Review: ‘New York, New York’ Makes It Here

The 1977 Martin Scorsese–directed film New York, New York was an ambitious postwar romance (it opens during the V-J Day celebrations) between angsty Irish musician Jimmy Doyle (Robert De Niro) and starry-eyed singer Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli). A high point was Liza’s “Happy Endings” musical montage, which consisted of poignant ballad belting interspersed with snippets of dancing numbers, a recipe that was obviously a nod to her mama Judy Garland’s “Born in a Trunk” sequence in A Star Is Born. The film’s songs, by John Kander and Fred Ebb (who died in 2004), veered brilliantly between joyous (the classic title song, made famous by Liza and then Frank Sinatra) and sour (“But The World Goes ’Round”), and the production design was rich, but the overall result felt downbeat and self-important. The weird mixture of noirish grit and glitzy artificiality tanked at the box office.

A stage musical of this property would seem like an uphill battle, especially without stars of the magnitude of De Niro and Minnelli, so the creators have completely rethought the whole thing, with an original story by David Thompson (with Sharon Washington). The result feels formulaic at times — and liberally tosses topics like homophobia, domestic abuse, racism, and WWII into a surfacy stew — but it’s laden with spunky showmanship that makes the show go down far easier than a big musical celebration of L.A.’s culture undoubtedly would. (Don’t get mad at me: The show itself points out that, unlike NYC, “Lots of phonies in L.A.”)

This time around, Doyle (Colton Ryan) is not as volatile or macho as De Niro, but he still has a driving taste for music — and booze. His lady love, Francine (Anna Uzele), is now Black — just like “Sugar” in another current movie-to-Broadway adaptation, Some Like It Hot — and she bristles under the racism she encounters in the music biz, though she always ends up tough and resilient (“I’m never playing a maid again. Ever”). In fact, the show gives Francine no fewer than three songs (including “I’m What’s Happening Now,” from the Broadway musical The Rink, and “Let’s Hear It For Me,” from the movie Funny Lady) in which to tout her self-possessed hunger for success. “Blow the bugle, sound the cymbal / All my troubles fill a thimble,” she trills in the latter, self-congratulatory number.

There are new characters, providing an overstuffed melting pot of people striving to “start spreading the news” about how NYC has given life to their dreams. 

In addition to known Kander and Ebb entities like those two tunes and songs from the New York, New York movie, the powers that be have added new songs by Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda,  plus K&E “trunk songs” (meaning numbers that were cut from their musicals, then placed in temporary storage; yes, the songs were re-born in a trunk). To the show’s credit, it doesn’t opt for obvious K&E hits — no one bursts into “Maybe This Time” or “All That Jazz,” which would have been just too pandering. As a musical hodgepodge, this show is reminiscent of Tony-winning director/choreographer Susan Stroman’s 1992 romantic comedy hit Crazy for You (based on the 1930 musical Girl Crazy, later a 1943 film starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney), which featured songs from other George and Ira Gershwin shows as well.

And there are new characters, providing an overstuffed melting pot of people striving to “start spreading the news” about how NYC has given life to their dreams. For starters, there’s a swishy Cuban immigrant (Angel Sigala) hoping to make it as a bongo-playing musician so he can buy his mother (Janet Dacal) a gold gown, and also get his father to finally respect him. (“I’m gonna make us so much money, you can finally have what you desire,” he shrieks to mami.) And there’s fragile landlady/violin coach Madame Veltri (Emily Skinner), whose son is missing in action in Japan — she prays he’ll be back for Thanksgiving so she can cook him his favorite foods — but who might have found a replacement in a young violinist from Warsaw (Oliver Prose), who tosses out a perfunctory mention of the Holocaust: “One morning, my father called hotel to say, ‘Do not come home’ … He knew what would happen.”

Unlike in the film, “Happy Endings” (“Happy endings … are not reserved for the stars / They’re in the stars for me”) isn’t the fulcrum of a film medley; it’s just one song in the show within the show, and Francine doesn’t dazzle in it — in fact, she has only one line in the ensemble number set at a party, because she’s playing, yep, the maid. (A step up from her restaurant day job, I guess.) When she gets noticed and books a singing tour, hubby Doyle turns nasty, concerned that she’ll be treated badly on the road but also no doubt feeling left out of her success. (This, again, is an echo of Judy’s A Star Is Born, but unlike James Mason, Doyle doesn’t kill himself; this show takes pains to be exceedingly nice and eager to please.) 

What has most noticeably been sprinkled in is a fairy-tale tone, complete with an actual “Happy Ending,” with the aim of being a lavish love letter to NYC and all its possibilities. And despite the less felicitous moments that verge on cliché (“Life turns around, like that. In a New York minute. Things can change. Even Jimmy!”), it actually adds up to a satisfying entertainment, steadily guided by Stroman, who has obviously learned from her 2014 musical adaptation of Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway, which took off with breakneck speed and never paused to breathe. New York, New York is full of wonderful, swirling movement — the streets of Manhattan come alive with strutting and spinning residents — but it also makes time for the human element, as when Doyle gets what he wants (a wife and a club management position) and sings a soft, haunting “A Quiet Thing” (“It’s funny, but the bells don’t ring / It’s a quiet thing”). That Kander and Ebb song was originally sung by Liza in the 1965 musical Flora the Red Menace, and it’s just as memorable this time (impressive, considering Liza won a Tony for her portrayal of Flora).

In the dialogue scenes, Ryan gives woozy line readings that emphasize the wrong syll-AHB-le, and he sometimes seems to be in his own universe, but, thankfully, he’s far from a cookie-cutter male ingenue. As Francine, Uzele (Six) is appealingly tough and soars on the two smash songs from the movie — “But The World Goes ’Round” and the title song, both of which she delivers with a throaty ferociousness. (For the latter, Doyle and his band, who accompany her at his Major Chord club, ascend on a riser, to thrilling effect.)

Stroman has always excelled at gimmicky, prop-reliant numbers: Remember The Producers’ old ladies (actually, chorines in wigs and makeup) doing the “Along Came Bialy” tap number with their walkers? This time, the show resurrects a relatively light-hearted ditty called “I Love Music,” from Wait For Me, World, a Kander and Ebb TV project that was never completed (“Liking is one thing and loving is another / And I love music”). As specified by the script, Stroman has Doyle picking up instruments out of his collection and playing them, one by one, as he delivers the song, Francine accompanying him on an invisible slide trombone.

Stroman also has a group of construction workers doing a dance on a metal scaffold that recalls the hoofing chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins. It may not have anything to do with the plot goings-on, but the number provides another wow moment that old-schoolers like me tend to want from a musical, no matter what.

But the real showstoppers are Beowulf Boritt’s set design and the projections by Boritt and Christopher Ash, which fulfill the show’s mission to be large, brassy, and affectionate. Tall buildings with balconies, descending billboards for the Horn & Hardart automat and Bond’s clothing store, and gargantuan backdrops of skyscrapers and Grand Central Station all contribute to the eye-popping appeal. What happens on that set doesn’t always avoid corniness (“I wasn’t killed in the war,” intones Jimmy, “but you die in other ways”) and Act One is too diffuse, but by the end of the show, the audience has submitted to the pizzazzy uplift.

Will New York, New York tour? Probably. If it can make it here, it can make it anywhere.  ❖

New York, New York
St. James Theatre
246 West 44th Street

Michael Musto has written for the Voice since 1984, best known for his outspoken column “La Dolce Musto.” He has penned four books, and is streaming in docs on Netflix, Hulu, Vice, and Showtime.

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