Triumph of Love: Reviews
Ben Brantley in The New York Times:
". . .And then, against all expectation, lightning strikes. Your emotions are stirred, you sit up in your seat and you may even discover tears in your eyes. In any case, if you're human, you'll probably find yourself delivering a silent prayer of thanksgiving for Betty Buckley, that fine musical star whose penetrating trumpet of a voice always seems directly and paradoxically linked to a fragile soul.
What has happened is that Ms. Buckley, playing an emotionally suffocated spinster named Hesione. . . starts singing a song with the deceptive title of "Serenity." She is addressing a young man who has aroused feelings that once tugged "at my heart like hungry birds." The young man responsible for this awakening is really a young woman (played by Susan Egan) who is duping Hesione for her own romantic reasons, but that no longer seems like a merely comic plot contrivance. "Serenity," with a music box lilt of a melody by Jeffrey Stock and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, is a lovely piece of confession that recalls the melancholy, character-defining songs of Stephen Sondheim's "Little Night Music."
As delivered by Ms. Buckley with a strength that also suggests an infinite capacity to be wounded, the number sheds a disquieting light on the forced, boisterous merriment that has preceded it. The elaborate plot to ensnare Hesione may be a form of sport, but it is now clear that this sport draws blood. The moment captures the delicate blend of froth and contemplative sadness that imbues nearly everything by Marivaux. . .
. . . Ms. Buckley's character undergoes a similarly humiliating transformation. Yet somehow she not only endures, but also prevails. Even swinging the panniers of the cartoon period dresses that Catherine Zuber has designed for her, she retains a plaintive dignity. And while she earns every possible laugh, it is never at the expense of a fully developed character.
Ms. Buckley, the original Grizabella of "Cats" and the much-admired successor of Glenn Close in "Sunset Boulevard," is the only thing triumphant in "Triumph." For what it's worth, she definitely owns the show. But isn't it time someone gave her a more valuable piece of property all her own?"
Fintan O'Toole in Daily News
". . .All of this relentless wackiness might begin to grate, though, were it not for the wonderful Betty Buckley. Only a great performer can switch the mood of a show in a moment, turning burlesque into tragedy and then back again. Buckley belongs in that select company. Her pure, hard-edged voice cuts against the grain of Jeffrey Stock's cheery music. And in the show's one outstanding musical number--"Serenity"--she suddenly becomes, not the comic caricature she has been, but a real, lonely middle-aged woman yearning for love.
With a lesser actress, the effect would be jarring. It is, instead, startling and moving. And it provides the essential grip on emotional realities that stops the gaudy balloon of the plot from floating away into mere insignificance."
John Simon in New York Magazine:
". . .There remains, however, the Hesione of Betty Buckley, who transcends the claptrap she is given into beautifully sung, touchingly acted, throbbing humanity. Her artistry and nobility remain unbesmirched. When, we all keep asking, will this artist get the vehicle and role worthy of her? In the green terry Pandora's box of this show, she is the only ray of hope."
OTHER REVIEWS
The New Yorker
Something to Sing About by Nancy
Franklin
. . ."Triumph of Love" (at the Royale), which fulfills its potential and then some, is based on the 1732 Marivaux play; a translation by James Magruder was seen at the Classic Stage Company a few years ago. It was a glittering, small-scale production, a study of the farcical geometry of romance: squares caught in triangles in the sphere of love. Magruder, who also wrote the book for the musical, has taken advantage of the extra breathing room afforded him in a Broadway house; he has streamlined the story and at the same time packed in more bawdiness, more puns, and more double entendres, to make a richly suggestive stew for the characters to splash around in. The play's eighteenth century formalities have been toyed with, which is to say that they've been honored, for what Marivaux did was to toy with the artifice -the disguise--that we employ to obtain or to protect ourselves from love.
The topiary garden in which the play is set is made of big green blocks and is lit in bright, candy colors--it has the cartoony realism of a child's drawing. Jeffrey Stock, who wrote the music, makes a remarkable Broadway debut here, and Susan Birkenhead's lyrics are even more remarkable. While the characters are essentially stock types--a handsome prince, a perky princess, a surly servant, a self-deceiving brother and sister who believe themselves to be purely rational beings--Birkenhead (who wrote the lyrics for "Jelly's Last Jam") gives each of them his or her full due with words that call to mind the songs of Rodgers and Hart and Comden and Green.
