By Harry Haun
19 Sep 2008

Brandi Burkhardt, James Barbour, Aaron Lazar, Natalie Toro, Gregg Edelman, Mackenzie Mauzy, Kevin Earley, Catherine Missal, Warren Carlyle and Jill Santoriello.
photo by Aubrey Reuben

Once the curtain, and the guillotine, fell Sept. 18 on A Tale of Two Cities — once the rabble on stage took their bows for restoring Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite! to the land — the audience at the Al Hirschfeld broke en masse and made a mad dash by bus, train and town car for Wall Street, where the monied American aristocrats used to hang out, for a little post-show boogieing at Cipriani's lower Manhattan branch.

I opted to sub it and therefore arrived, shot from an underground cannon, at my front-door battle station a good half hour before tidal waves of tuxedoes and elegant attire finally swept forth and saturated Cipriani's lavishly spacious dining area. Seasoned first-nighters, dressed traditionally for the evening, were impressed with the influx of Florida "old money" who duded up in four-figured frocks and tuxes like the good old days. Bellinis and hors d'oeuvres awaited, democratically, for one and all.

Twenty-two years in the writing, Jill Santoriello's songs and musical-book adaptation of Charles Dickens' 412-pageturner are, on a massive scale, a cautionary tale of why the high-born elite shouldn't rub the faces of the less fortunate in it.

Densely populated by Dickens with hard-to-cut cases in point, his story spills over from Paris into London of the late 18th century, ultimately and resolutely ending at that great leveler (and equalizer), the French Revolution and its attending mayhem.

At the heart of the story — albeit, late to arrive for it, after plot machinations have started churning on their inevitable path — is Sydney Carton (James Barbour), a booze-fueled barrister and lost romantic who finds redemption and love in Lucie Manette (Brandi Burkhardt). Alas, he finds all this after she has promised to wed Charles Darnay (Aaron Lazar). Darnay, by any other name, is an Evremonde, a late-blooming Englishman who has renounced his rich, nasty French roots — to unpersuaded Parisian peasants, it turns out, and so it falls to Carton to reiterate his love with noble self-sacrifice, substituting himself for Darnay on the chopping-block.

Basically, it's this triangle that twirls the narrative forward, but the sidelines are chock full of colorful Dickens grotesques—not the least of which are Madame Defarge (Natalie Toro), a hate-filled firebrand who can knit beside the guillotine and not drop a stitch; John Barsad (Nick Wyman), a shameless thief and scoundrel who gets a life-altering shot at goodness; Miss Pross (Katherine McGrath), a bossy old crone and Manette family retainer, and the despicable Marquis St. Evremonde (Les Minski), who fatally inflames the masses by hoping aloud his horses weren't injured in trampling a towheaded guttersnipe. Blanche Yurka, Walter Catlett, Edna May Oliver and Basil Rathbone had field days with these roles in M-G-M's definitive film of '35, and their counterparts munch it up accordingly.

Warren Carlyle, whose only previous Broadway credits have been as Susan Stroman's "Associate Choreographer" for Oklahoma! and The Producers, scores a double Broadway debut here as choreographer and director, taking up both reins from the late Thommie (A Chorus Line) Walsh. Surprisingly, Carlyle contends that choreographing was harder, but both jobs fuse spectacularly in the first-act finale where the many characters are positioned together to underscore Act II conflicts.

This whole experience has left him a happy hyphenate, and he plans to continue with both hats. "Oh, sure," he says. "I'm working on two projects that are coming up real soon, actually." Cautiously, his lips purse. "They're not announced yet, though."

A proud new American who stills speaks with a clipped British accent, he says the hardest thing about A Tale of Two Cities was just doing it. "I think just the size of it. It's an epic production. There's just a lot of elements. There's a lot of people, there's a lot of scenery, there's a lot of lighting, there's a lot of music, there's a lot of story."

There is a lot of story, Dickens being Dickens. Did he make some short cuts entering the homestretch ? "As we worked on it, I probably cut about seven minutes out of Act I," he says, "and we rearranged things a couple of times. We took out the graveyard scene and the song, and we played with a song in Act II called 'Let Her Be a Child.' We tried it as a duet, and we tried it as a solo. Things jumped around quite a bit."

For assistant director, Carlyle tapped Michael Arden, the actor (bare, Pippin), but Arden is snapping out of it now and is resuming his acting career "hopefully soon."

Given the driving, hammer-hard beat of Santoriello's music, it's not surprising that lots of Les Miserables alums were rounded up for A Tale of Two Cities. And this starts from the top — from Ron Sharpe and Barbra Russell, the husband-and-wife who did the hiring and, indeed, executive-produced the whole shebang. They met on stage, on Broadway, as Marius and Cosette — so they are thoroughly familiar with the sound. That hooked them, and they started this march to Broadway in 1999.

"I waited nine years for this moment," Sharpe trills joyfully. "I always believed in it. I gathered all these artists. At the end of the show, it was very touching when the investors turned to me and clapped for Barbra and me. I said, 'Barbra, we didn't have to sing a note, and they applauded for us.' It was a beautiful moment for us."

The comparison to Les Miz doesn't bother him. He encourages it, if anything. "Our story's about a drunken British attorney. It has nothing to do with that other story, but if you wanna compare it, I love it. It's my favorite show of all time, Les Miz."

The next Sharpe-Russell production will be identical twin sons, arriving in February. "Sydney and Charles, right?" They already have a daughter, 13, and son, 6. Continued...

View article on single page

Previous Page 1 | 2 Next Page