Joe's View

“Beebo Brinker Chronicles” is a very funny stage comedy that recalls the sexy pulp novels of the 1950s — in this case, three books by Ann Bannon about the secretive lives of lesbians during the Eisenhower era.
Co-writers Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman walk a fine line between send-up and seriousness as we follow young women — married and unmarried — who are trying to come to terms with their same sex attraction.
Director Leigh Silverman gives many scenes the slightly lurid, shadowy look of film noir as Beth (Autumn Dornfeld) and Laura (Marin Ireland) find themselves in and out of “cover” marriages that can’t mask their true natures.
The three Bannon pulp novels used for the play — “I am a Woman,” “Women in the Shadows” and “Journey to a Woman” — were among the very few 1950s pop culture artifacts that made isolated lesbians realize they were not alone.
One of the funniest scenes in “Beebo Brinker Chronicles” is set in a Greenwich Village bar where a married fan from the Midwest arranges to meet a lesbian pulp author named Nina (played by the brilliant comic actress Carolyn Baeumler, who gets the chance to score in two other roles as well).
Broadway baby Jenn Colella — who starred in the ill-fated “Urban Cowboy” and “High Fidelity” — is virtually unrecognizeable in the title role, a notorious butch lesbian known as “Beebo” who isn’t quite as tough as she looks.
Off-Broadway veteran David Greenspan — who is one of the funniest actors in New York — plays Jack Mann, a closeted gay man who decides he wants the security and stability of 1950s married life, and settles down with a lesbian who finds the arrangement perfect for her as well.
Autumn Dornfeld and Marin Ireland have to do most of the heavy dramatic lifting as the two conflicted lesbians who are unable to sustain their college romance in “the real world”; both actresses deliver wonderful performances that shift from comedy to drama and back again throughout the evening.
“Beebo Brinker Chronicles” was a hit at a tiny non-profit off-off-Broadway theater and has moved to a larger and more comfortable commercial off-Broadway theater — the 37 Arts — thanks to lead producers Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner. The mix of nostalgia, shocking recent American history and personal drama is quite unique and well worth catching during the play’s limited 10-week run..
(For tickets call 212-307-4100 or go online to ticketmaster.com)

Now that it has become a clearinghouse for work from elsewhere — rather than an originator of theater — it is almost impossible to say what constitutes a “Broadway show.”
Is Broadway “Mary Poppins” or “August: Osage County”?
“Legally Blonde” or “Spring Awakening”?
The incredibly wide mix of shows distresses some old-time mainstream theater folk — see the chatroom on talkinbroadway.com for lots of evidence — but I think it’s exciting to experience something new and fresh in one of those grand old Broadway houses.
Case in point, the rock/blues musical “Passing Strange,” which was a hit last season at the downtown Public Theater and has just transferred to the Belasco Theatre on West 44th Street (one of the oldest and classiest Broadway theaters and one that some people believe is literally haunted by theater ghosts!).
The creation of a singer/songwriter who goes by the name of “Stew” — and his longtime musical partner Heidi Rodewald — the show is about a young black man from Los Angeles who goes to Europe to escape American racism and finds a supportive home among bohemians in Amsterdam and Berlin.
“Passing Strange” is about the evolution of an artist, racial and sexual roles and a whole bunch of other contemporary issues that are absorbed quite subtly into the rich texture of Stew and Rodewald’s music.
The staging is minimal but novel. The score is played by five on-stage musicians — including Rodewald and Stew (the latter acts as host and narrator of the proceedings) — and the story is sung and acted by one of the most gifted casts to play Broadway in some time. The superb ensemble consists of de’Adre Aziza, Daniel Breaker, Eisa Davis, Colman Domingo, Chad Goodridge and Rebecca Naomi Jones.
At first, upon entering the Belasco, it appears that four of the musicians will take up much of the stage — and that the show’s visual interest will be almost non-existant — but then director/creator Annie Dorsen discreetly lowers the musical quartet into their own mini-orchestra pits so that they fade into the “background” of the narrative.
The choreography by Karole Armitage is striking but unobtrusive and a back wall covered with neon light tubing is used for some spectacular visual moments.
But, the music and the story and the characters are the stars here, not any standard over-the-top Broadway shenanigans.
“Passing Strange” would be a wonderful show no matter where it might be produced. Let’s hope that the bending of Broadway — represented in recent years by “Urinetown,” “Spring Awakening” and a few other off-beat shows — continues with this exciting and completely contemporary musical.
(For ticket information, call 212-239-6200 or go online to www.TeleCharge.com. The producers of the show have also set up a Website at www.PassingStrangeonBroadway.com.)

At the moment, some of the best work in the crime fiction field is being done in historical mysteries.
Recently, we’ve had Lawrence Goldstone’s “The Anatomy of Deception,” set in late 19th century Philadelphia, and Henry Holt has just released a new novel by one of my favorite genre writers, Jacqueline Winspear — “An Incomplete Revenge” — that picks up the adventures of British nurse Maisie Dobbs in between the two world wars.
While on vacation last week, I read a gripping novel by London writer Andrew Martin — “The Lost Luggage Porter” (Harcourt) — set in England a century ago. This is the third in a series of books Martin has written about a young railroad man named Jim Stringer.
Martin immerses the reader in the atmosphere of life in and around British railroad stations a hundred years ago, but he journeys into the past with minimal nostalgia.
At the start of the new novel, Jim has been named a railway detective at the York station, just when a mini-crime wave has erupted.
A porter has been found dead in the station hotel and Jim no sooner meets the criminal brothers Cameron in a local pub than they are found murdered in one of the rail yards.
Stringer is given an undercover assignment by his chief that involves pretending he is a street criminal looking for a new alliance. Jim soon finds himself working for a major underworld player named Sampson who has a whole crew of paid-off cops and railway employees helping him make big scores in and around the York station.
Tension keeps building in “The Lost Luggage Porter” as Jim finds himself in that age-old dilemma of the double agent, who has to go along with a certain amount of criminal activity in order to trap his prey. Stringer starts wondering how deep inside the crime world he can venture without losing his own moral bearings.
Martin balances the fear and violence of Jim’s undercover work with his happy home life with a wife who is a budding feminist and who is continuing to work as a typist while pregnant.
The author convinces us we have stepped into the England of a century ago, but he gives the story a contemporary charge by reminding us that criminal and sexual violence were just as rampant then as they are now.
Jim’s unease grows as he and his cohorts flee York for London and Paris and our hero begins to wonder when and if he will resume his happy home life. Of course, the journey by train and boat gives the author a chance to thrill the reader with wanderlust, 1906-style.
“The Lost Luggage Porter” follows Martin’s earlier Jim Stringer adventures, “The Necropolis Railway” and “The Blackpool Highflyer.” Harcourt promises a fourth Stringer book, “Murder at Deviation Junction,” in the fall.
Andrew Martin seems to have found a perfect balance between strong narrative momentum and just enough historical detail to convince us we have stepped into a marvelous literary time machine.