There's a wistful, let's call-it-a-day song that the brother and sister, Betty Buckley and F. Murray Abraham, sing quietly to each other while meditating in front of a stunted potted tree. They've been humbled by their lesson in love, and as they sit alone, gazing at the little tree, she sings to him, "Maybe it once wanted more than it got." His sympathetic response is "Way of the world," which she counters with a resigned "C'est la vie." It's a familiar kind of exchange, and yet the moment is as fresh as a new coat of paint. In fact, one of the pleasures of this show is the way that, like Bill Irwin's recent "Scapin," it uses the history and the conventions of entertainment as a trampoline, jumping giddily around from silent movies to vaudeville to movie musicals to slapstick to farce. Here, everything old really is new again.
Michael Mayer, the director, keeps the pace fast, but he allows each character to ripen properly. The cast of seven is superb, and Buckley and Abraham are especially winning after they've been brought low by emotion. We know they're being tricked, but they don't, and our interest in the game stops being merely sporting when Buckley appears before us newly in love, and nakedly vulnerable--a thoroughbred destined to break a leg in her very first race. Kevin Chamberlin, as the servant, and Roger Bart, as a jester, are twin stars of subversive inanity.
Chamberlin has a field day--or a W.C. Fields day--with his lines. Summoned by his boss, he says, not quite under his breath, "Coming, my utterly frightening tyranthood." Late in the show, Chamberlin and Bart do a terrific number called "Henchmen Are Forgotten"; they're Hope and Crosby in baggy pants as they deliver a history of ingratitude and the plight of the second banana ("Who stood in for Midas when Midas got arthritis?" "Who convinced Medusa her perm looked betta loosa?"). Nancy Opel, a gregarious goofball, is simply wonderful as the princess's maidservant. The character responsible for all the nonsense in the first place is the princess, played by Susan Egan, who falls in love with the prince (Christopher Sieber, a tall, blond, handsome maypole around which everyone else runs).
Hers is a complicated role, involving so many levels of deception that it's hard to keep track. With her cap of red hair, she's boyishly girlish, a cross between Puck and Mary Martin's Peter Pan. At first carelessly mischievous, she eventually sees that her tricks have had real consequences, and she falls to earth convincingly in the ballad "What Have I Done?" "Triumph of Love" is the kind of show that makes people want to come to this city--to be in the theatre, to go to the theatre, to talk about the theatre. New York, New York: it's a helluva town.
Newsday
A Stylish Sweetheart of a Show By Linda Winer
AT LAST, a musical comedy for people who despair of ever being pleasantly amused again by the form, who tend to shrink from all the mugging, who wince at the mincing and leave Broadway's more celebrated recent laugh riots wishing everyone would work less frantically at the business of entertainment.
"Triumph of Love," which opened without much fanfare at the Royale Theatre last night, is a modest but stylish sweetheart of a show. Lovingly -- but none too reverently -- adapted from Marivaux's infinitely more tough-minded French entertainment of 1732, this is a chamber musical comedy/fractured classic that manages to take itself lightly and still play for keeps.
And, during the occasional blips when director Michael Mayer loses his ability to tell the breezily foolish from the really stupid, we are consoled by the knowledge that someone from his delicious cast -- Betty Buckley, F. Murray Abraham and, more surprisingly, the gifted Susan Egan -- will be back soon to recapture the tone.
The show, developed by Broadway producers at Baltimore's Center Stage and the Yale Rep, is more an 18th-Century "Once Upon a Mattress" with wordplay than the sophisticated musical "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" of our dreams. The creators have mentioned "The Boys From Syracuse," the Rodgers and Hart spin on Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors" as a role model. That seems about right.
The time is ancient Greece, pre-revolution France and, in ironic attitude, today. Princess Leonide (Egan) comes to a secret garden to pursue a hunky young philosopher named Agis (Christopher Sieber). The fellow is really the rightful heir to her throne and has been raised in seclusion by his repressed intellectual aunt Hesione (Buckley) and uncle Hermocrates (Abraham) to slay the princess and reclaim the lusty world for pursuits of the mind.
Egan, known mainly as Belle in "Beauty and the Beast," is thoroughly adorable as the princess -- which means not too adorable at all. Boyish yet delicate, she makes the three disguises -- of varying genders -- she assumes to woo the three intellectuals seem as easy as hopping onto one of the cartoon hedges of Heidi Ettinger's bright, witty set.
Buckley is priceless as the spinster lured back to romantic feelings again. Her dark, silvery vibrato -- usually used for more solemn occasions -- finds a startling place where sadness and hilarity meet in a show-stopper called "Serenity." It would be easy to name dozens of better singers than Abraham, a serious actor in his Broadway musical debut. But could anyone trade the trapped look he brings to the eyes of a dignified man as he notices passionate unwanted stirrings? Besides, with his shaved head and white makeup, he looks like Mel Brooks playing Kojak and, talk-singing like Rex Harrison, brings a dry precision to "Emotions" that makes the song sound like literature.
