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    Bumps on the Road From Broadway to Hollywood

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storycritic’s notebookBumps on the Road From Broadway to HollywoodNot for decades have so many plays and musicals been turned into movies. But even in the best of the new crop, a lot gets lost in translation.David Byrne, center, with musicians and dancers in Spike Lee’s filmed version of the critically acclaimed Broadway show “American Utopia.”Credit…David Lee/HBODec. 18, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETA moment I barely noticed in the 2019 Broadway production of David Byrne’s “American Utopia” jumped out at me with new resonance in Spike Lee’s film of the show for HBO.That was when Byrne, in his introduction to the song “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” described hearing it performed by students at the Detroit School of Arts. Without altering a word or note, the high schoolers had turned the number, which in Byrne’s original version comes off as an anxious monologue about being inundated by otherness, into a joyful choral invitation.“I kind of liked their version better,” Byrne says, apparently amazed by the material’s mutability: The song was the same yet had “a completely different meaning.”I knew what he meant; after all, I was watching an even more elaborate translation, in which a concert staged like a Broadway musical was turned into a live-capture television film for cable. And though Lee’s slick and exuberant adaptation includes plenty of shots of the audience at the Hudson Theater bopping to the beat and dancing in the aisles, it was now, like “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” the same yet totally different.Theater lovers are getting familiar with that feeling. These days, it seems like everybody’s coming to our house — and walking off with the furniture. Not for decades have we seen so many Broadway shows, whether musicals (“Hamilton,” “The Prom”) or plays (“What the Constitution Means to Me,” “The Boys in the Band,” “Outside Mullingar,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) or unclassifiable offerings like “American Utopia,” taken up by Hollywood, squeezed through the camera lens and turned into film.The squeeze is certainly subtler now than it used to be. Lyrics are seldom butchered to avoid offense as they once were; I expect that Steven Spielberg’s version of “West Side Story,” scheduled for release in Dec. 2021, will restore Stephen Sondheim’s original rhyme for “buck,” which had to be altered for the 1961 film.Nor are innumerable songs dumped like dead plants from fire escapes anymore. (The 1966 movie version of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” dropped at least half of Sondheim’s 14 numbers.) Musicals — and, in a way, plays too — are now being filmed because of their music, not in spite of it. More

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    ‘The Prom’ Review: Showbiz Sanctimony, and All That Zazz

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘The Prom’ Review: Showbiz Sanctimony, and All That ZazzRyan Murphy takes on the Broadway hit “The Prom,” with help from Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Keegan-Michael Key.The bright (small) lights of Indiana meet Angie Dickinson glam: Nicole Kidman and Jo Ellen Pellman in “The Prom.”Credit…Melinda Sue Gordon/NetflixDec. 10, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETThe PromDirected by Ryan MurphyComedy, Drama, MusicalPG-132h 10mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Early in Ryan Murphy’s “The Prom,” a Broadway flack starts reading the reviews of a newly opened show about Eleanor Roosevelt, “Eleanor!” The gang’s all here, including the self-adoring stars, Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep) and Barry Glickman (James Corden). The drinks and laughs are flowing, and everyone is as lit as their bedazzled outfits. And then the flack starts reading the notice from The New York Times (hiss, boo). “This is not a review you want when you have crappy advance sales,” he bleats. “This is going to close us.”In his review of “The Prom” on Broadway, my Times colleague Jesse Green amusingly reassured readers that this wouldn’t happen, deeming it “a joyful hoot.” It won’t happen with the movie, which is based on the show, for other reasons. “The Prom” starts streaming on Netflix on Friday, which means no amount of cheers or jeers will matter. On Netflix, the movie will sit alongside thousands of other titles, subject only to mysterious algorithms and sheltered from both critics and the box office. Its canny mix of nostalgia and idealism, old-fashioned conservatism and new-age liberalism will hit the spot for some, even if its vision of American unity is hard to recognize right now.In its broad outlines, the story — a show-people lark wed to a morality tale about a teenage lesbian’s triumph — seems unchanged. Called out as unlikable narcissists (who can’t even make a hit), Dee Dee and Barry decide to rehabilitate their tainted reputations with celebrity activism. With their overripe second bananas, the archly named Angie Dickinson and Trent Oliver (Nicole Kidman and Andrew Rannells), they travel to an Indiana town, intent on taking up (uninvited) the cause of the heroine, Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman), a high schooler who’s been barred from bringing her girlfriend to the prom.The theme and the story’s arc emerge when Dee Dee et al. descend on the town, waving placards and trumpeting indignation. “We are here from New York City and we are going to save you,” Barry announces to Emma, who’s embedded in a meeting filled with parents and other students. This joke is soon repeated, as often happens in this movie, where every rose is gilded and every laugh squeezed until it’s dry. “Who are you people?” asks the mother (a misused Kerry Washington) leading the homophobic charge. “We are liberals from Broadway,” Trent says, assuring that Team New York will fall on its smug face while securing its own redemption.The tolerance message in “The Prom” is sincere, no matter how satirically delivered. And it’s easy to imagine that onstage the whole thing came off as charming (as a friend insisted), a quality not in Murphy’s paint box. (The charm of his TV series “Glee” sprang from the youth of his cast and the musical genre itself.) Murphy likes to go big and lightly bonkers, and his aesthetic is best described as Showbiz Expressionism: it’s splashy and ostensibly excessive without being threatening. In contrast to, say, the shocks of John Waters, for whom tastelessness is a revolt (aesthetic, political), Murphy’s excesses are tastefully vulgar strokes rather than a value.The story unwinds with histrionics and homilies, jazz hands and twinkle toes, overly busy camerawork and hookless lung bursters. (Matthew Sklar wrote the music and Chad Beguelin wrote the lyrics and, with Bob Martin, the screenplay.) Some of the songs are cheeky (“we’re gonna help that little lesbian/whether she likes it or not”); others are as earnest as a daily affirmation (“life’s no dress rehearsal”). Taken together, they create a parallel narration that makes swathes of dialogue superfluous. “If you’re not straight,” Emma sings early on, “then guess what’s bound to hit the fan.” Later, she sings “nobody out there ever gets to define/the life I’m meant to lead.”Pellman doesn’t look remotely like a teenager, but her melancholic sweetness is appealing and she has a quality of stillness that creates a much-needed oasis amid Murphy’s insistent din. It helps that, in contrast to her famous co-stars, she hasn’t been directed to oversell every note, whether musical or emotional. With her open face and pretty soprano, she turns her character into a recognizable adolescent and lets you see — and feel — Emma’s yearning, her hurt and belief that something better, more soul-nurturing, waits beyond the prejudices and provincialism of her town. Like Dorothy and countless others, Emma dreams of her place over the rainbow.She gets it, with assistance from her soon humbled, ultimately victorious New York helpers (and the warm presence of Keegan-Michael Key as the principal). How this all goes down is as predictable as expected except that, in the year 2020, it’s also more fantastical than “The Wizard of Oz” at its trippiest. Here, all it takes for bigots to accept Emma and L.G.B.T.Q. rights is for Trent to call them out as hypocrites who should — in a sublimely narcissistic move — be more like their fabulous, righteous interlopers. In other words, if the haters would open their tiny, hard hearts, everything would be fine. You don’t have to be a cynic to know that is a crock. You just need to be an American.The PromRated PG-13 for who knows? Musical theater? Glitter? Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. Watch on Netflix.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More