unfolds in an "ensemble drama style." Ensemble shows are great, look at "Rent" for a show that succeeds without having one "main central character" that everyone else revolves around, but "Women on the Verge" didn't have that balanced, "all these stories fit together" feel to it. It just felt like a show that, while entertaining, was running in circles trying to keep from falling over.
Or perhaps that's the whole point- this slightly unhinged, frenetic but faintly tragic musical comedy is, like its protagonists, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Who knows? Either way, crazy can be fun for a little while, but it's not somewhere you'd want to stay for a long time.
Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown: B-
LESSON FOR ACTORS: The breaking of the fourth wall is a risky endeavor. A good aside to the audience or a well-received, witty and appropriate improv will often be the highlight of a performance, as Danny Burstein shows as Mambo-Loving Taxi Driver. A bad one, or an improv that derails the show or doesn't fly, can wreck a performance's momentum instantly- just watch when a skit doesn't work on "Saturday Night Live."
WARNING FOR ACTORS: Make sure you don't let your accent slip. Work with a dialect coach, learning tapes, or watching appropriate films as much as you can- Sherie Rene Scott's occasional lack of Spanish accent sets her apart from the rest of the cast immediately and clouds her character.
LESSON FOR WRITERS: Balance is extremely important, and varies from medium to medium. The wonky ensemble farce style of "Women on the Verge" works extremely well as a film (if you haven't seen it, check it out- Antonio Banderas is unexpectedly hilarious as geeky Carlos), but onstage, it seems unfocused and roundabout. By watching as many movies, plays and television programs as possible, we can learn what does work and what does not work rhythmically and balance-wise, which can only help to create better, stronger and more solid works in the future.
WARNING FOR WRITERS: Write with casting in mind. Danny Burstein's performance as Mambo-Loving Taxi Driver sets him up to be a narrator or Greek chorus, but does not deliver on this potential. Instead, he appears at a few crucial moments as a supporting comic character. Meanwhile, a number of smaller, one-scene-only male roles such as the judge, the police officer and a matador, appear briefly and do little but appear and then leave. A more effective use of casting would have been to make Mambo-Loving Taxi Driver appear from time and time again in various guises and smaller characters, creating a comic lead from what is a rather minor supporting character.
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