SOLVED: The Vexing Conundrum Of Elaine Stritch!

Elaine Stritch was a mass of contradictions.

She came from a loving, intact family and said she longed to be married but she avoided commitment with all the ferocity of a confirmed bachelor.

She was a lifelong, practicing Catholic but she smoked, drank and cussed like a truck driver and went through a long list of bedmates in the course of a storied career.

She claimed she was most at home and most alive on the stage but opened her one-woman show with a string of complaints about the perils and pitfalls of show business.

She admired decent, practical midwest sensibility but avoided a return to her native Michigan until her final years.

She was said to be a devilish flirt and rarely hid her appetite for the opposite sex but insisted that sex itself was greatly overrated.

She proclaimed a love of New York but when she finally bought a home of her own she opted for a single family home on the main street of a small town.

A lifelong drinker, she joined Alcoholics Anonymous and swore off booze but reportedly continued to imbibe right up to the time of her death.

She was a scene-stealer and show-stopper who also generously mentored other actors. She was a notorious spendthrift who could be surprisingly generous. She had no children of her own and showed little or no interest in kiddies but bequeathing hundreds of thousands of dollars to a children's health program. She boldly challenged authority and scorned sacred cows but went weak kneed in the presence of greatness.

All of this and more is revealed in Alexandra Jacobs' juicy new biography, Still Here, The Madcap, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch.

To say that Elaine Stritch was a complicated person (and an often difficult personality) would be an understatement. It wasn't easy to be her friend. But people were drawn to her and her devotees were legion. She wasn't a great beauty or a melodious songstress and she couldn't dance to save her life. And though she was all the rage in London, you'd never put her in the same league with the giants of the West End.

So, what was it about Elaine Stritch? Why did she prove to be such a compelling presence, so sought after, such an indomitable star?

Here's the way Jacobs explains it (with a bit of help from Stritch's collaborator John Lahr) in Still Here:

John Lahr: “She was actually the most panic-struck person I ever knew . . . . . her real great acting talent was convincing the world that she was loosey-goosey — that was a complete act. And the world bought it!”

And Jacobs adds: "What [Lahr] recognized was someone of the old guard, someone who knew how to stop a show. Someone with no 'Plan B' . . . someone who’s very survival, psychological and economic, depended on her performance, and the audience liking her performance.
" . . for Stritch home was no place, except when she alighted on the stage. 'Honset to God, when I get into a play — even a musical,' she said, 'that was where I lived.'
"What was Stritch’s talent exactly? . . . It really was entertaining, the root of which means 'to hold together.' In a drawing room or on a stage, Stritch could command the entire space."

Throughout her life, sometimes in spite of herself and sometimes against the most overwhelming odds, from the very start right up till the end, Elaine Stritch held it together!

Dear Evan Hansen? Isolation,Torment And Angst

Today less than 24 hours after we saw Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway another high school shooting occurred, this time in Santa Clarita, California. The details are still being sorted out but the alleged shooter is a 16-year-old and today was his birthday.

I mention this because Dear Evan Hansen is about adolescent isolation in the age of the internet. And it deals frankly with high school alienation, the longing for attention and acceptance, and teenage suicide.

But if you're looking for any real insight into what's knawing at high school kids these days from Dear Evan Hansen, you're likely to be disappointed. In fact, it would be generous to call this show a musical attempt at pop psychology.

Evan Hansen comes from a family that consists of just him and a single mom. His parents are divorced and his dad started a new family somewhere else. At school he is bullied and disconnected and can count but a single friend, the terminally nerdy Jared. A hostile student named Connor Murphy badgers Evan and throws him to the ground. Shortly thereafter, Connor (who has his own set of problems, including drug use) commits suicide. And that's where the internet and Evan's ten minutes of fame come into play.

We won't tell you anymore than that.

Dear Evan Hansen consists of a mostly bare stage, eight players, lots of high-tech projections that pose as scenery, a tinny nine-piece band and street clothes in place of costumes. The characters frequently appear solitary and lit by a single spotlight. Often, when they speak to one another they look straight ahead at the audience instead of at one another. When they sing, they simply shout out their feelings in shrill, declarative sentences. In Evan's case, he occasionally switches from a faux tenor to a falsetto without explanation. OK, he's a teenager and he's awkward. Maybe his voice hasn't completely changed. One powerful song (Waving Through A Window) defines Evan's dilemma. Most of the other songs in the show take their cue from "Waving" (or the second-act anthem You Will Be Found) and they sound pretty much the same.

Evan is a senior at his school but we don't know exactly where he lives. We never meet any of his teachers. If he has any goals or occupational aspirations they're never shared with us. His mom is needy, clingy and often whiney. Connor's parents are presumably successful but unhappy and all but estranged. They've spent so much time worrying about Connor that they've apparently neglected his sister, Zoe. All this has made Zoe feel alienated and resentful of Connor. But Evan's got a crush on Zoe.

Dear Evan Hansen is so saturated with incoherent detachment that you come to feel that you're about to drown in a sea of free floating anxiety. There's nothing subtle or nuanced about this show -- so much so that it sometimes seems assaultive. Plus, it's more than cheerless, it's damned near tortuous.

So, why did it win the Tony Award and why is it still running after almost three years with no signs of abatement? Well, for one thing it's been exceptionally well hyped and cleverly marketed. But it also seems to have struck a chord in an America where all the traditional guideposts have sunk into the quicksand of moral relativity. Nobody seems to know right from wrong, good from bad, truth from falsehood, hero from villain, or anything else anymore.

And Broadway doesn't seem to know a series of barely-melodic, angst-filled monologues from an actual musical.

Hear It Like You've Never Heard It Before!

Brian Stokes Mitchell in South Pacific in Concert at Carnegie Hall in 2005.
Perhaps the finest rendition of this song ever!