In the News

Not a great review, but check out the paragraph below in blue:

If you loved “Les Miz” and “The Scarlet Pimpernel” on Broadway, you might like “A Tale of Two Cities.”

A little.

The show that opened last night at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre is a musicalization of the 1859 Charles Dickens novel about the French Revolution. This is the actual French Revolution, not that mid-19th century student uprising that “Les Miz” was really about.

This show has book, music and lyrics by New Jersey’s Jill Santoriello, who has a thin Broadway résumé. Make that no Broadway résumé at all. Now 42, she reportedly started writing this show nearly 28 years ago, as a child, during the first Reagan administration.

Santoriello might just be the Sarah Palin of Broadway. Asked how familiar she was with Dickens’ other novels in a recent interview, she replied, “I’m a fan of his stories, and I’ve seen adaptations. But I still haven’t read any of the other novels. I’m saving those up for when this is over.”

“This” is likely to be over soon.

“A Tale of Two Cities” had its stage premiere a year ago at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Fla. Now, with 20 listed producers, it finally comes to Broadway. One problem with any show that takes nearly 28 years to come to Broadway is that by the time it gets there, it’s likely to be a bit dated.

“Les Miz” was a legitimate musical smash – its big melodies and larger-than-life themes dominating Broadway. Now we live in diminished times, to say the least, and the intimate focus of musicals like “Avenue Q” and “Spring Awakening” seem more to the point.

But a part of the Broadway audience still yearns for the big stories and the large choral melodies to go with it, and “A Tale of Two Cities” strives to give them that.

Strives is the operative word here. None of the songs quite gets off the ground, including “Until Tomorrow,” the attempt at an anthem that ends Act One. This is the moment at which the miserable street wretches of Paris decide enough is enough, and that it’s time to storm the Bastille.

Yes, “Until Tomorrow” is a knockoff of “One Day More,” the anthem from “Les Miz” that knocked your socks off.

Neither Santoriello’s musical talent nor her lyric-writing skills are really up to the job, though, as she plucks well-worn phrases from Dickens, and adds her own lame tweaks:

“Now is the best of times/The worst of times/And all things in between.” Hmmm.

Act Two focuses on the lawyer who will make the giant sacrifice of his life for the woman he secretly loves, the dissipated Sydney Carton. It builds to the great guillotine scene – which thrilled so many of us when we had to read the novel in junior high school.

Santoriello does Carton the favor of keeping Dickens’ magnificent exit line intact, and mercifully unsung.

James Barbour, who has a big baritone and a background in such shows (he starred in “Jane Eyre,” replaced Terrence Mann in “Beauty and the Beast,” and created this role in Sarasota), stars as Carton.

Aaron Lazar, Enjolras in the recent revival of “Les Miserables,” plays Charles Darnay, the French nobleman who gets into difficulties when he goes back to Paris at the height of the Terror.

Brandi Burkhardt, who looks exactly like the movie-operetta star Jeanette MacDonald here, is Lucie Manette, the woman both men love.

Gregg Edelman (“City of Angels”), long missing from Broadway, is the shell-shocked Dr. Alexandre Manette, who spent years in prison for having witnessed a horror of the old Regime.

Other appealing faces in this large cast include Westchester’s droll Nick Wyman (another “Les Miz” alum) as John Barsad, Katherine McGrath as the fussy and solicitous Miss Pros and Michael Hayward-Jones as the English banker, Jarvis Lorry.

Natalie Toro simply fails to terrorize as the sinister Madame Defarge, who knits patiently beside the guillotine.

The director, who keeps all this traffic moving at a brisk pace nevertheless, is Warren Carlyle.

What may be the biggest surprise here is the scenic design credit for Tony Walton, a distinguished Broadway veteran, who seems to have been given a 49-cent budget.

Two wooden contraptions roll off and on, faintly recalling the jungle gyms in “Les Miz.” Except that these seem to be made of matchsticks. Walton also seems to have recycled a couple of blue-painted backdrops from his show, “A Christmas Carol.” They only vaguely suggest the two cities of the title, London and Paris.