James Magruder's book is clever enough to carry Marivaux's debate about reason vs. the heart without scaring the family-entertainment demographics away with its erudition and, though the '90s "outta here" asides are cheesy, such inventions as "dresspassers" (for crossdressed trespassers) are good enough to steal. Newcomer Jeffrey Stock's confidently old-fashioned music -- often in court-dance rhythms -- makes us feel considerably better about the continuation of the species. "The Tree," a meditation for Buckley and Abraham on what might have been, is a wry but haunting Sondheimesque art song. The baroque opera spoof "Love Won't Take No for an Answer" is smart.
The lyrics by Susan Birkenhead ("Jelly's Last Jam") gracefully capture enough of the original's edgy virtuosity to suggest a legacy from Hart to Sondheim. We have to listen, and it's fun to hear. And is it possible that stock predatory sexuality and tired old bawdy double entendres seem fresher because a woman, for a change, has rewritten them into honest, straightforward yearnings?
Nothing, we fear, could make the lines for the princess' maid, Corine, sound anything but coarse. The usually good Nancy Opel, a late replacement for comedic Elayne Boosler, mugs so loud we think she's trying to get laughs in another show. In contrast, Roger Bart and Kevin Chamberlin update the commedia dell'arte characters, the gardener and the valet, with such style we forget how much we hate rustics. Their big number, "Henchmen Are Forgotten," may sound more than a little like "Paris Makes Me Horny" from "Victor/Victoria," but we'd rather be here with them.
The show, alas, is amplified, even in the intimate Royale. This is Broadway in the '90s, isn't it? But someone figured out a way to hide body mikes so they don't look like those horrid little worms that crawl down the foreheads all over Broadway. That's a small triumph we can love, right there.
USA Today
Broadway's 'Love' A Triumph of Both Heart and Head by David Patrick Stearns
NEW YORK The musical The Triumph of Love offers far more than a victory of emotion. To attract attention here, it would have to. Love, after all, triumphs incessantly on Broadway: Everywhere you look, sweaty actors spew all-purpose emotionalism to throbbing orchestral accompaniment
Smart, refined, restrained, intelligent -- and not, amazingly enough, written by Stephen Sondheim -- Triumph (***1/2 out of four) skips all that. Based on an 18th century expose on the Age of Reason, it watches steely intellectuals capitulate helplessly to passion; given the glorious mileage Mozart got out of similar fare in The Marriage of Figaro, it's the sort of musical the Lloyd Webber weary might dream of but dismiss as unmarketable.
Somehow, though, Triumph has emerged, helped no doubt by the star power of Betty Buckley and F. Murray Abraham and the excellence of a creative team that's mostly new to Broadway. Librettist James Magruder, composer Jeffrey Stock and lyricist Susan Birkenhead have produced a score of well placed songs that reflect Sondheim's influence but have an airy suavity that's perfect for this plot.
The story, about an androgynous princess (Susan Egan) who, while disguised, wins the hearts of both sexes (Abraham and Buckley), is taken from the play of the same title by Pierre Marivaux, a sort of French baroque Neil Simon. It has been sharpened to a razor point without losing a bit of its humanity. The farce becomes most penetrating when the middle-age Buckley and Abraham characters discover love just before they're too old.
Buckley delivers an unforgettably soulful characterization as she realizes how one-dimensional her life has been. Abraham becomes touchingly quiet as he falls in love, which is partly how he gets away with his weak singing voice. Egan projects a delightful playfulness that keeps the show buoyant, though her main love interest (Christopher Sieber) is bland. Roger Bart, Nancy Opel and Kevin Chamberlin provide sharp comic counterpoint as scheming henchmen.
The only misstep is Heidi Ettinger's set, meant to be a stylized portrayal of a manicured garden. It looks more like an obstacle course. Still, Michael Mayer's direction is so beautifully timed, so packed with sly references to other Broadway musicals, that audiences ought to look past the setting.
New York Post
'Triumph on Cult-ing Edge by Clive Barnes
YOU enter the theatre and the stage is virtually drenched in the cascade of a gold satin curtain. Your appetite thus whetted, you sit back, waiting for a banquet. Well, banquet perhaps it is not, but at least it's a lot more feast than famine.
