By Christopher Caggiano

The spring season has yielded a sizable crop of musical revivals. But how many of them actually bear fruit?

The 2023-2024 Broadway season has been dominated by new musicals: 15 new tuners in all. That’s the most new musicals in any single season in decades, and certainly the most in one season that we’ve seen this century. Of course, a number of those shows have already closed, and now that the Tony nominations have come out — leaving some shows with few or no nominations — we’re likely to see a few more close before the summer.

It’s a similar story for the musical revivals, of which there were six in total this season. Two have already closed — Gutenberg: The Musical, which had a limited run, and Monty Python’s Spamalot, the run of which was limited by anemic sales. The smash hit revival of Merrily We Roll Along, which is almost certain to win the Tony Award for Best Musical Revival, will close on July 7, as the producers have wisely decided not to try to replace the stellar cast when their contracts expire.

That leaves the three revivals that I’ll be addressing in this review: The Who’s Tommy, Cabaret, and The Wiz. Cabaret is selling like gangbusters, thanks to the presence of Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne. The Wiz is also selling well, despite the absence of marquee-value names, other than minor celeb Wayne Brady in the title role. Sales for The Who’s Tommy are slightly less robust, but are still averaging around $1 million a week, which should be enough to cover weekly costs.

The strange thing is, these shows seem to be selling in inverse proportion to the quality of these productions, at least in my estimation.

Alison Luff (Mrs. Walker), Olive Ross-Kline (Tommy, Age 4), and Adam Jacobs (Captain
Walker) in The Who’s Tommy. Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

In terms of genuine entertainment value, the strongest of these three productions is The Who’s Tommy. I’m not a huge fan of the show itself. My overall impression of the original in 1993 was that it was a sensational production in search of an actual show to put across. The stagecraft was terrific, but the story was thin, particularly in act two. Even so, director Des McAnuff’s production was stylish and slick, which is also true of the current revival, which McAnuff also helms.

The main selling point of Tommy is that it’s based on a classic album, one of the first of the theatrical concept albums. However, that selling point is also its main liability. Because the album is a classic, written mostly by The Who’s Pete Townshend at the age of 23, the creators seem to have felt the need to remain faithful to the album. Townshend did write one new song for the show, the powerful but repetitive, “I Believe My Own Eyes.” In truth, the entire score is repetitive, both lyrically and musically, treading water when it could be deepening the characters or advancing the plot.

Because the songs don’t fully tell the story, the production elements and staging must do a lot of the heavy lifting. As was true of the original run, this production of Tommy is a barrage on the senses. But there are only so many blinding flashes of light and deafening blasts of music I’m willing to tolerate in a show.

I will say that I saw a lot more of the humanity in the characters this time around, the result of some thoughtful staging touches on McAnuff’s part. For instance, at one point in the show, Mrs. Walker, Tommy’s mother, takes Tommy’s arms and puts them around her neck, only to see them fall limply away. Simple but heartrending.

Of course, the performers here contribute greatly to the emotional effectiveness of the production, particularly the nuanced Alison Luff as Mrs. Walker. Adam Jacobs as Mr. Walker also generates strong emotion via his powerful singing voice. And newcomer Ali Louis Bourzgui is dynamic and wry as the oldest of three Tommys.

Again, since the staging does a lot of the work, choreographer Lorin Latarro’s contributions here are pivotal. Thankfully, she seems to have developed a great deal since her contributions to Waitress, which felt distracting and ornamental. Here, she reveals herself as a savvy and varied choreographer, capable of crafting complicated group numbers with movements that are eclectic and colloquial, but never self-consciously so. Her efforts add considerable dimension to the piece — which really needs it.

Cabaret

Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee in Cabaret. Photo: Marc Brenner

In my review of the 2014 Broadway return of the 1998 version of Cabaret — i.e., the revival of the revival — I recall writing that, despite what seemed like a shameless cash grab on the part of the Roundabout Theater, Cabaret should always be playing somewhere in New York City. The show is that good and that important.

Based on the current Cabaret revival — I shall spare myself the indignity of referring to it by the production’s pretentious and unnecessary moniker, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Klub — I still feel that strongly about the quality and importance of the show itself, even though this production is too distracted by ham-handed efforts to be different just for the sake of it.

Among the distractions are a superfluous 75-minute preshow, an in-the-round reorganization of the orchestra section, and a louche dinner-theater ambiance. But none of this foofaraw adds to the emotional impact of the musical. If anything, it takes away much of the material’s power.

The pre-show is clearly intended to draw the audience into the seedy milieu of a Weimar Republic nightclub. However, unless you enjoy standing around in a crowded, sweaty bar, listening to loud avant-garde Klezmer music (seriously), and watching affected, spasmodic choreography, I’d recommend you give yourself five minutes at most for all this flummery — then head to your seats.

Because here’s the thing. Cabaret works the way it is. The revisions from Sam Mendes’ 1998 production brought the piece to its ideal form, freeing it of the unfortunate compromises in Hal Prince’s original 1966 production. The show doesn’t need another round of reinventing, at least not as director Rebecca Frecknall has envisioned it. It seems clear that she is aiming for something distinct here, but it’s not entirely clear what that is.