If you want to see “A Tale of Two Cities,” be quick about it. Chances are, in any case, that you’ll probably like the book better.

Bear in mind that it happens to be one of Dickens’ shortest.

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Thought you’d enjoy this bit of film history, even though it doesn’t directly involve Jeanette MacDonald or Nelson Eddy… yet there is a connection, since it concerns Metro Pictures (later merged into MGM).

JACKSONVILLE, Florida (AP) — Before there was Hollywood, there was Jacksonville.
Norman Studios advertises a silent film that was shot in Jacksonville, Florida, in the 1910s.

Norman Studios advertises a silent film that was shot in Jacksonville, Florida, in the 1910s.

Oliver Hardy made his debut film there in 1913’s “Outwitting Daddy.”

The first feature-length color film produced in the U.S. — the 1917 release “The Gulf Between” — was filmed in Jacksonville.

It even was the birthplace of Metro Pictures, which later merged with other production houses to become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM.

Dubbed the “World’s Winter Film Capital” a century ago when Kalem Pictures moved its offseason production here to escape New York winters, Jacksonville once had more than 30 studios.

“Jacksonville was once the Big Daddy of it all,” said Shawn Bean, a Melbourne, Florida, writer whose new book, “The First Hollywood,” details the city’s rise and fall as the nation’s destination for movie production.

The city’s cinema production thrived for about a decade and survived for a decade more before competition from its California rival, disease, war and clashes with the locals drove the industry from town.

Jacksonville’s downfall started as its California rival took off in the 1920s, complete with the now-famous “Hollywood” sign built into the hills above Los Angeles.

“For Jacksonville, the sign was a gravestone,” Bean writes. “The deceased was a turn-of-the-century East Coast film town that once drew industry elites and wide-eyed hucksters.”

‘Great legacy’

Today, Jacksonville is spending $681,000 to restore four of five of the last remaining buildings from the city’s movie heyday, hoping the Norman Studios buildings can become a silent-film museum and community center.

The city is trying to raise another $2.5 million to finish the structures’ interiors and purchase an adjoining building that was part of the original studio.

“It is a great legacy for my father,” said Richard Norman, the 82-year-old son of the filmmaker of the same name, whose silent films featured black actors and were aimed at black audiences. “He was an exceptional man.”

In the early days, Jacksonville prospered because it offered a variety of backgrounds from sandy beaches and tropical jungles to urban scenes. And the railroad stopped here, making it an easy destination for northern filmmakers.

Among the notable Jacksonville films were the 35 one-reelers in the “Plump and Runt” series made by Hardy and his sidekick Billy Ruge. Many of the films contained Southern, Florida and Civil War stories, including “The Old Soldier’s Story” and “The Escape from Andersonville.”

When World War I broke out, many actors and technicians joined the armed forces or took jobs at Jacksonville’s growing shipyards. The 1918 worldwide flu pandemic struck the city particularly hard.

Filmmakers didn’t help their cause, pulling alarms so they could shoot real-life fire trucks rushing to fight blazes that didn’t exist. Car chase scenes in town were criticized as reckless. Churchgoers didn’t like studios staging bank robberies on Sundays, when the streets were empty.

“Some people felt the filmmakers were taking over the town,” Bean said.

An anti-film mayor was elected in 1917 and by 1930 the city had lost all its major producers.

Filmmakers return

Jacksonville wasn’t the only location where early filmmakers were producing moving pictures, a new and popular medium. Cuba, Arizona and the Bahamas were also the location of some of the films, Bean said.

In 1920, a studio to produce silent films was opened in Astoria, New York, by Paramount Pictures, according to the American Museum of the Moving Image, which is next to the historic Kaufman Astoria Studios.

Recently, however, Jacksonville has reclaimed some of its prior glory — about 60 movies and TV shows shot here, including HBO’s “Recount,” about the disputed 2000 presidential election, the movie “Basic” that started John Travolta and “The Devil’s Advocate” that starred Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves.

Film, TV and other media are worth about $100 million a year to the city, officials said.

But the city never regained the national stature it enjoyed for the first part of the 20th century.

“Jacksonville was a shooting star,” Bean said. “It burned really hot and really fast.”

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