It must be frighteningly difficult to write a musical--what do you do for music, for a star?--and although Broadway's latest entrant, "Triumph of Love," may be something less than a triumph, it has solid and substantial merits, and many, many people will love it.
It has all the makings of a cult musical. Its immediate success depends entirely on how quickly the cult catches on, for it is a show easier to love--or, at least, like a lot--than to admire, especially for the totally enchanting Susan Egan as its ruthless but adorable heroine.
Ruthless? Egan? The unmelted-butter-mouthed Belle of "Beauty and the Beast"?
Well, one of the show's pluses is the spectacle of its stars behaving unexpectedly but exceptionally well. More on the performances later, but from top to toe each is gemlike.
First, though let's deal with Jeffrey Stock's music behaving not unexpectedly a little like Stephen Sondheim's; and the story, devised by book writer James Magruder, seeming a little like French playwright Pierre Marivaux. Well, forget Marivaux- after all, the musical itself almost has.
Strangely enough, it was 18th-century Marivaux, Magruder's adaptation of his original play and Michael Mayer's off-Broadway staging of same at the Classic Stage Company repertory that sparked the whole plan for the current enterprise.
Magruder sticks to the marivaudage of the original story, with its typical psychological cynicism, and all the plot mechanisms of disguise and chicanery Marivaux pinched from the commedia dell'arte.
Thus, the story of an enamored but wrongful princess who woos the sheltered rightful prince, brought up in solitude by his philosopher uncle and aunt with a view to him regaining his kingdom, has been left pretty much alone.
The style has admittedly been bastardized and vulgarized for Broadway musical audiences, although it has the best closing line--exquisitely handled by Betty Buckley--I can ever recall in the musical theater.
Elsewhere, though, camp anachronisms and lame, intentionally bad puns abound in Magruder's script, and, to a lesser extent, in Susan Birkenhead's generally deft lyrics.
As for Stock's music: Yes, it does sound like fairly stock Sondheim. Just as the admirable but imitatable George Handel had a disastrous effect on English music for more than a century, so Sondheim seems to be wreaking the same damage on the Broadway musical. But this is higher subSondheim than most.
Meyer's staging is boisterous and stylish; Catherine Zuber's costumes are elegantly attuned to place, period and musical; and while Paul Gallo's lights seem a little by rote, the permanent topiary joke of the garden setting by Heidi Ettinger has its charms (although it outstays its welcome).
Perhaps the major thing the musical has going for it are the opportunities it offers for performance, and these are joyously seized by the chamber-styled cast of seven. A magnificent seven, at that.
For the delectable Egan, the show could be a starmaker, while Buckley (adorably prissy but in full voice) and a commandingly priggish F. Murray Abraham have never been better. Both are so convicingly moving that at times they threaten to capsize the comic boat.
Christopher Sieber contributes an endearing chump of a hero, while the clowns--Roger Bart, Kevin Chamberlin and Nancy Opel, sometimes with a shrewd assist from Doug Varone's unobtrusive choreography--prove show-biz joys.
This is not your common or garden-variety Broadway musical--but it has abundant and luxuriant charms.
Newsday
Love Should Triumph by Liz Smith
Now that the hoopla--the much deserved hoopla- surrounding "The Lion King" has abated a bit, let me praise another musical I simply adored. The enchanting "Triumph of Love," now wowing audiences at the Royale Theater in spite of carping from some critics. But please, don't let these silly spoil sports keep you from this unique musical, which is a take on the romantic, acerbic, intelligent works of 18th-century author Pierre Marivaux.
I was enthralled by Jeffrey Stock and Susan Birkenhead's score and I loved the bawdy jokes built into James Magruder's book. I loved Michael Mayer's direction and I adored the sets (Heidi Ettinger), lighting (Paul Gallo) and costumes (Catherine Zuber). This is not a mindless evening in the theater watching chandeliers fall or the French revolt on a turntable. This is intelligent, witty and caustic humor surrounded by a lovely kind of touching bathos.
Susan Egan, who was the original Beauty in "Beauty and the Beast," is charming, sexy and amazingly talented. She is the troublemaker of this tale and, as the story has it, everyone on stage falls in love with her. You will too.
Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham is absolutely majestic here in his outrageous makeup and costumes. He and the mightily gifted Betty Buckley are the anti-emotion, put-upon brother and sister who learn that though love isn't fair, it's better than no love at all.
Betty Buckley, deservedly, has become a beloved Broadway icon and is never to be missed. Her presence and vocal velocity and dexterity are always a singular sensation. If you are smart, you won't miss this dazzling "Triumph of Love."