Other than the opaque nature of the production’s intent, the main liability here is Frecknall’s apparent goal to make each subsequent number louder — and more off-putting — than the one that came before it. Most of the numbers are over-enunciated and over-acted, particularly the title number, which is almost unwatchable given all the immoderate emoting of Gayle Rankin, this version’s Sally Bowles.

Gayle Rankin at Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Photo: Marc Brenner

As for the dancing, there is a trend among contemporary theater choreographers: to abandon recognizable vocabulary in favor of jerky, awkward, pointlessly complicated movements that even the best Broadway dancers have trouble making look good. We’ve seen this from Christopher Wheeldon in MJ, Steven Hoggett in A Beautiful Noise, and even the otherwise wonderful Camille A. Brown in Hell’s Kitchen. We can apparently now add Cabaret’s Julia Cheng to that list.

The hardworking cast of Cabaret partially redeems the production, particularly Steven Skybell as Herr Schultz, who is the only one on stage who doesn’t succumb to shouting and histrionics. Gayle Rankin manages to make Sally’s scenes sound fresh and spontaneous. Bebe Neuwirth as Fraulein Schneider is a bit too chipper in the first act, but she partially redeems herself with a passionate rendition of “What Would You Do?” — despite her machine-gun-like vibrato during the number. As for Eddie Redmayne, his costumes make more of an impression than he does, although, as we saw in the movie version of Les Misérables, he possesses a legitimately strong singing voice.

One of the most powerful aspects of the 1998/2014 Cabaret revival was the final image of the show, with Alan Cumming suddenly revealing the garb of a gay concentration camp victim under his trench coat. Rather than replicate that image here, Frecknall has placed the entire cast in oversized grey suits, I guess to evoke the grim efficiency of the Nazi machine. But the image made for a flat, quizzical tag to an overdressed but under-affecting production.

The Wiz

Kyle Ramar Freeman, Avery Wilson, Phillip Johnson Richardson, Nichelle Lewis in The Wiz. Photo: Jeremy Daniel

When the Tony nominations came out, many theater fans expressed umbrage on social media that the current revival of The Wiz didn’t receive any nominations. Not a one. Well, pumpkins and poodles, I’m here to tell you that The Wiz got just as many Tony nods as it deserved.

When you put on Cabaret, you’re at least starting with a very strong show. With Tommy, you’re working with a beloved album full of popular-for-decades songs. But with The Wiz, you’ve essentially got two catchy numbers — “Ease on Down the Road” and “Everybody Rejoice” — and not much else. The entire piece is just a loose collection of songs and scenes without much connective tissue or much of a motor pushing things forward.

Perhaps realizing this, the producers brought in writer/comedian Amber Ruffin to provide “additional material,” but her contributions seem to have consisted of throwing in a few one-liners here and there. She doesn’t seem to have done much about the spotty, episodic nature of the book.

So, The Wiz is not exactly what we might call a masterwork. If the show is going to go over at all, it needs a sure directorial hand to spackle over the gaps, punch up the energy, and make audience members think they’re having a grand old time. However, Schele Williams doesn’t seem to be that director.

Williams is also represented on Broadway this season by The Notebook (read my review), but with that show she had a strong story to work with, even if the score is unremarkable. She also had a world-class co-director — the shamefully Tony-less Michael Grief — presumably working by her side. On The Wiz, Williams’ crowd work is messy and unfocused, making it hard to know where to focus on stage. Also, her handling of the show’s comic scenes is sloppy, with lots of potentially funny moments lost in garbled diction and swallowed punchlines.

Nichelle Lewis, Avery Wilson and Company in The Wiz. Photo: Jeremy Daniel

Lost in the mess are some strong performers, particularly the folks playing the Tin Man (Phillip Johnson Richardson), Scarecrow (Avery Wilson), and Cowardly Lion (Kyle Ramar Freeman), all of whom deserve a better musical to suit their considerable talents. As for Nichelle Lewis as Dorothy, well, let’s hope that some other show will help her demonstrate that she’s capable of doing more onstage than just pouting.

As Glinda, Deborah Cox was unintelligible, but she’s hardly the only one in this production with poor enunciation. Wayne Brady is fine, if not spectacular, as the Wizard. And although I’ve heard great things about Melody A. Betts as Evillene, alas, she was out the day I saw the production, and the less said about the understudy I saw, the better.

To sum up, Cabaret seems poised to withstand any brickbats that I and my fellow critics could hurl its way. Likewise, The Wiz could overcome mixed-to-negative reviews as well as a dearth of awards to storm ahead towards a profitable run. The Who’s Tommy received mostly strong reviews, but we’ll see if the box office numbers stay steady enough to keep it running past the summer.

Christopher Caggiano is a freelance writer and editor living in Boston. He has written about theater for a variety of outlets, including TheaterMania.com, American Theatre, and Dramatics magazine. He also taught musical-theater history for 16 years and is working on numerous book projects based on his research.