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."
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