New York -- Survival of the performing arts seems to always be tenuous.
Unable to support themselves solely on earned income, they are hypersensitive to every hiccup and cough in the economy. If that weren't enough, they must also compete with popular cultural changes, which are now constant.
With Lady Gaga streaming to your phone 24/7, why do you need to spend big money and devote precious hours to sitting in a room?
Perhaps because I am most familiar with theater, it appears to me to be the most insecure of the major art forms. Its fragility and demise is regularly discussed and predicted. Hand wringing is continual.
This is why the 2011 Tony Awards, presented here a few weeks ago, are worthy of special notice. The big winners in both the musical and straight play categories are wildly different but strongly in step with this moment in time.
Neither "The Book of Mormon" (nine Tonys) nor "War Horse" (five) has a star in the cast. Common wisdom in recent years believed that at least one celebrity performer was necessary for a show to have box office success. But "The Book of Mormon" is a flaming hot ticket, and "War Horse" is doing well.
"Mormon" brilliantly captures the pulse of the great cultural divide over religion in this country. Its creative team of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the folks who gave us TV's "South Park," along with Robert Lopez from past Tony winner "Avenue Q," should give you a firm idea of which side of the divide this show inhabits. Broadway has never seen this level of nasty irreverence.
Political incorrectness rules, blasphemy is blessed and the language is saltier than a New York street vendor's pretzels. If I were in the cast, I might worry a little about the karma I was putting out there nightly, and I would be very careful crossing the street.
And yet, when the final curtain falls, we take away from "Mormon" a message so fundamentally inspirational we can't help but be delighted and a bit awed about the wild ride we just took. The New York Times' Ben Brantley wrote about the mix of reverence and ridicule that powers this show, and he hit the old nail right on the head.
"Mormon" was written for a generation that is not offended by the F bomb, perceives institutional cluelessness and hypocrisy, and still embraces basic human values that its elders often forget. All of this in a Broadway musical!
One of them is the epitome of cheery and shallow blandness. His dream was to do his mission work in Orlando, Fla. The other is the class klutz, always confused and disheveled.
They are the odd couple, dropped into an alien culture for which they had scant preparation. The Ugandan population is being decimated by AIDS and a one-eyed warlord. You get the drift.
While the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is targeted for plenty of sharp-edged spoofery, it is not alone. The larger picture of proselytizing any religion and the cultural arrogance that often underlies that is lavishly lampooned.
Beyond the religious issues, "The Book of Mormon" smartly parodies "The Lion King," entertainment stereotypes of singing and dancing Africans, and the general Broadway musical genre. It's fun spotting the momentary send-ups of iconic shows we know so well.
"Mormon's" score is tuneful but not memorable. It completely serves the story, never drawing attention to itself.
"War Horse" is at the opposite end of the style and emotional spectrum, appealing to the increasingly visual focus of our culture.
Based on a 1982 children's novel by English author Michael Morpurgo, it's a basic tender tale of a boy and his horse. War and an unfeeling alcoholic father are the dramatic context.
More than a million British horses were sent across the English Channel to the front lines of World War I, and only about 65,000 returned. Barbed wire took an especially terrible toll.
Joey, the steed at the center of "War Horse," was sold by the father to the military. The distraught boy who loved him also winds up in the army. The story is propelled by the question of whether the two will be reunited.
England's esteemed National Theater opened a stage adaptation of the novel in 2007, and it is still playing in London. The hook is not the script but the exceptional theatricality of the experience.
Life-size puppets created by the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa portray the horses in an amazing display of clever stagecraft. With two puppeteers inside of each animal and a third on the exterior, controlling the head, the creations possess genuinely equine physical presence and movement.
Inventive and evocative production design, including shrewd lighting, follows through on the intensely theatrical event, delivering powerful images of the chaos of armed conflict.
"War Horse" has proven to have immense appeal to adults, but it is written with the broad brush of children's novels. The text is melodramatic, characters are undeveloped, and the play would probably work better if the show's two acts were compressed into one.
That said, "War Horse" is justifiably on the must-see list of many theatergoers.
Tony-winning plays and musicals often appear in the seasons of regional theaters, but that is unlikely to happen with this year's crop. "The Book of Mormon" has a great potential to offend in the provinces, and "War Horse" is too technically specialized. However, we can expect to see productions of both in Chicago.
Damien has been around so long, he was at Summerfest the night George Carlin was arrested for speaking the seven dirty words you can't say on TV. He was also at the Uptown Theatre the night Bruce Springsteen's first Milwaukee concert was interrupted for three hours by a bomb scare. Damien was reviewing the concert for the Milwaukee Journal. He wrote for the Journal and Journal Sentinel for 37 years, the last 29 as theater critic.
During those years, Damien served two terms on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, a term on the board of the association's foundation, and he studied the Latinization of American culture in a University of Southern California fellowship program. Damien also hosted his own arts radio program, "Milwaukee Presents with Damien Jaques," on WHAD for eight years.
Travel, books and, not surprisingly, theater top the list of Damien's interests. A news junkie, he is particularly plugged into politics and international affairs, but he also closely follows the Brewers, Packers and Marquette baskeball. Damien lives downtown, within easy walking distance of most of the theaters he attends.
