The result is fresh, frivolous and somewhat interactive theatrical tomfoolery. It looks haphazard and unsophisticated but actually it is the result of careful, considered work, excellence in improvisation and a thorough understanding of the dynamics and attributes of each member of the performing troupe.
For 90 minutes of ecstatic storytelling, you are transported to a place where love, death and consequence are dancing together and where a victory for true love might just not be what you first think it will. Chita Rivera, an incandescent star of the Broadway stage in undiminished glory, is faultless. One of the best of Kander & Ebb’s musicals, The Visit is the best, most important, musical currently playing on Broadway.
Ultimately, TWO is a very fine night out at the theatre that zips through its eighty-minute length in no time, leaving you full of admiration at such detailed building of narrative and character with rare economy of means and a wide emotional palette. The revival is fully deserved and richly rewarding on every level.
Renée Fleming is an accomplished operatic soprano with a voice of ravishing beauty and the capacity to move opera audiences to extremes of emotion by her extraordinary singing and her skill as a musical performer. Indeed, some of the finest moments in this play occur when Fleming sings the odd phrase or legato line. “Was that a bird?” She asks, then trills sublimely: “Oh no, it was only me”.
This is Patti LuPone in full, unstoppable Diva mode, strutting her cabaret credentials at 54 Below in a show designed to show her range: The Lady With The Torch. Supported by an extraordinarily gifted band (piano, trumpet, trombone, saxophone/oboe, double bass), LuPone demonstrates precisely why she has a cult following.
It’s all downhill from there. The drama begins and quickly it all goes to pot. Lines are forgotten, the acting is terrible, and the efforts of all of the actors on stage are at odds with each other resulting in a calamitous mess. But it’s hilarious.
Whatever your thoughts about Chenoweth, her performance in this musical is that one-of-a-kind, flat-out unbelievably extraordinary star turns that leaves you breathless and stunned by the power, ferocity and magnetism of the delivery, both vocal and physical, of the performance, desperate to immediately see her do it all over again and certain, quite quite certain, that, no matter how long you live, you will never see anyone play that role like that again.
The last three songs ‘Pocket Park’, Time’, and ‘A Child’ are very fine, demonstrate what this creative team are capable of at their best, and vindicate the format of the musical as a whole. I would urge all involved to see what can be done to scatter the fairy dust of that final sequence over the first half as well.
